"With mirth and laughter let old wrinkles come."

- William Shakespeare

Man claims he is NOT the Messiah

There he is, the Beeze - in all his spring-time glory.

Leave it to the government to name one of it’s health care programs after a venomous snake. The actual name is: Consolidated Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act. Not much better.

Anyway, as most of you know, when you switch jobs, you frequently have to go without health insurance for 3 months or so between the time your old job drops you and the new job picks you up. COBRA is the government’s answer to that gap. So long as you continue to pay the premium, you can continue on your last job’s health plan for up to 18 months or so. Here’s the catcher: for the wife, wee one and I, the monthly premium was over $1200.

Uh, no.

Here’s the other issue: So long as Annabelle goes on COBRA and has continuous coverage, the new Insurance Company cannot deny her based on a pre-existing condition. If Annie doesn’t go on COBRA and has a lapse in coverage, the new company does not have to cover her (none of this has anything to do with the new health-care reform that was passed this past week or so).

So the $1200 question is, “Can we insure just Annabelle through COBRA without coverage for the wife and I?” The HR folks said “Absolutely” – for a premium of about $419 a month.

So I filled out the paperwork and sent it in. In reply, I received a letter in the mail stating, amongst other things:

Well a friend of mine found a guy on the internet takes things a step farther. He creates a bacon-infused bourbon smoked porter. Now that’s a mouthful (pun intended)!

RECIPE HERE

I gave this about 250 rounds. but I think around 150 might actually be enough. But then again I don’t mind when bacon is crispy. Ahh the smell of sizzling bacon mixed with the smell of gunpowder and weapon oil.

RECIPE HERE

Annie loves to be outside - especially if it is breezy. She just lights up and sticks her face into the wind and laughs and giggles. Since we have Zoo passes, I actually have taken her to the zoo just so we could ride the sky-tram to one end of the park and back. Total time at the park?: 15 minutes. Passes are great.

This is a photo of the wee-one in her stroller at Mission Beach - soaking it up.

http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/2010/mar/29/catalina-zipline-aims-to-pep-up-tourist-industry/

Yes, she is solving a rubik's cube while reciting Pi with stack of books on her head . . . .



Why I myself did something similar just last night . . . (so long as sitting on the couch in front of the tv with a glass of wine is considered "similar").

Hey! I said "similar" not "exact"!

“Chicken is cooked with bacon, tomatoes, and wine, then spooned over steaming radiatore pasta.”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m_MaJDK3VNE

=Video Removed=

Awwww Jeepers . . . . I just watched the WHOLE thing and the language just barely crosses that fine ethical line that we routinely blow through here at TDR.

Use the link if you wanna see it - pretty funny stuff though . . . .

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yi3erdgVVTw

Reminds me of another good one:

I heard a fascinating (and helpful) podcast this morning from All In the Mind.

It included an interview from the 70's with Psychiatrist Dr Elisabeth Kubler-Ross who is probably most famous for putting forth the five stages of grief.

The whole interview was fascinating and I feel like I actually gained new insight into the subject of death - highly recommended - especially if you are in the medical profession.

"This is a simple way of making traditional Hawaiian kalua pig without having to dig a hole in your back yard."

I've never been poor, only broke. Being poor is a frame of mind. Being broke is only a temporary situation.

~ Mike Todd

Dawgs + Fire

http://mashable.com/2010/03/23/youtube-choir-eric-whitacre/

Explanation here.

The Owl Box

I got this on my facebook today:

"The United Nations is giving you Free Goodwill Points that you can use to buy one EMP Bomb"

Have no idea what it means but I am pretty sure it's not right.

"Marriage is our last, best chance to grow up."

- Joseph Bart

I made a resolution in 08/09 to disengage from politics and it has served me so well I think I will continue it. that being said . . .

btw: Don't bother blasting me with lousy political criticisms - like I said, we are having enough trouble getting from day-to-day . . . .

UPDATE:

You know, the more I think about my daughter being uninsurable the more my blood boils. To think that ill and/or disabled children in the richest nation on earth have been denied health coverage for profit . . . . for whatever faults the health care reform may contain, there will come a day when we will consider this one point and shake our heads in wonderment and hang them in shame.

Shame on us for taking so long to offer health care to the children who need it most.

WATCH IT - IT WILL MAKE YOU A BETTER PERSON. NO. REALLY. WATCH IT ALL

(Did I mention that Aimee Mullins is a double amputee walking around on prosthetic legs? Who's disabled now????)





http://www.cnn.com/video/#/video/living/2010/03/08/ted.aimee.mullins.ted?iref=allsearch

A friend who read this site for years finally met the dog, and was delighted to hear how vocal he was, how much he talks. She said she dreamed he actually spoke. I think he says the most when he says nothing – a look, a stare, a sigh. It’s the wordless moments you value most with your dog. The unspoken connections. The times when the two of you are on the same level, a place between the two of you. That feels real, sometimes, as real as anything else. It’s all a trick of the light, in a way.

- Lileks

I can barely see through my misty eyes . . . .

LINK

Every winner has scars.

Your pet's own camera

Today is Big Bird's 41st 6th birthday.

You read that right - Big Bird is always 6 years old. To find out why and discover all things Big Bird - hit the link.

I once worked at a church that had a BB Hoop in the parking lot. I researched all the dimensions and painted a half-court on the asphalt. I used to go out in the parking lot and vow not to quit until I sunk 15 shots. All in an effort to become more "sporty" and connect better with a few of the teens at the church. Some days 15 shots took a really, really, long time . . . . Then I see this . . .



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PD6eQY7yCfw

UPDATE:

Awww geeze . . . .



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BIqVvRh_cEY

In interactions with others, instead of trying to be right, why don't we try being kind?

Butterfly Garden

I know, I am a day late, but somehow it still feels appropriate this morning . . .



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OCbuRA_D3KU&feature=player_embedded

Yeah, but we still don't have flying cars . . .



I am going to start singing that song when I intentionally irritate my wife . . . "Just push a little button . . ."

I think I have the show figured out anyway. The island is a prison for the smoke-thing, which is Evil, but not Satan, otherwise it wouldn’t be hanging out on an island looking to crawl inside of bald guys to get something done. It’s just a bad thing. Maybe an outerspace bad thing. There’s probably a spaceship buried under the island. If I had to put money on the last episode, Jack is Jacob – the names might provide a clue there – and he’s back in the states, in the future, touching someone to assure they will come to the island in 2047 to contain Mr. Bad Angry Fog. In the end we will realize that there’s nothing we couldn’t have learned in the first two seasons, if people had just been a tad more . . . forthcoming.

Also, Benjamin Linus will be redeemed. Sawyer will wear his sulk-glower. Freckles will die. Hugo will be happy. Locke will be buried on the island.

- Lileks

Sometimes all we need is a hug . . .

Hope you had a good weekend. I did. Temps helped: we cracked 60 on Sunday, which eliminated the last of the snow, aside from a few doomed floes. (There’s one chunk in a shady spot which usually lasts until the tulips are up, but I helped it along by chopping it up with my heel. I am the sort of man who kicks a season when it’s down. I admit it. Took down all the Christmas lights, plugged them in to see which had survived: about an 80% failure rate. Thank you China. Quality work there, lads. I plugged in the gazebo lights and set them for dusk, and when they popped on I felt remarkably happy: this could be it. This could be spring.

- Lileks

Seriously, watch to the end - good stuff at the end.

Shawn and Kristi Burke shared their story with us in Sunday School this morning.

It's long, it's slow and it will creep you out at the end . . . .

Skhizein (Jérémy Clapin,2008) from Bertie on Vimeo.

Apparantly I live in a digital Bermuda Triangle. Our internet routinely craps out for no apparant reason and because I have exactly 2.5 minutes of free time every other month, I don't get around to fixing it right away.

Case in point: 2-3 weeks ago the internet stopped working. I hauled out a moldy-oldy cable modem and hitched up the wireless router and got everything plugged in to no avail. And there it sat, on the kitchen counter, for a week. I finally called the cable company last Saturday. They were able to "see" my modem on their system, sent all the appropriate signals, had me unplug, wait, plug and unplug again. Finally, I could call up the internet on a laptop in the kitchen.

"Just so we are clear: and I know this is a stupid question . . . . The modem in the kitchen is working - and so is the modem in the family room, along with the phone which is bundeled in with everything."

The tech laughed, "No, you can only have one active modem at a time - if you want two - you have to pay extra."

"How much extra?"

"I have no idea - but I can transfer you to sales."

"Please do."

Sales was closed on the weekend.

And so it goes.

More than once I have thought of this bit . . .



PS. Thankfully, our good friend and roomie, uncle Day spent half of one on the phone with the cable brain trust and got it all figured out . . . for now . . .

UPDATE:

Awww . . . Jeepers . . . .

The longer you have these cookies around the more bacony they taste. These cookies are like a good soup, there better the next day.

Next time your in the mood for cookies give these a try. Elisa says that she really like the cookie dough this recipe makes. You can add any mix ins you want to the dough to make an original bacon cookie.

RECIPE HERE

To exist is to change, to change is to mature, to mature is to go on creating oneself endlessly.

~ Henri Bergson

Rudyard Kipling

One man in a thousand, Solomon says,
Will stick more close than a brother.
And it's worth while seeking him half your days
If you find him before the other.
Nine nundred and ninety-nine depend
On what the world sees in you,
But the Thousandth man will stand your friend
With the whole round world agin you.

'Tis neither promise nor prayer nor show
Will settle the finding for 'ee.
Nine hundred and ninety-nine of 'em go
By your looks, or your acts, or your glory.
But if he finds you and you find him.
The rest of the world don't matter;
For the Thousandth Man will sink or swim
With you in any water.

You can use his purse with no more talk
Than he uses yours for his spendings,
And laugh and meet in your daily walk
As though there had been no lendings.
Nine hundred and ninety-nine of 'em call
For silver and gold in their dealings;
But the Thousandth Man h's worth 'em all,
Because you can show him your feelings.

His wrong's your wrong, and his right's your right,
In season or out of season.
Stand up and back it in all men's sight --
With that for your only reason!
Nine hundred and ninety-nine can't bide
The shame or mocking or laughter,
But the Thousandth Man will stand by your side
To the gallows-foot -- and after!

So the wife and child have been up in Seattle for the past 12 days helping out "Gram" (the wife's mom) after her shoulder surgery.

Now Leta is having nightmares about leprechauns. After comforting her, I've decided to use this as leverage.

- Dooce

by Faith Shearin

My father, in middle age, falls in love with a dog.
He who kicked dogs in anger when I was a child,
who liked his comb always on the same shelf,
who drank martinis to make his mind quiet.

He who worked and worked—his shirts
wrapped in plastic, his heart ironed
like a collar. He who—like so many men—
loved his children but thought the money

he made for them was more important
than the rough tweed of his presence.
The love of my father's later years is
a Golden Retriever—more red

than yellow—a nervous dog who knows
his work clothes from his casual ones,
can read his creased face, who waits for
him at the front door—her paws crossed

like a child's arms. She doesn't berate him
for being late, doesn't need new shoes
or college. There is no pressure to raise her
right, which is why she chews the furniture,

pees on rugs, barks at strangers who
cross the lawn. She is his responsible soul
broken free. She is the children he couldn't
come home to made young again.

She is like my mother but never angry,
always devoted. He cooks for his dog—
my father who raised us in restaurants—
and takes her on business trips like

a wife. Sometimes, sitting beside her
in the hair-filled fan he drives to make
her more comfortable, my father's dog
turns her head to one side as if

thinking and, in this pose, more than
one of us has mistaken her for a person.
We would be jealous if she didn't make
him so happy—he who never took

more than one trip on his expensive
sailboat, whose Mercedes was wrecked
by a valet. My mother saw him behind
the counter of a now-fallen fast food

restaurant when she was nineteen.
They kissed beside a river where fish
no longer swim. My father who was
always serious has fallen in love with

a dog. What can I do but be happy for him?

I'm In.


Tron: Legacy in HD

Trailer Park Movies | MySpace Video

"You will not be punished for your anger; you will be punished by your anger."

- Gautam Buddh

Puttanesca

by Michael Heffernan

Before I gave up wondering why everything
was a lot of nothing worth losing or getting back,
I took out a jar of olives, a bottle of capers,
a container of leftover tomato sauce with onions,
put a generous portion of each in olive oil
just hot enough but not too hot,
along with some minced garlic and a whole can of anchovies,
until the mixture smelled like a streetwalker's sweat,
then emptied it onto a half pound of penne, beautifully al dente,
under a heap of grated pecorino romano
in a wide bowl sprinkled with fresh chopped parsley.
If you had been there, I would have given you half,
and asked you whether its heavenly bitterness
made you remember anything you had once loved.

by Allison Joseph

I miss the rumpled corners of correspondence,
the ink blots and crossouts that show
someone lives on the other end, a person
whose hands make errors, leave traces.
I miss fine stationary, its raised elegant
lettering prominent on creamy shades of ivory
or pearl grey. I even miss hasty notes
dashed off on notebook paper, edges
ragged as their scribbled messages—
can't much write now—thinking of you.
When letters come now, they are formatted
by some distant computer, addressed
to Occupant or To the family living at—
meager greetings at best,
salutations made by committee.
Among the glossy catalogs
and one time only offers
the bills and invoices,
letters arrive so rarely now that I drop
all other mail to the floor when
an envelope arrives and the handwriting
is actual handwriting, the return address
somewhere I can locate on any map.
So seldom is it that letters come
That I stop everything else
to identify the scrawl that has come this far—
the twist and the whirl of the letters,
the loops of the numerals. I open
those envelopes first, forgetting
the claim of any other mail,
hoping for news I could not read
in any other way but this.

by Katha Pollitt

The weather's turned, and the old neighbors creep out
from their crammed rooms to blink in the sun, as if
surprised to find they've lived through another winter.
Though steam heat's left them pale and shrunken
like old root vegetables,
Mr. and Mrs. Tozzi are already
hard at work on their front-yard mini-Sicily:
a Virgin Mary birdbath, a thicket of roses,
and the only outdoor aloes in Manhattan.
It's the old immigrant story,
the beautiful babies
grown up into foreigners. Nothing's
turned out the way they planned
as sweethearts in the sinks of Palermo. Still,
each waves a dirt-caked hand
in geriatric fellowship with Stanley,
the former tattoo king of the Merchant Marine,
turning the corner with his shaggy collie,
who's hardly three but trots
arthritically in sympathy. It's only
the young who ask if life's worth living,
notMrs. Sansanowitz, who for the last hour
has been inching her way down the sidewalk,
lifting and placing
her new aluminum walker as carefully
as a spider testing its web. On days like these,
I stand for a long time
under the wild gnarled root of the ancient wisteria,
dry twigs that in a week
will manage a feeble shower of purple blossom,
and I believe it: this is all there is,
all history's brought us here to our only life
to find, if anywhere,
our hanging gardens and our street of gold:
cracked stoops, geraniums, fire escapes, these old
stragglers basking in their bit of sun.

The aim of an argument or discussion should not be victory, but progress.

~ Joseph Joubert

by Faith Shearin

My husband and I stood together in the new mall
which was clean and white and full of possibility.
We were poor so we liked to walk through the stores
since this was like walking through our dreams.
In one we admired coffee makers, blue pottery
bowls, toaster ovens as big as televisions. In another,

we eased into a leather couch and imagined
cocktails in a room overlooking the sea. When we
sniffed scented candles we saw our future faces,
softly lit, over a dinner of pasta and wine. When
we touched thick bathrobes we saw midnight

swims and bathtubs so vast they might be
mistaken for lakes. My husband's glasses hurt
his face and his shoes were full of holes.
There was a space in our living room where
a couch should have been. We longed for

fancy shower curtains, flannel sheets,
shiny silverware, expensive winter coats.
Sometimes, at night, we sat up and made lists.
We pressed our heads together and wrote
our wants all over torn notebook pages.
Nearly everyone we loved was alive and we

were in love but we liked wanting. Nothing
was ever as nice when we brought it home.
The objects in stores looked best in stores.
The stores were possible futures and, young
and poor, we went shopping. It was nice
then: we didn't know we already had everything.

Baby Bunny + Eating a Dandilion + Washing Its Face Afterwards

"Stand further away. You can't possibly appreciate my greatness this close up."

- STM

William Butler Yeats

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

And "Yes" that is the "If you're happy and you know it song . . .

Rachel Clear is a friend I have never met but she has been a follower of this crummy blog and a great encouragement to me.

Right now She needs prayer and encouragement for her family and her pregnancy. Please visit her blog and add her to your prayers.

A stumble may prevent a fall.

- English Proverb

(language warning)

by Stephen Dobyns

How calm is the spring evening, and the water
barely a ripple. My son stands at the edge
tossing in pebbles, then jumping back. He knows
that someplace out there lies Europe, and he points
to an island to ask if it is France. Here
on this beach my neighbor died, a foolish man.
He had fought with his daughter, his only child,
about her boyfriend and came here to cool off
when his heart stopped. Another neighbor found him
and thought him asleep, so relaxed did he seem.
He had helped me with my house, gave me advice
on painting, plastering. For this I thank him.
As I worked, we discussed our plans, how he wished
his daughter to go to the best schools, become
a scientist or engineer. I said how
I meant to settle down and make my life here—
My son asks me about the tide, why the water
doesn't keep coming up the street to wipe out
the house where he lives alone with his mother.
Is he scared, should I console him? Should I say
that if I controlled the tide I would destroy
that house for certain? Our plans came to nothing
and now, a year later, I'm just a visitor
in my son's life. We walk down to the water,
pause, and look out at the world. How big is it?
he asks me. Bigger every day, I answer.

Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don't matter and those who matter don't mind.

~ Dr. Seuss

In the confrontation between the stream and the rock, the stream always wins – not through strength, but through persistence.

- Buddha

Yeah, it's 16 minutes long but if you are reading this, it's not like you have anything better to do . . . and it's worth it!

Man's Best Friend

UPDATE:

Awww . . . puppies . . .

"Kids go where there is excitement. They stay where there is love."

- Zig Ziglar

LINK

by Reginald Gibbons

The collection manager of the bird specimens at the natural history
museum told of often stopping, on his way to work during spring and fall,
at the immense convention building—tall, long and wide—on the shore of
Lake Michigan, where on the north side he would gather the bodies of the
migratory birds killed by their collisions against the expanse of glass before
first light.

The north side, whether in fall or in spring—a puzzle.

Are these particular birds blown off course by winds, and do they return
in starlight or dimness before dawn or under dark clouds toward shore,
making for the large bulk they might perceive as forest?

They have been flying along this same route for tens of thousands of
years, and not yet has their thinking formulated this obstacle of the city
that has appeared in the swift stroke of a hundred and fifty cycles of their
migration.

"The rules of soccer are very simple, basically it is this: if it moves, kick it. If it doesn't move, kick it until it does."

- Phil Woosnam

by Gerald Locklin

Because my daughter's eighth-grade teachers
Are having what is called an "in-service day,"
Which means, in fact, an out-of-service day,

She is spending this Friday home with me,
So I get up in time to take us,
On this summery day in March,
For a light lunch at a legendary café

Near the Yacht Marina.

Then we feed some ducks before catching
The cheap early-bird showing of
My Cousin Vinny, at which we share a
Dessert of a box of Milk Duds large
Enough to last us the entire show.

Afterwards we drive to a shoe-store to
Get her the Birkenstocks she's been coveting,

But they're out of her size in green; we leave
An order and stop for dinner at Norm Calvin's
Texas-style hole-in-the-wall barbeque rib factory.

When we get home I am smart enough
To downplay to my wife what a good day
We have had on our own. Later, saying
Goodnight to my little girl,

Already much taller than her mother,
I say, "days like today are the favorite
Days of my life," and she knows

It is true.

A really nice post (an not just b/c I am mentioned . . .)

"Springtime is the land awakening. The March winds are the morning yawn."

- Lewis Grizzard

Thanks Joye!

The Sandpit from Sam O'Hare on Vimeo.