Archive for the ‘Living Life’ Category
Little Girl, back when she was a Little Girl.
Little Girl said something important today.
Little Girl isn’t so little these days … she’s home from college now, and working at a day care business here in Santa Clarita. She’s now in charge of the kindergarten; a promotion she recently earned. My Little Girl is doing very well these days.
Her kindergarteners don’t call her Little Girl, but I do. And I always will.
In her room at the day care, she decorates the walls with a variety of stuff. She’s got a “me display” that includes pictures of her family. There’s a picture of her niece, Payton, among others.
Little Girl relayed a conversation she had with a kindergartener in her charge, and it brought a smile to my face. Twice.
Kindergartener: Who’s that?
My Little Girl: That’s my boyfriend, Eric.
Kindergartener: You’re not married?
My Little Girl: No, we’re not married.
Kindergartener: But you have a baby? You can’t have a baby if you’re not married.
My Little Girl: No, that’s not my baby. That’s Payton, she’s my niece. She’s my brother’s baby.
Kindergartener: Oh…. You have a brother?
My Little Girl: I have two brothers and two sisters.
Kindergartener: You have two brothers and two sisters?!!??
My Little Girl: Well, my two brothers are both married. And their wives are my sisters-in-law. They are my sisters.
Kindergartener: Ohhhhhh.
OK, so I love this Kindergartener. Can’t have a baby if you’re not married? Love it.
The big idea here, though, is Little Girl describing her relationship with her sisters-in-law. They are sisters.
They were all 3 in the weddings for the 2 that are married, and I’m sure that Lauren will have her sisters in her wedding (whenever that might happen).
Sisters. Family.
Isn’t that the way that it should be?
Here’s Little Girl … the blonde! … and her two sisters. That’s the very important mother of my Granddaughter on the left, and MrsMowry on the right. 2006.
Happy Anniversary, Velda!
I swear this is true. The names have been changed to protect, uh, me He.
He: What is this?
She: Larb.
He: Larb?
She. L. A. R. B. Larb.
He: Why are we having Larb for dinner?
She: I was hungry for Larb.
He: How do you get hungry for Larb?
She: I like Larb.
He: I never get hungry for Larb. I don’t even know Larb. Why are you hungry for Larb?
She: When I go out for Thai food, I have Larb. Unless I have Bun. And it’s not a bun. And I like Larb.
He: (drinks his Bulleit)
She: I didn’t give you the hot Larb. You wouldn’t like it.
He: Should I use the sauce?
She: Yes, but not too much. It has some pepper in it.
He: I like pepper.
She: But I know you don’t like spicy foods, so don’t have any.
He: I like spicy foods.
She: No you don’t.
He: I don’t know what I like?
She: It doesn’t matter. Eat your Larb.
He: So I put it in a lettuce leaf?
She: I prefer the cabbage.
He: So why are there lettuce leaves? Is the cabbage too spicy?
She: It doesn’t matter. Eat your Larb.
He: OK.
She: And put some rice in it, too.
He: Is that why there’s rice on the table?
She: Eat your Larb.
He: OK.
She: I found the recipe online.
He: (drinks his Bulleit)
She: Really. Want to see it?
He: Uh, no.
She: Oh, this is really hot. My mouth is on fire.
He: It has pepper in it.
She: (drinks her Bulleit)
He: (drinks his Bulleit)
She: It’s good. I love the fresh flavors. Lime. Cilantro. Mint. Cabbage.
He: Cabbage flavor? Really?
She: Eat your Larb.
He: (drinks his Bulleit)
She: This doesn’t taste like what I had yesterday.
He: You had Larb yesterday?
She: Yes, and it didn’t taste like this.
He: I thought you were hungry for Larb.
She: I am.
He: But you had it yesterday?
She: Yes, I had it yesterday.
He: But you were hungry for more today?
She: Yes. I like Larb.
He: But this doesn’t taste like what you had yesterday?
She: No.
He: So are you hungry for this Larb, or yesterday’s Larb?
She: I like this. I like Larb. Don’t you like it?
He: Why am I eating Larb?
She: I like it. Go ahead. Drink your bourbon. I like it. Go ahead and blog about it. I don’t care. I like Larb.
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(ed. note: Larb is a minced meat salad. It’s the national dish of Laos.)
(further ed. note: She likes it.)
(final ed. note: He is not allowed to eat the hot stuff, but at least She prepared some Larb without the heat. He prepared the Bulleit, and all was well.)
Larb recipe on Grit & Glimmer blog (probably not the one used in the above Actual Conversation)
Cole Withrow, in a picture on the “FreeCole” facebook page.
This story has gone viral in the 48 hours since the incident … and it’s currently a tragic affair.
One honest mistake that he immediately tried to correct … and an Eagle Scout and high school senior is facing prison.
The story is still developing, but here’s where we are as of this writing:
1. David “Cole” Withrow, from Princeton, NC, went skeet shooting with friends over last weekend.
2. He left one (or perhaps two, reports vary) shotgun(s) in his truck by accident, which he discovered when he reached for a book bag in the Princeton High School parking lot Monday morning.
3. After locking the guns in his truck, he went to the office, and called his Mom to come get the guns. He knew they were not allowed on school property, but also knew he was not allowed to leave school grounds once he had entered them that morning.
4. School officials overheard the conversation. Cole was arrested and expelled from school.
5. North Carolina mandates a 1-year expulsion for bringing a gun onto a high school campus.
6. After initially standing by his expulsion, the Johnson County Superintendent Ed Croom, has now offered Cole the opportunity to serve a 10-day suspension and then finish school on another campus. He will not be able to attend the graduation ceremony with his class.
7. He still faces the felony charge.
8. His college admission is also now unclear. Scholarships may be voided due to the felony arrest. However, Liberty University has stepped forward to award Cole a scholarship & make sure he can finish high school over the summer, in time to enroll at Liberty this fall.
9. His family isn’t commenting to the press, and the legal proceedings continue.
#FreeCole
“Zero Tolerance” is fine … until you come up with one of those shades of gray situations, which this obviously is.
Yes, Cole made a mistake by forgetting that he had guns in his truck. Once that mistake happened, he apparently had no option but to be arrested, expelled and imprisoned. Really? It’s a wrong law, and I hope that Princeton High School, Johnson County and North Carolina can see their way clear to appropriately extricating all involved parties from this mess.
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UPDATE: Cole “Knew” The Guns Were In His Vehicle
WRAL.com
The Blaze
WTVD-TV, Raleigh-Durham
This is most of our front yard.
That’s all it took. 14 minutes.
That’s certainly not how it used to be. It used to take much, much longer.
I remember mowing lawns as taking, uh, hours. It killed Saturday mornings … and I had a riding lawn mower, to boot. Of course, that was when I was mowing 2 yards on the farm … and the size of the yards was probably best measured in hundreds of yards, not tens of feet. Today, my lawn isn’t big enough to turn around on a riding mower.
Today, for the first time in about 30 years, I mowed my own lawn. In 14 minutes.
The Mowry Mower
So the mower works. But what to do with it?
The big problem, of course, is that the Mowry Mower doesn’t fit in my 2-car garage workshop. Space is at a premium in SoCal … no one has space to spare. My workshop had a sudden incursion last June when Little Girl came home from college … and it took me months to recover and find new storage for all of the things that have to be stored until she moves out.
Again.
It took me far too long, but eventually I found storage for all of Little Girl’s stuff … just in time to re-fill the workshop with the sheet stock and lumber required to build the shed.
The shed is now just about finished. It got doors today … it’s functional. Another day for final trim pieces, paint and touch-up, and it’ll be all done. Meanwhile, here are a couple of shots of our new shed.
I enjoy designing and building projects from the ground up. This is our first outdoor shed, and we will enjoy it.
It’s a tight fit in our side yard.
The shed backs up against a retaining wall, and still gives us 3′ of clearance.
Bicycles high and low, and still room for the Mowry Mower.
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Why Do I Even HAVE A Lawn?
Any Lawn Care Advice, Auntie?
Another Aunt, Another Bad Lawn
Tom Cruise’s fortune was made in “Risky Business” with his oh so retro Ray-Bans.
When have you been painting white boards in the direct sunlight too long?
When your eyes no longer see color properly.
It’s called Chromatic Adaptation, and what it means is I over-stressed the brightness and blue color receptors in my eyes … so when I walked into the darker, flourescent-lit garage workshop, I couldn’t see brightness or blue colors … which is particularly bad in a blue-light flourescent environment. So everything looked dark brown. And I mean everything looked that way until my eyes recovered several seconds later.
So it was time to quit painting!
Here’s a link to a site so you can see what happens when you over-saturate certain colors in your eyes: PlanetPerplex.com.
Ever wonder why Hollywood stars always wear sunglasses? It’s not just to look cool. Or mask their identity. In fact, if they’ve spent too much time in bright lights, then their eyes eventually adapt so that they don’t see well in transitions between light and dark … they teach their eyes to adapt slowly, because they are always in the bright lights.
So they wear sunglasses to protect their eyes.
It also protects their eyes from all of the camera flashes. And if they are, uh, self-medicating, then it can help protect over-dilated eyes.
And it’s cool.
Sunglasses were just as important in Cruise’s Top Gun.
All the cool kids were doing it. I resisted. I was wrong.
Hear that, Velda? I was wrong. I freely admit that.
For years and years, I resisted the idea that lower quality electronic copies of songs was the way to go. We bought iPods for the kids … but I bought CDs. Finally, last Christmas, I embraced change and asked Santa for an iPod.
And I have now ripped 72 gallons of CDs. I know it’s 72 gallons, because that’s the storage capacity needed to keep all of the CDs & jewel cases. And yes, the idea that I’m keeping the CDs is probably evidence that I haven’t fully embraced the digital age … oh well.
I decided to buy library software to store CD-quality audio on my hard drive; I am using JRiver Media Center 18. It allows me to drag and drop playlists, design smart playlists with rules that I write, and play songs by genre and by artist (to name but a few of my options).
13,619 songs are now at my fingertips, wherever I go. There are 17 different playlists, each of my specific design.
And that, my friends, is a wonderful thing.
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Music To My Ears
Sobbing On An Airplane
JRiver Media Center Software
This UCLA freshman created a huge buzz with her no-hands sideways-facing forward flip done on the balance beam at the NCAA Gymnastics finals last Sunday.
No one else is performing this stunt in competitions right now. WOW!
She landed this epic flip perfectly … but then fell later in her routine. But for that slip, she just might have won a national championship. And she’s just a freshman!
Kudos to 25.media.tumblr.com, who posted the gif.
So there I was, sitting on the driveway painting boards. I had laid out plastic, and I was brushing away.
I have been here before. Many times. Applying finish to wood is something I do, and building projects that outgrow the garage workshop is a common thing. I build big things, which often test limits … like the 80% complete gardening shed you can almost see behind the gates to the right of the house.
I heard the neighbor across the street taking his daughter to cheerleading practice, and I realized that I had never seen him painting boards on plastic sheets spread out on his driveway.
I stopped & thought. He’s lived there for … more than a decade. And I have never seen him doing work in the driveway. Wow!
And then I realized that I was the weird one. I was the one pursuing an idea that apparently makes no sense to my neighbors.
But I’m not alone.
I worked with a lady that is a serious adult figure skater. She travels, competes and judges.
I know a guy that’s got a collection of every 45 record ever to appear on Billboard’s charts. His house is a museum to music.
I know another guy that’s worked in Africa almost his entire adult life. He works for the UN, helping people learn better agricultural practices.
And then there’s the guy that’s done 3 tours in Iraq/Afghanistan.
Velda cooks meals from scratch several days a week. A complete meal from scratch in 60 minutes? No big thing. Feeding 2? Feeding 8? No big thing. Oh, and she’s got a very demanding job, too.
I’ve traveled to Nashville just to run 26.2 miles.
It’s a big world out there.
And isn’t that wonderful?
