Category: family

Isn’t this a beautiful pile of crap?

The LDS Church’s response to Prop 8 passing: Read the statement.\
bq. We hope that now and in the future all parties involved in this issue will be well informed and act in a spirit of mutual respect and civility toward those with a different position. No one on any side of the question should be vilified, intimidated, harassed or subject to erroneous information. (emphasis mine)\
Uh, yea. Tell that to your leaders. (More correctly, to the leaders of the Yes on Prop 8 movement.)\
Nice sentiment, guys, but too late.\
As a whole, the statement reads nicely. And, I am not sure I mean that as a compliment.

Published
Categorized as Jen, politics

This and that

  • I’ve misplaced my iPod. I am bad enough at cleaning the house with it, I can’t imagine what I’ll be like now. Booo. I need my crutch! I am going to dig out our 80s-inspired iPod that is the size of my head and see if I can duct tape it to my body. That should get me through the day, I hope.
  • The kids didn’t have school yesterday so we went down to Kevin’s office for lunch. The boys were happy when practically the whole office went with us. They just looooooove Kevin’s coworkers. Brian especially enjoys spending time with the office manager, Juliet. He makes sure to sit with her and walk with her and give her hugs. He got mad at me once and said, “I don’t love you anymore. I just love Daddy and Juliet.” A couple of weeks ago a bunch of us went out to dinner, including Juliet’s parents. Brian was really excited to meet them. I joked that he was meeting the in-laws. It’s so cute to watch and Juliet is so nice to him.
  • I had a (bad) dream last night that we were moving to Utah, where we would be isolated in our liberal, hippie views AND we’d have to deal with constant four-foot snow. Kevin was thoughtful enough to buy lots of Christmas decorations so our new neighbors would like us, though. Hmm.
  • As far as I can recall, I have never voted for a winning presidential candidate before. (I honestly can’t recall which candidate I voted for when Clinton was reelected, which wasn’t my first election.) It’s nice for that streak to be over.
  • We’re going to the in-laws for Thanksgiving and I am really looking forward to seeing everybody. Kevin’s brother and his family, including a baby, will be there. YAY. And an aunt, cousin, and and a grandma are coming too. Lots of family time! I love it when the boys get to see their extended family. The downside is that we are staying in a hotel, which is my least favorite thing to do with kids. Worse than 4 hours at the Health Department without a lunch break, even. But that is what happens when your family quadruples in size, yes? So, nice problem to have, all things considering.

My Little Internet People

Max and Brian dressed up as Pip and Kitteh from the Laugh Out Loud Cats

I’m not sure what to say about the boys’ costumes this year, other than, I think I’ve broken my children. Did they want to be characters from mainstream popular culture? Nope. They wanted to be the main characters from the very funny, but very internet-y Laugh Out Loud Cats. Did anyone in the neighborhood have the slightest clue who they were? Nope. I don’t think that bothered the boys a whole lot, but I do worry that I’ve done irreparable harm to their pop culture repositories by showing them funny stuff on the internet like Homestar Runner instead of more mainstream fare. I don’t know, but they’re so damned cute as niche web comic characters, I kind of don’t care.

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Categorized as Brian, Max

Mark It Zero, Dude

me dressed as Walter Sobchack from The Big Lebowski

I haven’t dressed up for Halloween for years, at least since Max was born. This year, for some reason, I decided that I should be Walter Sobchack from The Big Lebowski this year. Why? I’m not sure.\
I grew the beard just for Halloween… that’s how seriously I took it. And again, I’m not sure why. But, here we are, and I think it came together quite nicely. See?

me as walter vs. john goodman as walter

Published
Categorized as funny, Kevin

Spare Eight Minutes

Lawrence Lessig provides a great argument against Proposition 8. It’s reasoned, has a sound legal backing (because, he’s Lawrence Lessig), and is profound in its simplicity. It perfectly echoes my own feelings on it, and does a great job of dissolving the rationale for the proposition without insulting those who support it. Great great stuff. Please watch it.

It’s In Every One of Us to Be Wise

It’s in every one of us
To be wise
Find your heart
Open up both your eyes
We can all know everything
Without ever knowing why
It’s in every one of us
By and by
It’s in every one of us
To be wise
Find your heart
Open up both your eyes
We can all know everything
Without ever knowing why
It’s in every one of us
By and by
By and by

from It’s In Every One of Us by David Pomeranz

I should be going to sleep now, but I started watching Big Bird singing It’s Not Easy Being Green at Jim Henson’s funeral, which led me to the Muppet’s Tribute to Jim Henson, and then to Frank Oz’s lovely eulogy. In the second video, I heard a song I don’t remember, the one above, and it got me thinking (and yes, crying a little) about my heroes, and why they hold that position.

I love Jim Henson. He’s one of my heroes – a man of amazing creativity, warmth and love, who created so many great characters. More than that, though, he opened up imaginations by sharing his, and everything he created has at its core a gentleness, decency and humanity. You can tell right away that there’s a piece of him in everything he did. He died long after I’d outgrown Sesame Street (I was fifteen), but I still got choked up whenever anyone played Rainbow Connection (still do).

My second hero is Mr. Rogers. I used to watch both shows as a kid, but didn’t really understand who Mr. Rogers was as a “real” person until much much later. Mr. Rogers was seemingly without guile, someone totally in touch with their emotions and with the emotions of those around him – and like Jim Henson, the adjective that jumps to mind when I get past the things they created – the artifacts of their professional lives, is “gentle”. I love that Mr. Rogers dedicated his life to speaking softly to children without speaking down to them, to teaching them about the world without fear or cynicism. I told this to a friend today and she looked at me like I was crazy, but I think Mr. Rogers may be the most Christ-like person to live on the earth since, well, Jesus.

And last, but certainly not least, my dad. I certainly don’t tell him this enough, but he is my hero. He is the most patient person I’ve ever met, and set a great example of what a husband and father should be – one that I don’t measure up to, but aspire to. He is kind, and gentle. I think the only times I heard him raise his voice were either on the golf course or home repair “mishaps” with heavy tools, and they were never directed at us (the only reasons my brother and I ever went golfing with dad were: to hear him swear, and to drive the cart).

It all comes back to being gentle, something I’m not very good at, but want to be. All three of my heroes are good men: creative, smart, compassionate and charitable gentle men , who leave those around them better for having known them. They are who I aspire to be.

Thank you, dad, for being there when I need you. And thank you, Mr. Rogers and Jim Henson, for being examples of where imagination and decency can take you in a sometimes dark and always imperfect world.

And to get back to the song, it is in all of us to be wise. It’s in all of us to be better than we are, to aspire to being more like our heroes and to choose leaders more like we aspire to be instead of those that feed on our fears. I saw a sticker today Love More. Fear Less (you can get your own), which is what started this whole train of thought.

We, I, have been afraid too long – driven by fear to compromise our dreams, our futures and to choose leaders who feed those fears. It’s time to be led by love, to stop being afraid and embrace the future as a challenge to be better, to live our ideals instead of preaching them to others and doing the opposite behind closed doors when we think no one is looking. I’m tired of being angry. I’m tired of hearing politicians claim that the people who disagree with them aren’t “real” Americans. I’m tired of the pandering and the lies. Anger is fear turned outwards, a blind response to things we feel powerless to control, and anger is not love. I’m no hippie. I know I’ll still be angry when I wake up in the morning and catch a glimpse of the news, but I’m going to try to be wise. I’m going to try to love more and fear less, and I will keep my heroes that embody those qualities.

I don’t know that this makes any sense at all. It’s late, and I should have been asleep two hours ago, but I couldn’t go to bed with all this trapped in my head.

“It’s in every one of us to be wise. Find your heart, open up both your eyes.”

I remembered!

So the other reason I am a dork is because I accidentally ruined our iron. I usually keep a cup of water nearby to refill it as I am ironing but sometime last week I grabbed a cup that held the remnants of melted diet-coke-covered-ice. It looked just like water! I didn’t realize the problem right away and almost ruined some clothes. And then after trying to clean the mysterious goop off of the iron, I finally realized the goop was coming from inside the iron. When I tried to burn it out, Kevin accused me of trying to burn the house down. Finally we just decided that buying a new iron was the best solution. :P\
This is related to Kevin and/or his work because I discovered the mysterious goop while ironing clothes before meeting a bunch of his coworkers for dinner.\
The End.

Published
Categorized as Jen

How I Use Evernote

I mentioned on twitter the other day that I love Evernote and use it to keep my daily to-do list and keep track of what I work on. A couple people said I should write a blog post about it. Since I’m just waiting for my Tylenol PM to kick in, I figured… why not.

If you’ve never heard of it, Evernote is a note-taking app that is accessible from anywhere. They have desktop applications for OS X, Windows and the iPhone and a really nice web interface too. I clip things I’m reading to it all the time to either save for later or because I know I’m going to want to send it to people and might not be able to find it again. I put quotes in it I want to save, put URLs to things, and even jot notes down on the iPhone if I come up with an idea while I’m out. It’s fine for that, but I didn’t become a heavy user of it until I started keeping track of my to-do list. I’d tried implementing GTD (Getting Things Done) several times before, but it never stuck, until now.

Evernote has the idea of notebooks and notes. I have notebooks called Stuff – for everything not work-related that’s not a to-do list, Journal – for all my daily to-do lists, and Work – for work stuff I want to remember.

Here’s how I use it for keeping track of my daily to-do list:

  • I have the desktop application open all the time. It’s never closed unless I’m rebooting, so my to-do list is only ever a couple keystrokes away.
  • Either at night before I leave work, or first thing in the morning, I create a new note in my Journal notebook with the date as the title.
  • Then, I just start creating a list of to-do items I want to get done that day. They’re usually always work-related, but sometimes they’re not (lthis week, one was: “Call doctor about the whole not-being-able-to-breathe thing” – and I did… check!).
  • Then, as I go through the day, I’ll either just check them off if they’re simple, or add details about exactly what I did and approximately how long it took. The details are the important thing, since I can now remember the steps I went through to do something and have much better recall when I need them again.

This sounds really anal, I know, but it’s really helped me concentrate on my productivity, and how much time I spend doing things other than the stuff I really need to get done that day. I also remember more of what I do during the day just by writing it down.\
The to-do items in Evernote are still a little buggy. For example, until recently, you could only add them in the desktop application and you couldn’t mark them complete in the web if iPhone apps. I just checked and you can’t mark them done in the web interface… oh well, nothing’s perfect (and it’s still in beta).

There are some great web apps out there that are all about to-do lists, and I’ve tried most of them (I got the farthest with Remember The Milk). I think Evernote is sticking because I use it for more than just the to-do list, and I can get to it wherever I am.