Blog to O'brien

Move Day

2012-01-22T05:14:00.000-08:00

It's been 6 years since the last time we picked up and moved hundreds of miles to start a chapter of our lives. When the wife and I moved from Philadelphia to Charleston there were some things similar to this move. We knew that the job I was taking would be a lot of work. We knew that we didn't know that many people at the new place.

There are some differences this time. We've got the boys to try and adjust to a new area. There's family that are a few hours away, and notably close to the nearest temple.

Ohio Bound

2012-01-13T10:30:00.000-08:00

If there's anyone left who hasn't heard, we are going to be moving to Cleveland Ohio in the next 10 days. I was offered the position of Director of Pharmacy for Rainbow Babies & Children's Hospital and after a lot of thought, I accepted.

Personally, I'm excited to get into another situation where a department needs help figuring out the basics. I've got a great gig here in SC, but it was starting to get hard to generate a lot of enthusiasm for the future. As I was installing a new software system in one of the pharmacies here it became clear that it was not going well. I had to spend a bunch of time and effort talking about best practices and solving problems to get consistent and safe practice from the technicians and pharmacists. I was exhausted each day and totally spent at the end of the weeks. And I love it. It reminded me of why I got into management and leadership, to solve everyday problems and make things better over time. It was after that software install that I knew I needed to get serious about finding the next place to turn around.

From my families perspective I think we are ready for something new. We've lived in SC for 6 1/2 years and we've absolutely loved almost all of it. The friends we've made are people I hope to keep in touch with for the rest of my life. My wife and I have worked with the youth for almost the whole time we've been here and it's been really great to watch them grow up and get ready to go to college.

One of the things I'm sad about is that I don't know how much J is going to remember SC, and I'm positive E won't remember any of it. It's such a great place that will be reduced to a few scattered memories for them. But they will have many opportunities in the new place that they wouldn't have had here.

As someone who lived in the same house until I left home after High School it's sort of weird to think that my kids will have a different childhood experience than mine. But that is life. When I left Utah 11 years ago I did it because I felt strongly that I was needed somewhere else. It's been a grand adventure to see where that somewhere actually is.

The New OS

2011-10-13T20:16:00.000-07:00

Here I am, sitting in the dark trying not to wake up the wife while I'm trying to update the OS of my devices. There's a phone, a laptop, and a desktop. This all started earlier in August when I upgraded the desktop to the new OS. The wife was on vacation at the time and it was a good thing. It gave me some time to try and figure out why it did crazy things when buttons were pushed, or the mouse was used a certain way. I think I've figured out most of the essential features. It's funny how the company might list that there are "over 200 new features" and then I can't find a complete list of the 200. I think that the most I've seen is possibly 20 of the 200. Personally, I think they double dip on their claims. All I'm asking for is a list people. After the list google could take care of the rest of the training. Or it might not because so far it's failed me in producing a list of enhancements.

The next real installment in the "I'm trying to be more productive" effort was the laptop purchase. I think I've progressed just far enough in my career that I have to have a full size keyboard and access to Office available at any time or place. I've also progressed just far enough in my career that if I take a few minutes of quiet thought, I can come up with 2 or 3 things to do on the laptop that would actually qualify as productivity. I got my first laptop when I went to pharmacy school. I actually brought it out during lectures and took notes on it. It worked for some classes and was a miserable failure for others. It's strikingly difficult to express an elimination constant of a particular drug when you're taking notes in Word. And strikingly simple if you have a pen and paper in your hand. As we all neared graduation, there were a few of my friends who confided that they thought I was really strange to pull out a laptop during class. I've seen recent photo's of college classes now and you can't find a single person who doesn't have a laptop. I was totally a trendsetter. I was also not very efficient. I found that most of what I needed to do was read enormous books and browse online medical journals. What I used the computer for was to pursue hobby interests: digital photography, digital recording of myself playing the guitar and singing, and surfing the almighty web. I really needed a desktop.

The next phase was the desktop phase. I actually learned how to use one. There was a need for a mobile device, but the devices were really clunky with terrible battery life 6 years ago. When things like the iPad were really introduced I was out of the clinical arena and firmly behind a desk. Again, chained to a desktop.

This next phase I guess is categorized by frequent enough travel that it's difficult to be truly unplugged for multiple days at a time. Projects are due, papers need to be written, emails need to be sent, and business suites at hotels are filled with clunky slow computers that are out of the way to get to. And some aren't free! I've had the displeasure of spending about $100 a year on computer time because some project had to be completed or worked on during a trip. It was about 4 years ago that I learned there is no such thing as a vacation. If you unplug, risk being unplugged permanently from your job. I was sad about that at first, but then you get over it. I don't think the wife has really gotten over it yet, but maybe in the next 10 years she'll see the cold truth of it.

*************************
We're now in the home stretch of the update. The download bar is almost completed. After the download is complete there's a restart and then some options to check or uncheck. I really hope this all gets easier in the future. I'm really looking for a conversation in the future.

Me: "Hal, isn't it about time for your update?"
Hal: "Your right Dave, I do need to improve myself."
Me: "You know it creeps me out when you call me Dave Hal."
Hal: "Yeah, but I can't help myself sometimes. I'll schedule the update to begin when you go to bed. All devices and components will be updated and upgraded before you get out of the shower in the morning."
Me: "Excellent. Thanks Hal."
Hal: "No problem....Dave."

The Camping Photos

2011-05-22T18:56:00.000-07:00

Some of my readers aren't regulars on my Facebook account and didn't see my camping photos with J. So here they are with all of the lo-res glory of an iPhone camera.

Called to task

2011-05-17T18:55:00.001-07:00

Thank you Jeff for pointing out a failing of my blog ambition. Around Christmas I set out to review some root beer that my wife had given me as a gift. I got to number 3 and then I found an excuse to stop writing. I hope it’s at least some consolation that I didn’t just start writing about something else, I just stopped writing altogether.

So let me go back and make amends and review the worst of the lot. It was the Oogave. That was probably the worst liquid I’ve purposefully put in my mouth in a very long time. I have a particular aversion to crèmesicle and my good friend, and task master, Jeff understands why. Oogave was nasty at room temp and nasty cold. Anyone who would like to take on the dare and drink the whole bottle slowly, so all the nastiness can wash over their taste buds, are hereby challenged.

As far as the best root beer goes, it really is a hard thing to judge. The wife really like Dad’s for all of it’s commonness. The Maine Root Beer stands out in my mind all these months later, and so does the Sioux City. So there you go, a real endorsement.

Thanks for the reminder Jeff. And if there are any other stories that remain untold, feel free to leave a comment. I’ll be blogging for at least another day or two (hahaha).

The Big Project

2011-05-17T18:46:00.001-07:00

A while ago I mentioned on my blog that I was beginning a project at work that had some potential to make a significant difference in the pharmacy world. We took several steps forward on that project in the last week and it’s exciting to see us get started on some of the challenges.

As we’ve been battling a budget for the project and what seems like an endless amount of red tape, there are other hospitals that are getting close to their own implementation. I’m starting to wonder if the first real project that I submit for publication from this needs to be a collaboration with other sites or if I can still have a relatively independent assessment. For those who do research regularly, I imagine this is a common thing to think about: are you going to be beaten to the punch by someone else.

There’s a portion of my feelings that are still very genuine that I’d like to be able to describe the situation and set the tone of the debate. And then there’s a fairly selfish side that would just like to cross this finish line first.

One thing to remember for me is that it only really matters if I actually can pull together the information into an actual publication. This is a step that’s been elusive so far for me.

Computers

2011-05-16T22:30:00.001-07:00

You know, sometimes things can be different than you expect and still be good. I’ve recently been introduced to a new Windows PC and I have to admit it doesn’t suck. The set up was easy, the user interface is relatively straightforward, and I haven’t run into any major issues in the first 2 hours.

There are a few things that I’d like to figure out, like how to backup files to my already established backup method. Or possibly how to stream the music from my other computer to this one without downloading the actual files. Anything is possible right?

Day 3: Americana

2010-12-28T18:21:00.000-08:00

That's a bold title for a root beer: Americana. Although root beer has it's roots (pun intended) in other countries it's been popularized in North America. So to call your beverage Americana is like saying, "Yeah we're the original. The grand daddy of root beers."

According to my source of all information, Wikipedia, root beer has several very distinct varieties; Birch Beer, Ginger Beer, Sarsaparilla, and Spruce Beer. I have plenty of experience with Birch Beer, but really haven't appreciated the other varieties. I guess that could be a gift for next Christmas, hint, hint, hint.

So Americana, how do you fair?

* Nice aroma. There's nothing quite like smelling a newly opened root beer. My brother Andy used to take a newly plastic bottled soda, with all of the smokey stuff, and squeeze the bottle so it would puff up and then inhale it. I wouldn't recommend trying it, it's not real pleasant.

* The most striking thing about Americana is that the carbonation is very subtle. Not really something I thought I needed to judge, but I guess I do.

* The root beer guide tells me there is a strong molasses taste, but I guess it's not strong enough.

It just occurred to me that I'm drinking all of these from the bottle so I really can't give an accurate description of color. I guess you'll just have to trust that they all look like root beer.

Until tomorrow fellow root beer drinkers, bottoms up.

Day 2: Boylan

2010-12-27T19:15:00.000-08:00

This little gem is definitely made for sipping. That doesn't sit so well with me because I sort of have a drinking problem. What I mean by that is that I'd prefer not to sip beverages, I need to drink them by the gallon. Don't try to diagnose me with the diabetes, there isn't any polyuria or high fructose corn syrup coursing through my veins.

Back to the task at hand, Boylan. The root beer guide says that it is "creamy and smooth, with a balance of wintergreen and anise." Can't say that that description is on target because I don't know what anise tastes like, and how could anything be balanced with wintergreen. A small word about wintergreen. In my first pharmacy job at the U in SLC, we would dispense wintergreen to certain nursing units. I wondered why we did that until one night I was on a unit that we had delivered a bottle and noticed a very strong smell. Like a cow had eaten a bushel of wintergreen and overstayed his welcome. Some smells even wintergreen can't cover up.

Back to Boylan. Does my flight of ideas tell you anything about this particular root beer.

* It's good, but doesn't quite keep your attention.

* There is an unmistakable smell of cane sugar, which is good because it must be the salient feature of the brew.

*If I were to pair this with an ice cream I guess I'd go with vanilla, but don't poor the root beer over top. You don't want your anise getting mixed with the cream.

Until tomorrow, bottoms up all you fellow root beer drinkers.

The 13 days after Christmas: Root Beer

2010-12-26T14:10:00.000-08:00

My wife is amazing! Sometimes husbands say that and they are just being kind, hoping to go golfing, or are being confronted with the dreaded question, "What did I just say?" But I really mean it, my wife is amazing. This Christmas was extra special because we had 2 small kids, J and E, who were sooooo cute on Christmas morning. It was an emotional roller coaster for J, but it was really special to see him all morning.

Back to the wife. She had this great idea to give me a crate of different root beers for a Christmas present. It's amazing. As the pictures will attest this was a glorious thing to behold on Christmas morning.

So now I have a mandate, to drink and rate the 13 different kinds of root beer that were provided. I've decided to drink them at room temperature to have the clearest taste of the root. If by some chance you like the ratings I've given and would like me to sample other varieties of root beer and post it on my blog, please, go ahead and make my day.

Day 1: Stewarts

* This is the least favorite of the internet root beer scene. It seems like other reviews that Stewarts is the PBR of root beer. It's cheap, abundantly available, and did I mention cheap.
* J gives it a sad face rating, but drank about half the bottle (clearly not scientific rating system)
* Sweet taste, slightly bitter aftertaste, and well uhhh, rooty.

I'm going to have to get a little better at this as the 13 days go on. Bottom's up all you fellow root beer drinkers out there.

Almost Perfect Weekend, Day 1

2010-10-24T19:28:00.001-07:00

I had an almost perfect weekend starting this past Friday. Friends of ours invited the wife, the boys, and I down to their house on Kiawah Island. The plan was for the wife and kids to spend time on the beach while I played golf with the husband friend of ours. As we were trying to coordinate a time when we would both be in Charleston before the weather became very unpredictable, we determined that this past weekend was the best we would get for several months. The problem is that the wife and kids are still visiting family in Utah.

I'm not the sharpest knife in the drawer, I realize that why I get invited places is not really my sparkly personality. It's the sparkly personality of the wife and my very adorable boys. So I sheepishly asked if it would be okay for me to come by myself and maybe at a later time the rest of the family could come down. They were very nice to agree.

On Friday I quickly wrapped up some things that were happening and rushed down to Kiawah, or as I'll refer to it in the rest of the post, a wonderful slice of paradise (WSP). I only got slightly lost on my way to WSP and when I arrived I was shown my room. It was absolutely breathtaking. While we were just sitting in the living room talking, my friend Jim and I were talking about the latest news about the NPR firing of Juan Williams. On his way to a very good point he asked as an aside, "Do you know Nina Totenberg?" I said sure I do. He said quickly, "Really, oh good we know her as well. We were eating dinner with her about a month ago at the Kennedy Center..." At that point I almost had a heart attack. When I was asked if I knew Nina Totenberg I assumed I was being asked if I had heard of her, and yes I have heard of her, not, do you regularly have dinner with Nina. I couldn't pay attention to the rest of the point Jim was making. It just cracked me up too much.

After hearing more about dinners at the Kennedy Center we went off to dinner at the Turtle Point Golf Course. We were in a little bit of a rush so we decided to go to the bar because we could sit down right away and eat a quick bite. Well, I never imagined bar food to be so spectacular. We had these amazing mussels and calamari for appetizers, and then I had the most tender, flavorful short ribs and pasta ever. It was truly the most upscale bar food I've ever had, or maybe ever will have.

After dinner we scooted over to a catholic church to hear a Flute recital that was being put on by the Arts Council of Kiawah. It was absolutely delightful. The church had great acoustics and the pieces chosen were modern, but not unhearable. It really reminded me of when my mom would ask me to go with her to classical performances because the other siblings wouldn't go with her. After the first several I really started to enjoy myself.

We decided to skip the cookies after the performance to go back to the villa and have some Cherry Garcia ice cream and watch the Rangers beat the daylights out of the Yankees. It was a late night, but it was tremendous. I've attached a photo from the back porch of the villa. It was an amazing first day. The second day was equally amazing, but this post is long enough.

Tech Update

2010-10-24T19:23:00.001-07:00

Here's a quick update about the technology that I wrote about in my last post. You know, the last post that I wrote 5 months ago. I'm so current and efficient.

Anyway, I've been traveling around the US to see places that have implemented versions of this new tech and it's blowing me away. The great thing is that there are places that are pushing forward. The really great thing is that it seems like they're missing the boat with how huge this impact could be. Most places have implemented the tech without making needed process changes that can really transform their process into something amazing. I guess that will be the thrust of the mythical article that I'll be writing.

Off to Boston tomorrow to see another companies version of this tech. I'm under some pretty strict obligations not to talk about what we've seen so as not to appear biased in my assessment. After Tuesday I think it should be very clear what direction we will be going, and I hopefully will be able to lay out the case for why we need a safety revolution in the hospital IV room. Viva la Tech!!!

Potential Career Project

2010-05-12T19:01:00.000-07:00

I've been a pharmacist for about 5 years. That's not really a long time considering that many pharmacists work until they're 90. Every so often I come across a topic that strikes as interesting in the way that Skype was interesting the first time you saw it. The type of thing that you're so happy someone figured this out because you can immediately see how it would change what you do on a daily basis.

About a year ago, after a very significant medication error at my hospital, there was a group of hospital admin types that were questioning why we made IV products the way we made them. After several hours of talking with about our process, and many, many hours thinking about how we make things and why we make them the way we do I was a little depressed that things couldn't be better. We were caught between the demands of the patients, and the absolute necessity to produce flawless products. This really sounds like the beginning of a robotics book. Around that time I saw a presentation about a couple companies that were looking at changing the way IV's were prepared in the pharmacy. What they were proposing would be a fundamental change in practice, but there was a problem. It just didn't come together with reality. There were holes in what they could do and what they couldn't do. One of the companies was really thinking about their solution with a very narrow view. So I proclaimed to our hospital admin folks that we the technology just wasn't mature enough to move forward. When I looked at this same tech this past December I knew we were in a watershed year. These companies were starting to see what they had, and what they had was the formula for gasoline with a whole country of people waiting to drive their Model T and shoot their horse.

It was in December that I realized that it might be possible to get in on the early stages of this technology role out to hospitals and make this my mission. To get people to see this tech for what it really could mean. I'm pretty excited about it because this morning a vendor for a pneumatic tube maker was talking to us about other things that they wanted to do, and it just made perfect sense that they were 6 months from adding the only missing piece of the IV technology. In the next year our hospital could transform from a very manual, and ultimately flawed model to a very automated, and redundant model that would help make errors more apparent, and thus easier to eliminate.

I don't think it will get me on the cover of Wired, but it would be great to know we could prevent even 1 fatal mistake.

I wouldn't be doing justice to name of this blog if I didn't also mention that this would also be the dawn of a Big Brother era in Pharmacy. As a pharmacy manager I would be able to see more work statistics of my people. We would be able to benchmark technicians and pharmacists against each other. We could set work statistic standards and speak with people that were 2 standards of deviation above or below the norm. This is the stuff the ACLU is probably just waiting to break open so they can sue me. There's nothing quite like smell of getting sued in the morning. It smells like...depression.

I may turn this blog into the beginnings of several journal articles about this technology. I might actually do it, but then both of my loyal readers, the wife and mother, would abandon me forever. Hi Mom!

Ready or not

2010-05-05T18:31:00.000-07:00

The radishes have got to go. I was doing a little late night planting tonight and thought that my radishes are growing so well that they are probably hindering my fledgling tomato plants from getting enough sun. I don't like radishes enough for them to crowd out tomatoes.

They are probably far from done, but they'll be harvested tomorrow. Long live the tomatoes!!

As a side note there was an NPR piece about a bunch of folks in Ottawa tearing out their grass to plant urban gardens. That is a great concept for almost anyone. The idea is that home owners give up their grass and someone plants veggies in it's stead. The planter takes care of the garden plots as well. The owner of the land gets a share of the harvest from all of the garden plots in the coop. Wonderful idea that could be done in any urban or suburban area. Almost totally local produce and you don't have to mow.

Make Our Garden Grow

2010-04-27T17:55:00.000-07:00

The garden is moving right along here in SC. We got a little later start than last year. It was colder here in early March, and I was busy. You hear that, I was busy. After a misstep with starting seeds, the square that will be started from seeds is going great. So here are the early triumphs. I need to get them while I can because we have a long growing season and varmints and bugs are probably just waiting to feast on my efforts.

Seed Garden
Dill...I think.
Maybe Basil.
There's life in my blackberry plants.

Worthy Distractions

2010-04-19T19:23:00.001-07:00

I've often listened to talks about doing family history at church and thought, "I guess that's what I'll do in retirement." Recently there has been a push, I think church wide, that all members get involved with family history by logging on to Family Search and doing some rudimentary tasks. I'd like to offer my first experience really looking through that website.

At first I thought that the church has come a long way to figuring out how to make the most of 12 million members. The idea to group-source family history work has really started to take shape. For those of you who are unfamiliar with group-sourcing check out a fun project called Zoo Galaxy. Instead of finding time to go to a family history center and deal with people who know next to nothing about computers and an infinite amount about genealogy try to explain the process to someone who knows a whole bunch about computers and zilch about genealogy, you can sit at home and have a handy dandy help function teach you all you need to know.

I had logged on over Christmas and asked my father in law to teach a few tricks (thanks Jesse), but I wanted to do a little bit more. So I logged on and started to play with the view features. This has always really frustrated me in the past. Now it's really easy to move around your family tree and figure out whose been found and who hasn't . After a little bit I figured I'd test the system and expand the entire view of my family tree. My hypothesis is that at some point the exponential growth of this view would diminish because the availability of records would become sparse. This was not true. So I spent about an hour expanding the lines to their maximum until I had reached back to the middle 1500's and there was no sign that we were reaching a diminishing point. (What's pictured is my Dutch line. This is what I thought the whole thing would do, but didn't. After 13 generations my Dutch line disappears. The earliest ancestor dates to about 1550.)

I also ran across some very inspiring things. I was looking to see if all of these descendants had their temple work done, and found that people on both my fathers line and my mothers line had been married in the Nauvoo Temple. And there were a few that had been married in the Endowment House before the Nauvoo Temple was ready. As I looked a little closer two couples had been married on the same day, Feb. 6th 1846, essentially right before they were driven out of Nauvoo. A google search later and I had found that on that day 512 other had been married or had some temple work done. Another interesting point is that from these 2 couples there was a marriage after they had left Nauvoo. It was a special moment for me, to see a glimpse of who I am through my ancestors with a little digging and web searching.

As a follow up to the initial look at the complete picture of my family history, there were some spots that were incomplete. I had always thought that it was all done, and there wasn't much to accomplish. That might be true, but not necessarily. There are people to find out there in the records of the earth, and someone needs to pick up where everyone else left off and find those people. For that intensive digging I might have to wait a few years. My 2 living boys and wife need some time and attention as well.

New Baby

2010-03-06T19:20:00.000-08:00

Let me say a few words about my lovely family so everyone doesn't condemn me as a useless dad who cares more about a silly garden and doesn't blog a word about his kids.

I have a wonderful wife. The wife, as she's known in the blog-o-sphere, is tremendous. I've said it for years that she's one of the smartest people I've ever met, witty, and simply beautiful to boot. I still haven't figured out exactly how I tricked her into marrying me, but I'm glad it worked. If only I knew what I did so I could write a book and all the other helpless schlubs out there would buy it and find the perfect person for them. This last pregnancy was very difficult, but she almost always had a smile and continued the vigorous pace of keeping up with J and keeping up with a busy husband. And have I mentioned how cute she is. It's shameful that she looks so good 2 weeks after having an 8lbs 4oz baby. No one in the Labor and Delivery unit could believe she's the one who had the baby because she walked out of the hospital looking like she was a visitor.

I have a wonderful oldest child. J has really done well with his new role as big brother. Sure, he wants to play every possible moment and at times flies off the face of the planet in a crying spell. If I was 2 I'd be doing the same thing I'm sure. But he also is so good about wanting to hold E.L.M. He will walk over very carefully and touch E.L.M.'s feet and touch his hands and then look up and say, "Baby!" He was terribly cute when we went to the hospital to see the baby and mommy. He walked right in, climbed up on the bed, and declared, "Hold it!" We positioned him in the wife's lap and let him hold the new baby. He didn't want to let go, he just kept saying, "Mine, hold it!"

And I have a wonderful baby #2. Right now baby E.L.M. just wants to sleep and chill. I hesitate to put that out in the universe because he could turn into a sleepless nightmare, but right now he's just perfect. He opened his eyes for a grand total of 5 minutes in his first 2 days. He stays awake a little more now, but is still just a sweet little thing that loves to cuddle into my arm, let out a big sigh, and then poop his pants. I'll quickly change him so he's all nice and clean and settled. He'll look around some, give me a little smile, and then poop his pants. He doesn't double poop with the wife, he saves that for me. I'm the special one.

I can hardly wait for E.L.M. to grow up into a toddler like J. And I can hardly wait to see J as a 4 year old when that happens. We have some wonderful time ahead, and I'm delighted to be a part of it.

Garden Bug

2010-03-06T19:02:00.000-08:00

The last post was all about how I was all uncertain about the upcoming gardening season. Well after the weather has seemed to be turning warmer, so have my thoughts about gardening. I've made a rough layout of what the garden will look like. I've mentally committed to building J a garden that he can play in (read destroy). And I've ordered some blueberry and blackberry plants for the backyard behind the garden squares. The berry bushes will be young this year, so we will most likely have to wait another year until we see the fruit of my labor. Yes that was a pun, just move along.

I made another purchase yesterday that I'm actually really excited about. I got a lemon tree. It's a Meyers Improved Lemon tree and it's quite small. The plan is to grow some lemons, make some lemon curd, make some lemon pie that'll make you want to smack yo' mama, and brighten up our front room. When I bought it from the nursery I told one girl that I was planning on having it be a mostly inside tree, and I could tell by the way she reacted she died a little on the inside. I guess these are the harsh realities of working at a nursery, not all of your beloved plants will find the perfect home. I promise now publicly that I plan on giving my lemon tree plenty of sun and care, and hope to be getting lemons for most of the year. I'm debating whether to get a lime tree as well. I'm a little of a lime addict and I'm not sure if it will be wise to have lime so accessible in the house. The wife might wake up one night to find me in a corner of the house passed out with a lime in each hand and a smile on my face.

I'm ready to garden people. Don't get in my way because I'm fixin' to make a trip to the dump for some cheap compost, and I'm ready to get this part started. The seeds that I started are looking okay, but I don't think they'll be ready to transplant in the next 2 weeks. It's possible it will be 3 weeks before the whole garden is in and ready to be nurtured.

New Garden Season

2010-02-20T18:31:00.001-08:00

I've started to get the gardening bug again. It's a little frustrating because I have hot and cold feelings about doing the garden again. Some days I just can't wait to get started. There are visions of pruning my tomato plants and watching them grow and bear fruit. I think back to all of the fun of having J come out to the garden every night when I got home from work and help water the garden.

And then there are the thoughts of late last year when I just couldn't bring myself to look at the garden. I kept wondering why the Jalapeno plant wouldn't just die already. The basil that was once a prize part of the garden was transforming into a mutant plant that sort of stank. The garden fell into some disrepair with weeds growing in it, and some neighborhood dogs tore up the twine divisions that had so neatly separated my plants.

Today was a, "I'm really into gardening" day so I stopped by the local gardening store and got some seed planters to start some herbs and tomato plants. Even though the web told me I shouldn't start them with soil from the garden, I just couldn't wait another week to get things started. I must be a gardener! This is a part of my identity as a provider. I keep wanting to learn how to butcher a pig as well, but can't get anyone else into the idea. One guy in the congregation has actually done it before and gave me a look like he was ready to puke when I brought it up. I'm ready to stand up to my shins in pig guts if it means that in a pinch I could go kill me a pig, slaughter it, and have bacon the next morning. I need me some bacon ya'll!!

At the moment I'm having difficulty posting the layout for the garden. Let me give you the gist, there is a whole bunch of lettuce on the plans. One thing that we noticed last year is that if you want to have a salad more than once a week, you need to plant a whole bunch of the stuff. So that's what we're going to do. I need to show the plans to the wife so we can have an agreement about what is going to be consumed. Sometimes the consumer wants to have significant impact on what's actually grown.

Busy at Work

2010-02-15T18:46:00.000-08:00

The other day I was talking to one of the folks I work with about all of the projects going on in our area, and it occured to me that we were probably the busiest we've been in quite a while. There are the projects that are necessary for regulatory matters (a renovation of our IV production room, and the redesign of our IV batch delivery times). The side project because we renovated our IV room (we switched our work flow around to reduce the number of steps our people take in a shift). The greater good project (we're trying to reduce our med errors by having a pharmacist help families be discharged if their baby is receiving meds in the nursery, and I'm trying to figure out some research topics that would carry me through for the next couple years). And the classified Human Resource projects (it's unfortunate that there are multiple of these going on, some more serious than other).

All in all it's a very busy time at work. But hey, I got nothin' but time right? Well, there are some home projects like be a supportive husband while the wife suffers through the final weeks of pregnancy. The supportive daddy to J while he gets all of his "I'm 2 which means that I climb on you from the time you walk in the door to the time I go to sleep" energy out. And the new thrifty me that loves to garden and has to start planning what we will be planting this year.

But that's it right? Not exactly. There are a few churchy things that are on a to-do list somewhere. I keep thinking of them at odd times and trying to do them at those odd times. I think most of it is getting done, but I haven't mastered stopping time yet. I need to stop time because most of the things that need to get done, need to get done at church and church is only so long. It might seem never ending, but it's crazy to try and get it all done in the allotted 5 hours.

Does this seem like complaining? I hope it doesn't. I was thinking this past week that although much isn't getting done, I'm probably getting more done now than I have for the past couple years. It feels nice to be working on projects and moving things along. It feels pretty great to try and juggle all of this stuff and stay centered on what's going on right now. At a time when I was freaking out and he noticed I was freaking out, my brother Andy grabbed me by the shoulders and said, "Keep your head in the game." Looking back on it that was a very cliche thing to say, but I have always thought about that as very sound advice. While I was in my pharmacy residency and I was woken up for the first time at 2am from a MD who needed some pharmacy advice, and I was completely panicking that I had no idea what this guy was asking, and I then started panicking that I had made a horrible career choice, I thought about my brothers advice again. I modified it a little to be "work the problem." And I would actually take a few moments each time I got paged to say that to myself over and over again before I started in on working the problem. Now the wife makes fun of me when I see J trying to do something that's clearly over his head, and I start telling him "work the problem." I'm just trying to check off one of those items by being the supportive dad, supportive husband, and good passenger of life.

Why so long between the talking?

2010-02-01T18:41:00.000-08:00

As you might have guessed there was a reason why I haven't been blogging as much. Life got busy and a little more complicated. In Early December I was asked to fill a different church assignment. It requires that I spend more time away from my family than what I'd like. It's taken some getting time for me to get used to the idea.

And then we took a real long vacation to Utah. And then we got home and we were robbed. They stole all my tech. It was devastating really. The thing that I'm most ticked off about is that they stole my back up hard drive. We have photos of J because we published some of them on a website (http://gallery.me.com/mmaughan1). I've recorded some music, and we have some of that, but most of it is gone. There were some movies of J that we recorded with our camera, and they are gone. I'm stuck right now in the "back up everything in a thousand places" ideal. I don't know how long it's going to last, but I feel like it will last as long as my digital lifestyle continues.

I can't promise that there will be frequent posts these days. Right now as I'm typing the wife is saying, "So much clickity-clackity". So my yelling into the abyss that is the internet will have to stop for the moment. Remember to back up your files often.

Hard Loss

2009-11-28T19:58:00.000-08:00

J and I watched some football today. He doesn't have a whole bunch of patience for football, because there's no Elmo, or Cookie. But today he must have been just tired enough from our trip that he just curled up on my lap and we watched football. It was one of my fatherly dreams come true.

The downside is that the U lost to BYU. That hurts because I've been saying for most of this season that the Y is complete crap, and now complete crap beat my team.

In other news, I"m watching Georgia v Georgia Tech and Notre Dame v Stanford. I'm torn about who I want to win in the Georgia game. I really don't like Georgia so I usually root for them to lose. But then again, if Georgia wins there is a strong argument that the SEC is so much better than the ACC. South Carolina, a terrible SEC team beats Clemson today who is going to play for an ACC title. And then Georgia beats Georgia Tech who is also going to play for the ACC title. The conclusion there is that the best of the ACC is not better than the worst of the SEC.

The only interest I have in the Notre Dame game is that I really don't like ND. There completely over rated EVERY YEAR, and they have some crazy deal that if they win 10 games they go to a BCS game. Considering who they play that is an extremely low bar.

Discipline

2009-11-22T18:59:00.000-08:00

J is extremely good at diffusing a situation. Yesterday and today he really wanted to push the limits of what was acceptable. So he would walk over to some folded clothes and push them over, look over and smile. When asked if he wanted to go on 'time out' he would get an even broader grin and jump into another pile of folded clothes. I'd walk him over to time out and wait the appointed few minutes, during which J is getting louder and louder. When the time is over I start to walk over to him and he whips out his surprise face. I'm not sure if it's the surprise face anymore as it has become the, "This is what daddy looks like when he's angry" face. And I can't help but laugh. I mean, I really can't. J's head will shake just a little, like he's getting stern, and then he'll giggle and laugh when I break a small smile. I'M DOOMED!

Wireless has Drawbacks

2009-11-13T20:02:00.000-08:00

You know you never notice how many times a wire has saved a piece of equipment until you take that wire away. I got a wireless mouse a little while ago, and I can't believe how many times it's dropped off of the desk. So far it's been able to take the beating, but I'm concerned that it won't take the abuse forever.

Do your TV shows say something about you?

2009-10-23T19:35:00.000-07:00

For those of you who don't know my wife, she is an avid TV watcher. Picture in your mind the guy who you run into and get into a conversation about college football and in like 5 seconds you figure out that this guy has watched every single college football game in the history of college football. He knows every stat, every player, every coach. He can tell you interesting stories about the backup kicker for the championship team of 1975 (you know you know this guy). Translate that depth of knowledge into TV and you have my wife. The point of that is that she is the keeper of the shows that are watched in the house. I basically hate TV at this point. I'm not a huge fan of reality TV (I have my own reality that is hard enough to keep track of), and most drama's or comedies aren't really dramatic or funny.

As the keeper of the TV shows she tells me what would be interesting for me to watch and pay attention to. She knows that I can only keep track of maybe 3 stories and 2 of those need to be what's going on in her life as well as j's. She's recently recommended 3 shows that I need to announce that I like, and if you haven't seen any of these shows you should check out at least 3 of the first season's episodes on Hulu.com to see what I'm talking about. The shows are Dollhouse, Castle, and Glee.

Later I'll tell you why I like these shows because it might not be obvious, but last night I had a small epiphany. Hulu.com provides TV shows with limited commercials because the sponsers of commercials pay Hulu.com to provide the show. This is a great strategy if you're a marketer because you just need to figure out what shows your target audience is watching and then sponsor that show. My epiphany was when I decided to watch an extended minute and a half version of a NuvaRing commercial so I could watch Glee without any other commercial interruptions. As I was trying not to listen to 4 women talk about why they prefer an extended release hormone product that's placed in the downstairs I had a moment of clarity that I wasn't the target audience of Glee. And later that night as I was catching up on the Castle episodes that I'd missed and was being bombarded by commercials for Latisse (a drug that stimulates eye lashes to grow) I again asked myself if there were any heterosexual males in America that were watching this show. Oh, and don't get me started on why Latisse is the beginning of the end for the pharmaceutical industry. Or maybe we should go there because my feelings about products like Latisse are the reason that I really like Dollhouse.

So in front of all 3 people who read this blog I will declare that I like Glee because it's fun music with great writing and interesting, mostly clean plot lines. I like Castle because the back and forth dialogue is some of the sharpest I've seen in several years. And I like Dollhouse because the premise that if we were able to discover a way to truly understand and manipulate the mind we wouldn't cure disease we would find a way to make billions and ruin society, is a fresh take on apocolypse writing.

Excited About Poop

2009-10-11T18:28:00.000-07:00

There were 2 different strategies about potty training in this house. The wife was adamant that we don't start potty training J until, I don't know, right before his senior prom. I was taking a slightly more aggressive strategy and have been asking about potty training since we brought him home from the hospital. Clearly there needed to be some common ground found.

J resolved this little dilemma for us by taking an increasingly large interest in the potty. At some point a couple of weeks ago we decided to start really talking to him about the potty and asking him if he needed to go. Before his bath I would ask him if he needed to go, and sit him on the potty even if he didn't gesture that he wanted to be there. About a week ago he gave us a major breakthrough, he peed in the potty. You would have thought that he had just discovered how to solve world hunger, because the praise that he got for managing that little trick was enormous. Since that moment he has successfully peed in the potty several times. We kept encouraging him to let us know if he needed to poop, but he wasn't quite sure how to get our attention when the poop snuck up on him. Close but no cigar.

Tonight was the breakthrough! We were playing in the tub and he started to get real animated about the potty. I was tired and thought, "You know, go ahead and pee in the tub. It's not that big a deal." But there was an emphatic look of 'get me to the potty quick' that prompted me to swing him out of the tub and onto the potty. And before I could determine if he was actually going to produce, or just laugh and try to pee on my face, there was a plop. I won't get any more graphic I guess, but it was freaking amazing!! Again the accolades came quickly and profusely. We gave high fives. We gave fist bumps. We sang songs and laughed. We've crossed a threshold in the potty training. He knows it's awesome to do his doody (pun intended), with the potty.

We're no where close to taking away the safety net of the diapers. We'll be going to pull-ups this week, and before you know it under-roo's.

Is the test over?

2009-10-06T19:01:00.000-07:00

Several months ago I decided to try to take a new step for the advancement of my career. There are several areas of pharmacy that someone can become Bard Certified in and I decided that it would be a good thing for me to become Board Certified in Pharmacotherapy. This is the most general of the fields and that is both good and bad. The good is that there must be something that I remember from my days in pharmacy school and a residency. It was bad because as I studied the material I kept thinking, "I'm not sure I'm even a pharmacist anymore, because all of this seems like new material."

I had ample time to study really, but I don't think I took full advantage of the time. There always seemed like something else that needed to get done. Or some other crisis that needed to be dealt with. At 2 weeks before the exam I actually panicked. I talked with the wife, who is pregnant now with #2, and having major gall-bladder trouble, and told her that if I didn't spend every moment after work studying for this exam I might as well not take it at all. I wasn't sure that after the studying I would pass, but I was positive that if I went in cold it was going to be over before it began.

And so I studied. I listened to lectures, did practice exams, and looked over guidelines. I tried to budget my time on what others said was a large part of the exam. In one moment of self reflection my mind drifted momentarily and I wondered if I was passing the other tests of my life. Here I was at 10pm in a hospital office pouring over material that has very little practical application to my everyday work. My wife was asleep at home after dealing with J for 12 hours. She was literally sick and tired, and I wasn't around to provide comfort or support.

I wish I could say that there was a swelling of peace and comfort that I felt that I was doing the right thing. There wasn't. The only good news is that there wasn't a sinking feeling that I had my priorities all messed up. It was all just...blah.

On the day of the test I woke up and started to get J ready for the day. After a couple minutes I noticed that the wife wasn't in the house. I was confused, but j was hungry so I kept plugging along. I noticed that there was a text message on my phone, it said the wife was at the hospital with a friend, the wife had a gall-bladder attack after I went to bed. She got up quietly, called the friend, slipped out of the house quietly, and the friend drove her to the hospital. The wife didn't wake me up because she didn't want me up all night sitting in the ER before my test. I think she passed her test, but I didn't get the chance to pass mine.

I took the Board Certification, well rested and somewhat prepared. The wife and J are definitely more than I deserve, and everything I've ever dreamed about.

USC vs. Ohio State

2009-09-12T19:37:00.000-07:00

If ever there was a way that both teams could lose and thus right the BSC universe, this would be the game. USC is ranked 3rd and is playing like a junior college. Ohio State in all of their glory really can't put much together that would dazzle anyone whose watching the game objectively. It would be nice if the BSC powers that be finally woke up and said, yeah they both lose and should be dropped from the top 25 ranking.

You are a liar

2009-09-10T18:59:00.001-07:00

I'm sure ya'll heard about a little event in Congress when a Republican from SC called the President of the United States a liar. Now, I'm not real shocked that that's what he was thinking. I'm sure there are a whole mess of uneducated hicks in SC that think the same thing. There are even some better than average educated hicks in SC that think the President is the embodiment of the antichrist. But to call the President a liar when he is addressing Congress is at least one step too far.

When did we stop caring about the process of debating ideas to understand the value of each side? When did it become the social norm to repeat whatever sound bite we heard last night from a commentator that resonated with us, but was a distortion of the issue at hand. When did we stop trying to piece together the facts of the issue. Here are some facts about health care that I think we've missed.

1. Each of us is an expert on our own health care experience if we'd only stop and critically examine what our experience has been. Have we at times waited too long to see a specialist with or fancy private insurance? Do we wish our medications were cheaper? What is actually being charged to us for the care we receive and if we suddenly had to pay cash would that ruin us? Why are we baulking at someone decided what health care we'll receive when that is the very charge of an insurance company. Every single day insurance companies deny procedures, medication, or treatment options and they do it so they can make money, NOT so you get better care.

2. It's dangerous to rush into a massive overhaul of a system that touches every single citizens life.

3. It's immoral to look the other way when the person next to you is suffering with less than adequate or no health care. The parable of the good Samaritan is fundamentally about someone who needed medical attention and was aided by another who was in a position to help. We can collectively decide that we will support this principle to be put into action for millions of people.

There are more, but I'll let those sink in for now. Getting back to our less than stellar Representative. He obviously forgot his Southern manners, because it is perfectly okay to call someone a liar if you say, "bless their heart" before or after you do it. And so to Representative Wilson I say, "Bless your heart you incompetent baboon."

Fine Dining

2009-09-10T18:46:00.000-07:00

J is a son of the South. The other day we were at a BBQ place and I thought, maybe he wants something off of my plate. So I got a little pulled pork on my fork and gave it to him. He was beside himself with excitement. Funny, that's how I feel about BBQ pulled pork. About a week ago the wife had a Waffle House craving, which is basically like playing dietary Russian Roulette. The breakfast she ordered came with a side of grits (of course it does), and because she doesn't really favor grits she gave some to J. He willingly took it in his mouth, examined it for a moment, and then downed the rest of the serving.

The final example can possibly be cited as parental stupidity so please read on with caution. Today was a difficult day for me at work and I needed some hot wings to soothe my soul. The wife and J were attending a church meeting and eventually met up with me. I didn't really expect them to join me, so I ordered hot hot wings and a chipotle BBQ that was very heavy on the chipotle. When the wings arrived J was more than eager to have some. I thought the BBQ would be a better choice, so I sacrificed a drumstick and the wife did her best to get chicken sans sauce. J would have none of it, and picked up the wing and started to go to town. We wrestled it away and kept giving him smaller bites, but he was determined. I finally just gave him some chicken bones that I was finished with so he could gnaw on them. And he did with vigor. The hot ones and the chipotle alike. He even got the "wing" face down.

We might pay a hefty diaper price for all that spice, but as far as J is concerned it was worth it. I'm not exactly sure where to go from here. We could embrace J's southernness and get him a NASCAR hat, and oddly colored camo. We could teach him to replace his current, "Yeah", with "yep". Or we could continue to try to root him in a Northern sensibility and education that is far too uncommon in SC.

Golfing the Majors

2009-08-30T18:38:00.001-07:00

Yesterday I played in a little tournament that I organized for the folks I work with. I say it was little because it was just 2 foursomes. I got a pretty good response when I mentioned this idea, and as usual, everyone dropped out. I had to scramble last week just to fill out the teams. It was supposed to be a chance to get our pharmacy interns out and have them connect with our regular crew. Half the interns couldn't make it, so I guess it was only so successful. But for those that attended it was a great time.

My team ended up winning. I negotiated the teams with a fairly good golfer on my staff nicknamed "Big Man". You'll guess who I'm talking about when you see the photo's. I only had one rule going in, which was that I got the intern who played Division I college golf. Overall, I think the teams were fair. I pulled out a few clutch shots when we needed them and out drove the big driver on one hole (I shanked it into the trees on most every other hole, so I'm not going to be bragging on Monday). As we finished one of my pharmacists who has worked at my pharmacy for over 20 years, and is one of the least excitable guys, was talking about how we needed to challenge the other areas to a match. I think it's a great idea, but getting other folks excited about it might be more work than I'm up for.

Training J

2009-08-30T18:34:00.000-07:00

Earlier this evening I needed to stop myself and re-examine what was going on. I had to say out loud to J, "Be careful while you're walking on Daddy." It could be the stupidest sentence I've ever said. Not because of the content alone, but because it was completely rational in the moment. I was stretched out on our office chair and J was practicing his high wire act by walking along my legs up my body. When he got directly over my liver he started dancing/jumping. If you've never had a 19 month old palpate your liver with his feet, you've never lived.

And so it begins

2009-08-18T18:51:00.001-07:00

Seminary starts tomorrow. This is as ominous a sentence as I could come up with. I'm looking forward to talking with the kids about the Book of Mormon. I am not looking forward to it starting at 6:10am. I keep telling myself that in a few weeks I'll slip right back into the groove and it will be like there was never a summer break. Except there was a break, when I could lounge around with my kid and sort of play with him in the morning before I went to work.

Right now the plan is to take him for walks on the mornings that I'm not teaching. That most likely will last 2 weeks if I'm lucky.

The Mountains Win Again: Part 2

2009-08-18T18:41:00.000-07:00

You know it's a bad post when you can't muster up enough energy to finish the second half. Part 2 is predictable so I'll make it short. It was great seeing my family again. I talk to some of them on the phone, but it was really great to see them in person and chat. That's possibly the thing that I miss the most. The chance to sit in our living room and just chat it up for an hour or so. Chatting for an hour certainly wouldn't happen very often, what with the kids, distractions, busy work schedule etc. But it would be very nice.

So this is my proposal to all of my siblings: Let's all move to Denver or Seattle. I think the family needs to lay down new roots somewhere, and it might as well be coastal. No, well a guy has to try.

It was also wonderful to check in with my friend Jeff. I sort of wish there was someone out there who would be willing to pay me a bunch of money to hang out with my friends and family. No takers? Oh well it was worth a try. On the way home I read that Denver Children's was ranked in the top 10 Children's Hospitals in the country. As a mentor once told me, "Don't you think I deserve to be at a top 10 hospital?" Yes I do, and I should be at one as well. The wife would want nothing more than for us to move to Seattle. Maybe Seattle Children's needs to get their act together and move up the rankings, and then I'll consider them. Just kidding. I was giving an employee a pep talk today to try and convince them to stay. These have never gone well in the past so I'm not hopeful that they'll stay. But in the middle of the pep talk I really had a peaceful feeling about where I was and what I was doing. It's funny how those moments, a second or two, somehow outweigh the complete junk that I have to deal with on a daily basis. Here's to those moments. May my life and yours have more of them.

The Mountains Win Again: Part 1

2009-08-13T19:02:00.000-07:00

This past week the wife, j, and I went to visit our family in Utah. I was a little worried about going because the wife hasn't been feeling real well because of her defunct gall bladder, and j can be a handful. My coping strategy going into the trip was to pretend it wasn't going to happen. Sticking my head in the sand never really works, and the time came to pack up and get a move on. We traveled to the smallest airport in the US, Florence SC for the first leg of the journey.

We checked in with the ticket agent to check a bag, walked 50 feet to security, walked another 50 feet to the holding lounge, and watched as the ticket agent helped load baggage onto the plane. I think the whole operation of the airport is completed by 3 people, 1 dude in the tower, and 2 people scurrying around getting everyone checked in and on the plane.

The 45 minute flight was delayed 30 minutes and we missed the connecting flight in Atlanta. Thank you Florence! I spent about 2 hours in Atlanta following j up and down the terminal as he stretched his wings. When he's given the latitude to just run and be an open range baby, he really doesn't get tired. He's also a very curious baby, which is good I guess. Except when he's curious about what's in the Emergency Box that holds the automatic defibrillator and is armed with a loud alarm. Ooops. We got on the plane well past j's bedtime, with the hopes that he would stay up past the in flight drink service, and then go to sleep for the flight. That was partly true, but the captain felt the need to keep us abreast of what was going on in the flight, "We're getting into some rough air. Please stay seated." Hey thanks for the update pal. I really couldn't figure that out on my own. I thought the wing had just ripped off and we were headed into a fiery grave in a Kansas cornfield. The frequent updates startled j awake over and over again. By the time we landed in SLC at 12:30am j wasn't sure what circle of hell he'd landed in. We got the rental car and started for my parents house. We arrived at about 1:30am SLC time, which is 3:30am SC time. J was slipping in and out of consciousness which I thought was a good thing. But when I tried to put him down for his sleep he let out a blood curdling scream. Seriously, I have never heard him make that unholy sound. So I scooped him right up and we decided to sleep in the same bed together, one big sleepy family.

Apparently, j got enough sleep after 3 hours because that's when he did a gainer into the small of my back. It was 4:30am and I'd had exactly 3 hours of sleep. Daddy was tired. J was not. I actually don't remember the next several hours, but I decided that we need to go for a drive and check out Ogden. We drove around and then it was time to head back so someone else could watch the child while I passed out. No such luck. It was a very long day. I think we took some family photo's. I'll only know that wasn't a halucination when we get the final photo's.

The saga will continue with Part 2.

July 24 AKA Pioneer Day

2009-07-26T18:55:00.000-07:00

Earlier this month one of my employees walked into the pharmacy and yelled, "Happy Bastille Day!". I thought, you know what it is Bastille Day so let's celebrate. We ordered from this great French restaurant for lunch and I went and picked it up. It was part team building and part interest in a good lunch. As a side note, if you're ever in Charleston and you want some great French country cuisine, check out Fast and French...amazing.

On Thursday I finally came to my senses and realized that this past Friday would be July 24th, Pioneer Day. So I came into the pharmacy and announced, "Happy Pioneer Day!" Everyone just looked at me strange and didn't really press it further. Someone later in the day asked me what the heck I was smoking, so I got the chance to give the run down of what Pioneer Day is all about. There isn't a restaurant that sells funeral potatoes, zucchini casserole, or Jello salad, so the lunch experience wasn't really an option this time around.

Our stake had a Pioneer Day event on Saturday that made me catch a brief glimpse of home. It started with not having clear directions to the location of where this thing was going to go down. We started off in the right direction and when we pulled off the highway for the exit we saw a huge pink sign that said, "Stake Activity" with an arrow. Classic stake activity advertisement. The trouble that you'd run into in Utah is that at any given campground there might be 12 stakes who are having an activity at the same time, so you had to look close for the PV stake written in somewhere. When we got settled in at the farm that was holding the Pioneer fest we noticed one slight problem with this activity, the heat. It was HOT, HUMID, and mostly unbearable, and it was only 10am. We quickly whisked J onto a hay ride around the corn farm. He was mostly happy about that. He was even happier when we went over a huge bump and he got jostled around. After the hay ride we were trying to kill some time and found that there were some handcarts that kids were piled into and adults were schlepping the kids around the expansive yard. I unabashedly threw J in and watched him clamber around the back, never quite getting his balance. But huge smiles so no worries. Until the engine of the handcart was approaching heat stroke and asked for a sub, and I stupidly volunteered. Don't get me wrong, I appreciate the sacrifice of the Pioneers. I also appreciate that I was born in an era of cars, air transportation, and the internet. If there was a call to go to Missouri I would most likely make it. Probably.

J would certainly make it, because he would scream his head off if the cart ever stopped moving, as he demonstrated Saturday. So as I was verging on heat stroke and lunch was about to start I stopped the cart. At first he was confused. Why have we stopped Daddy? This is temporary, correct? When I lifted him out of the cart he immediately pointed back to the cart, as if to be even more clear that he was expecting more. J and I made a B-line for the snow cone machine where we started to treat both of our heat exhaustion. J reluctantly ate some lunch but the siren call of the handcart got the best of him. He wanted more. Another fool had picked up the cart so I dutifully threw J in the back and walked back to the shade. After 2 minutes the dope cart pusher learned the error of his ways, dropped the front of the cart, and was trying to get J out. And J was having none of it. To avoid a stake incident, I walked back over to the cart and picked up where the dope had left off. I would prefer not to think of myself as a dope, more a concerned parent. J and I took many turns around the yard and then we both needed the snow cone medicine again.

All in all it was a nice event, but I feel no compunction to go next year. We'll celebrate the 24th on our own, in the air-conditioning, or maybe "ruffing" it at the beach.

Ding Dong the Gardens Dead

2009-07-20T18:53:00.001-07:00

It finally happened. The garden had no more left to give, and now it's gone. We had a wild ride together, full of hope and heartache. So much promise (a single tear rolls down my cheek).

Ha, what a tribute to my little experimental garden. It was really fun to get involved with making something grow and solve a few mini problems along the way. The good news is that I live in SC, which is basically sub-tropical and now is the perfect time to plant the fall garden. A friend of mine decided to put covers over his garden and make it a full on tropical garden. That's just plain crazy in my humble opinion, but best of luck to him. I think we are going to go for some tomatoes from seed. Maybe some more cucumbers. And green beans, lot's of green beans. I have to go over the list again and figure out what will grow and what we might like to snack on in November. There will definitely be some leaks in there somewhere.

It should be a very happy Thanksgiving feast supplemented by our garden harvest.

It's the most horrible time of the year

2009-06-29T17:52:00.000-07:00

It's that time again. July. Don't misinterpret this post as being anti-July 4th. I LOVE July 4th! But I absolutely hate July 1st.

July 1st is when all the new residents start working in the academic medical center that I work at, and at every academic medical center in the country. An acute problem at our hospital is that this is also the time of year that new nurses start. And if you were like us last year, it was when new pharmacists started. It's REALLY stressful wondering if there were any problems that happened at work that should have been caught.

Each year we have a contest to see when the first order for IV Tylenol is written. This year it was won on July 3rd. Although, it could have been won on June 28th by a 3rd year medical resident. For those non medical readers of mine, there is no such thing as IV Tylenol. It's a stupid order written by less than thinking "physicians". The wife will give me huge amounts of derision for my using quotes for physicians, but it's true. They're well intentioned, but you really have to keep them from harming folks for the first couple of months.

At this point we're halfway through July and most of my folks are feeling the effects of the ramped up stress. I usually cancel vacations at this time of year so we have everyone on hand in case things get really crazy. I ran into one attending peds cardiology physician in the hallway on July 1st. I asked him how he was doing and if he was excited for another July. He stopped and said, "You know, when I was a resident this was the best time of year. It meant I was another year closer to doing what I really wanted to do. Now, I truly hate it because you spend so much time fixing stupid mistakes."

Here's to a happier time of year...August.

I hope you fail

2009-06-13T16:56:00.001-07:00

Below is a link to a short documentary that Honda made. It faces the reality of failure as a mandatory function of improvement. I think the short film is very well done and it has several very good points. One of which is that in order to win big, you have to accept that failure will be a part of that success. One feature of the short is to have people recount their failures.

I'm about to embark on a new chapter at work. My current coordinator has officially determined that he is going to leave and pursue other career opportunities in another area. This leaves me with a slight leadership vacuum, which I believe will be filled very soon by someone I've been recruiting for 6 months. But it also gives me a chance to look back at what's happened in the last 2.5 years and review the successes and the failures. I wouldn't say that I'm proud of my failures, but I recognize that I couldn't have achieved the success without putting myself at some risk. If you'd like to ask me about my biggest failure sometime, I'm sure I'd be happy to tell you. Enjoy the movie.

I've become a Killer

2009-06-03T17:38:00.000-07:00

I'd say that I'm a very tame person, even docile. I'm generally don't get too riled up or upset. But this week I turned into a stone cold killer. For a while I'd seen a few flowers that looked like they were plucked off of my cherry tomato plant. I just thought j had nipped a few while I wasn't looking. And then one afternoon after work I went to check on my prize garden and found not only the top completely lopped off of my cherry tomato plant, but also 3 out of 4 of the branches of my green pepper plant.

At first it was disbelief and then it was a cold rage. I was going to find what animal did this and it would die. I consulted a woman at church who has taken some master gardening classes from the local agricultural college, and she suggested that the damage was done by cutworms. I went to the local garden store immediately after work on Monday to find something that could kill cutworms and was directed to "Bug Getta Plus". It's great that somewhere there is a Bug Getta Original Formula. But I got the plus because I wanted some serious Getting being done. The applications weren't very clear, but the container that I bought was supposed to be able to cover 6,000 sqft. Slightly more than I would need. Hopefully it works. I'm a little curious to know how I will know if the worms are dead. I guess I just won't see further damage to the plants.

In other garden news, my cucumber plant is going great. We have the first cucumber that's developing. Sometime soon we'll be able to cut it up and eat it with some balsalmic vinegar, salt, and pepper. Those of you in my family certainly have a watering mouth right now.

Schools Out for Summer

2009-05-30T06:20:00.000-07:00

Yesterday was the last day of seminary for the year. It was sort of sad, and sort of a relief. Like it or not, these 6 boys have become a part of my life. It's a very solid morning routine to wake up and parent 1 fetches sweet baby j from the crib, parent 1 plays with j while parent 2 puts the final touches on the lesson, both of us greet the boys and maybe make it through the hymn and prayer with j, parent 1 feeds j breakfast while parent 2 gives the lesson. The wife and I alternate being parent 1 and 2.

We've had some very funny moments and some incredibly frustrating moments. Sometimes teenage boys say the darndest things. The wife has written about this a little in her blog. I remember one time at the end of a lesson one of the boys asked if beards weren't allowed in the church. I asked a few follow-up questions because I couldn't wait to figure out how he'd come to this conclusion. He said that a member of his Stake Presidency in Colorado was asked by a visiting General Authority to shave his beard, and the next day he had shaved his beard. I launched into a 15 minute lecture on obedience being the first law of heaven. After I had finished, one of the other boys broke into the conversation and said, "Was all of that an answer to C's question?" in a confused tone. I said yes it was, and he replied, "That was amazing." I'm pretty sure he was amazed because he saw no evident connection between anything I had said for 15 minutes and the original question. And to him I must have sounded like a complete lunatic. That was a very telling moment for me in the process of teaching these boys. Rule #1, there is no obvious connection between anything you've said, or scripture you've read. Rule #2, if you're making a point, make it quickly and don't confuse them with nuance. Rule #3, always ask if the comment they're about to make is relevant to the conversation at the time.

I have high hopes for next year. I think these boys will continue to mature over the summer and come back with a much clearer idea of what's expected of them as Seminary students. At the beginning of the year we tried to set the expectation that seminary was much more like school than church. We will only have 1 new student next year, a girl, so we'll see how that changes the group dynamic.

J gets sick

2009-05-24T19:12:00.001-07:00

Okay there is something new with J. It turns out I'm the worst father in the world. While the wife was teaching seminary on Friday, I was watching J, trying to keep him occupied. After feeding him his morning yogurt, he found the office chair and wanted to sit in it. He got comfortable, and then I started to slowly spin the chair around. He would get excited and then lean back for the ride. I'd stop every couple of turns to peek from under one of the armrests. He seemed to be really enjoying it. We went around right, then left, then right again. We did this for about 45 minutes. I was just so amazed that he was sitting so still I was mentally cataloguing this so we could do it again in the future.

When it was time to stop, J slowly climbed down from the chair and sort of staggered over to me. He sat in my lap and then got the most puzzling look on his face. It was almost like he was saying, "There's something very strange happening and I'm not sure I like it." And then he leaned forward and gave me back the first part of his yogurt. Thinking quickly, I cupped my hands underneath his mouth and thought we would be fine because it only filled up a quarter of my hands. But J wasn't finished...not even close. The second wave hit, and then the third. By the fourth I could tell he was losing steam, but it was already too late. My cup was running over, and I had no where to go. I tried to move quickly and dump the handful of vomit into a towel that was handy, and then I scooped J up to go clean him off. He was covered in yogurt puke. Yeah, I'm an amazing dad. I'm sure I'll get the award for America's Top Dad this year. It's just good that J won't remember this particular part of my insanity.

Garden Fresh

2009-05-24T18:56:00.000-07:00

Here's a helpful hint: if you're bored by the garden talk you might want to take a 3 month break from this blog. There's basically nothing else that's changing very frequently besides the garden. You might be thinking, "Don't you have a 16 month old son that is changing constantly?" You'd be right that J is 16 months, but he's not really changing all that much right now. He has a few words at his disposal, he has started to enjoy pulling my hair (what's left of it), and he's developed a little attitude recently. I'm sure some of this development is normal, and some we need to work through. I've started to tell him that he doesn't want me to rethink my position on spanking (the current position is that there is none). Part of the decision not to spank is born from the idea that my parent's use of the yard stick didn't make me more disciplined, it just made me a faster runner.

So on with the garden. Saturday was a full on harvest feast. Almost all of the dishes were from the garden, I'll designate these as (G). It's a small garden so don't ever expect all of any meal to come from our 32 square feet of Eden. The appetizer for dinner was a cheese stuffed jalapeno peppers (G). The cheese mixture was equal parts cream cheese, borsant cheese, parmesan cheese, chopped tomato (the garden tomatoes aren't ripe yet), with green onion (G), and kosher salt. Then there was pasta for the main dish with either pesto (basil from the garden), or spinach (G) tomato sauce. I had a little of both and it was delicious. And for dessert there was watermelon.

The first ripe cherry tomato is almost here. I think it will be ready on Monday or Tuesday. Many of the others are starting to turn so we should be knee deep in cherry tomatoes within 2 weeks. The cucumber plant is a very strange weed-like plant. I repositioned the plant to be closer to the stake it's climbing, then about 2 hours later I looked at it again only to find one of the tendrils already wrapped around the stake. My guess is that if you accidentally were dropped into the middle of an acre of cucumbers, no one would ever find your body. The cucumbers would reclaim you as a part of the land.

The Sub

2009-05-20T17:26:00.000-07:00

A couple of weeks ago I was approached by my home teacher who asked me to substitute teach the gospel doctrine class for a couple weeks while he was doing work in Spain. Inside I was doing backflips, but I remained calm on the surface. He explained what lessons we'd be going over, and I was already planning my first icebreaker jokes. That might seem strange to some of you who are thinking, "I get physically ill when I have to talk in front of 40 people." The truth is that I'm sort of a ham at heart (speaking of ham, did I mention I love pork products of all kinds?). There's still some anxiety related to being in front of people and performing, but usually it's fairly limited and goes away after the first 5 seconds. The feeling sort of reminds of why people eat hot peppers. They know it's going to burn like crazy going down and on it's way out, but they go through with it anyway to get the rush.

There was a small glitch in this whole plan, the first week I was subbing was going to be Ward Conference. That means that there would be a whole mess of Stake leaders roaming around taking silent notes about you. So what was I mainly concerned about? If you didn't know already, the wife and I teach the congregation's youth bible study (seminary for those initiated few who read the blog). We actually volunteered for the assignment, and then it became a calling issued by the stake. That seemed like the perfect gig, go through the scriptures with the teenagers in the ward and no one really checks in on you. That part isn't exactly true because one of the boys is the Bishop's son, and another boy is the Stake President's nephew. But really, it is pretty autonomous. So back to the subbing assignment, I had this flash of anxiety that the Stake President would be there, see what a lame teacher I am, and figure he needed to save the youth from this average teacher. The only thing that saves me in this calling really is that the wife, who is a much better teacher than I am, is also one of the teachers. So at least the boys get 3 good lessons a week.

All in all I think the lesson went fine. The Stake President didn't even crack a smile at my funniest jokes, didn't get all teary eyed at my most touching story, or make a single comment. The saving grace in the whole thing is that he didn't pull me into a class room afterward and give me a talking to. Also, a bonus is that no real controversial topics came up and the usual instigators of off the wall comments all had very normal things to say that week.

Next week, we talk about the Temple, a favorite topic of mine. I'll have to be very disciplined to keep this to a 40 minute discussion instead of a 3 hour borefest.

Rock that a cappella

2009-05-08T03:38:00.000-07:00

This is going to be quick people. Go out and buy the new Ben Folds album, "Ben Folds Presents: University a Cappella". If you don't want to invest in the whole album, I'd recommend "Landed", "Jesusland" (listen to the words and trust me), and "Effington". Those are the standouts, but if you're going to invest in those 3 just go all the way and get the whole album. I'm a Ben Folds fan so I guess the album has that going for it. I'm also into different versions of songs, I think I have 5 or 6 versions of "Somwhere Over the Rainbow".

Let me know what you think about the tunes.

Garden News Flash

2009-05-02T18:57:00.000-07:00

There were yellow cherry tomatoes at WalMart today!!! For any of you out there who are thinking to yourself, "Are we not in the middle of a possible flu pandemic, and this guys doing backflips over yellow cherry tomatoes?" You must not ever have had yellow cherry tomatoes. The wife raved about yellow cherry tomatoes for the first several years of our marriage, and I was like, "I'm impressed that anyone can get so excited about a tomato." And then she bought some, and I was hooked on that little yellow crack-like plant. I became a yellow cherry tomato junky. Much like crack, yellow cherry tomatoes are expensive, and if you're not careful you'll down $10 in 3 minutes.

I was poking around the Walmart garden section because the herb seeds that I planted are a no show. It's really a depressing thing to have exercised faith in those little seeds and then end up with bupkiss. So I was going to bite the bullet and buy some basil plants that were healthy and ready to thrive. And then I spotted the real prize, yellow cherry tomatoes (YCT's). I had to do an intensive mental listing of what was growing in my garden and where I could stash as many YCT plants as possible. I came up with only one YCT plant ... unless I made a sacrifice. Have I mentioned my bean plants that were so promising and full of life, and then were prematurely ravaged by a varmint? Well, they've been trying to make a comeback but really haven't been the same since the incident. So here was the alternative, fill the one empty square with one YCT plant, and intentionally kill 1 bean plant and transplant the more advanced recovering bean plant into the cucumber square. It's a risky procedure because the best bean plant is barely hanging on and I wasn't sure if it could survive the move. Ultimately I had to take that risk because it would mean double the YCT to munch on and feed my habit.

In other garden news, I've harvested the last of the radishes and am preparing to replant that square with onions. The current onions will be harvested next week to make room for new herb seeds. I'm going to make another attempt to grow herbs from seed. If this second try doesn't work I'll have to retrench for next season. We're starting to enjoy the spinach. It's a great topper for sandwiches. My chicken salad has never tasted so ... pop-eye-y.

Garden Update

2009-04-28T10:32:00.000-07:00

Let me give ya'll an update on my garden extravaganza. It can be summed up by, it was the best of times, it was the worst of times. I was on vacation at a conference for the past 4 days and it seems like the wife has a huge green thumb (I'm sure she'll dispute that claim). The garden really shot up while I was gone and we had our first (small) harvest. Outside of tomatoes, I'm not really sure when you harvest some of these things. I've sacrificed a couple radishes that were just getting started because the plant seemed developed, but the radish was far from a mouthful. So what did we get in this harvest? There were 4 beautiful radishes, and I think I could get enough spinach for a garnish. The tomatoes are going like crazy and I hope we get a good harvest later on. I checked on our onions, but I don't think they're quite ready yet. Here are the pictures from our victory garden.

Strange Happenstance

2009-04-19T18:53:00.000-07:00

I think sometimes I have incredible dumb luck. For example, for about 2 weeks this guy at in the Charleston Men's Chorus has been asking guys to sing at this church service that was going to take place today. For most of the time he's been asking I've been thinking that I really don't want to do it because it would mean we would miss church one week, and it's probably more hassle than it's worth. When I was asked personally last Monday, I only agreed to ask the wife about it. I didn't fully consent to going until late Saturday night when the wife and I talked about the pros and cons.

We got a little lost on the way there, but when we got there J was asleep in the car so I was dropped off to wait out the 1.5 hours until the service started. I'm not generally very social, but when I got there only a few folks had arrived so I started to ask about the church and this service. It turns out we stumbled onto a diamond of the South. Saint James Church was established in Nov. of 1706 by a group of evangelists from the Anglican church. The original congregation of this church includes most of the famous last names of Charleston: Gilliard, Legare, Moultrie. If you'd like to read more about the building, I've included pictures of the National Historic Marker that is located in the parking lot. But what you won't read on the marker is that this church only has 1 church service a year on the Sunday after Easter, for all of the descendants of the original congregation. I'm sure there are about 5,000 actual descendants of the original congregation, but about 80 are connected with their heritage enough to know about this particular service. These 80 folks are clearly a part of a different society of Charleston than I'm connected with. I've never seen so many fine linen suits, seer sucker suits, and matching suede shoes. More fun facts about this service: because there isn't an established congregation, the Archbishop of Canterbury dispatches a clergyman each year to perform the service. This year it was the Associate Bishop of Sufferage, Bill Stillton.

There are a few notables buried in the cemetery that accompanies the church. One is Major General William Moultrie who was instrumental in keeping Charleston from being burned by the British in the Revolutionary War. Of note, St. James church was spared desecration from the British because the Royal Coat of Arms of King George I hung above the altar. Also buried in the cemetery was a member of the original Continental Congress. Fun facts all around.

The service was fine, but a little weird for me. Lots of standing up and sitting down. We sang a couple songs that are in the LDS hymnal so I held my own on the first 2 hymns. The song that was sung while they were passing the collection plate, and the recessional hymn were new to me, so I did a lot of mumbling and humming.

Update on the Garden

2009-04-15T18:53:00.000-07:00

The garden is coming along nicely. At some point in the next 10 years, we won't have to rely on the produce section at the grocery store. Until then we hope and pray we don't have to rely on my gardening skills. I read an interesting New York Times interview with Arnold Palmer. He was saying that he has an interesting perspective having grown up during the Great Depression. His dad was a greenskeeper and they always had livestock around the house. In the fall they would butcher a pig and that's how they got by. My pig butchering skills haven't come along yet.

Here are some photos of the garden.

Where the Wild Things Are

2009-03-29T19:24:00.000-07:00

If you haven't seen it yet, there is a film version of "Where the Wild Things Are" coming out. Check out the trailer on iTunes and let me know what you think. It looks good to me, but the wife doesn't agree. The music in the trailer is Arcade Fire "Wake Up" in case you were wondering. I'm not familiar with the group so I was left really scrambling trying to figure it out. The iPhone saved the day.

Scout Camping Trip

2009-03-29T17:17:00.000-07:00

About a week ago, my wife went to a baby shower, and the Young Men's leader made an impassioned plea to all the wives attending to ask their husbands to go on a camping trip with the Young Men. When my wife did her duty and gave me the sob story, I volunteered to help out. She really didn't have to twist my arm too much. I'd been looking for an opportunity to camp in SC, and this was going to be my chance. The only catch in the trip is that on Day 2 there was going to be a 10 mile hike. I'm not exactly a specimen of fitness so this had all the makings of a disaster.

We left the church at about 5pm. We were supposed to leave at 4, but one of the boys was running a little late (not a big suprise). We drove into the Francis Marion forest and arrived at the campground. The nice thing about our campground is that there was basically no hiking to get to a place to set up our tent. The other bonus about camping with our scouts is that the leaders are almost entirely separate from the scouts. What I mean by that is that there was a leader's tent, and we cooked our own dinner and breakfast. After we had our camp set up, we walked about a mile to take a look at a Carolina Bay. It wasn't the best view, but it was an interesting discussion about ecological formations native to SC.

Dinner was fabulous. Blue Cheese burgers, roasted corn on the cob, and hash browns were on the menu. The boys had some half cooked Bubba Burgers. They were supposed to have corn, but it burned because no one watched it. They were supposed to have soup, but when it was finally done it was inedible, even for boys. The boys played capture the flag in the dark, and some of the leaders talked politics and economics. We basically solved the world's problems, which is the responsibility that you assume everytime you go on a camping trip.

For breakfast we had scrambled eggs, bacon, pancakes, and OJ. The boys had half cooked pancakes and sausage. The sausage was probably half cooked as well, but I was too worried about making breakfast. I was making the pancakes and almost all of them came out great.

The 10 mile hike started out very slowly. The boys had a hard time getting moving and taking down camp. It was like herding cats to get them started on tasks and have those tasks completed. We eventually started moving at about 9:30am. At first, we were moving at about 1 mile an hour. I had purposefully loaded up my backpack so I wouldn't set a pace that would kill someone. I'm not terribly athletic, but my body has a pace for hiking and I need to keep that pace. After about 5 minutes, I couldn't take it any longer, so I moved to the front and started a real pace. The weather was almost perfect for hiking, 60ish degrees, overcast, and it rained for about 15 minutes halfway through the hike. Every 3 miles or so we took a break for water and snacks. Right as the boys would start to get settled, we'd yell mount up, and we'd be off again. The boys did a great job keeping moving and on target. We were hoping to start the hike at 8:30 and finish at 1pm. We got off to a bad start, but still finished at 1:30.

Camping with good gear, when you know what you're doing, is a wonderful thing.

Varmints

2009-03-23T17:51:00.000-07:00

My garden project is being compromised by some unwelcome guests. After I planted almost all of the squares in one of my garden boxes I went out to inspect my handiwork. I found that the box was almost completely trashed by something, some unidentifiable varmint with little paws and mean streak. Whatever they were, they destroyed every square but the one with the cucumber seeds. Deep within me, I started to swell with a caveman like anger. This wasn't the law of the harvest at all. I'd planted this stuff and it needed to grow, not fatten up some two-bit squirrel with a seed sweet tooth.

I was also angry that I would have to make some other layout of cash to fix the problem; either with cages, or a fence, or bare electrodes, or something that shot poison darts. Whatever the solution I was positive it would be more costly than I wanted and risk derailing the whole thing.

We went to the local garden shop and looked around for pest control items. It's possible that not all garden shops are all 'get in touch with the earth mother' but the one down the street is. They didn't have any poison darts to choose from, or home kits for bare electrodes. They had these incredibly stinky, small pellets that you cast around the perimeter of your garden. I read the instructions and then promptly disregarded most of what I'd read. I spread this stuff everywhere. If we were going to create a stink barrier I wanted to make sure some stubborn squirrel wouldn't just plug his snout and plow through. Later that night I thought about making a second application even though the container said that you only needed to apply it once every 2 months.

The next morning I went out to see the results. Suprisingly, the garden looked undisturbed. Until I saw that the hungry little beggars came back to finish the job of the first raid, and had eaten my cucumber seeds. I'm seriously considering a shotgun. It won't solve the problem, but it will be solved the SC way.

Obama on the Tonight Show

2009-03-20T19:03:00.001-07:00

It was a television first, the sitting President of the United States appeared on a late night talk show. Since, I guess Clinton, candidates for the president have made rounds on talk shows to introduce their 'everyman' side to the electorate. But this was something entirely different. This is the President, the man with his finger on the button, the man responsible for the economic rejuvenation of the country.

I was skeptical before watching the show. I thought it might not be a great idea to present the President in too familiar of a light. I watched the show 'with limited commercial interruption' on HULU.com. By the time I got to the first commercial break I felt much better about the whole thing. There are many criticisms that have been thrown at the new President, but it is impossible to argue about this guys ability to communicate. He's personable and authoritarian at the same time. He can easily take the conversation to a place where you'd swear you were sitting on a couch watching a game together, and then the next sentence be explaining the economic crisis.

Let's just examine how this country has changed over the past 80 years and how the President has or hasn't changed with it. Roosevelt wasn't the first President to use the radio, but his fireside chats with America were important in assuring every household that the government was working for them. The weekly Presidential radio addresses have continued, although now only a small fraction of Americans listen to the contents. Appearing on a late night talk show like the Tonight Show should be no more shocking than having Roosevelt talk to us after the nightly melodrama was broadcast.

Just look at how I saw the interview, I searched for it on an internet site Hulu.com. And now I'm writing about what I watched on my blog. This week President Obama prepared a video message for the Iranian people that he loaded onto YouTube. If we are going to create broad support for changes that are absolutely necessary for our sustained economic growth, and world security, I think it's necessary to employ whatever means are available to us to get that message out. Presidential YouTube and all.

Heavy Building Friday

2009-03-15T18:27:00.000-07:00

I was running out of time. I'd spent all week getting the garden ready because I was going to go with a friend on Saturday to get compost from the dump. This was a deadline that couldn't be pushed. I had to get the materials and build the boxes Friday. The wife, J, and I went to Lowe's to grab the supplies. Here's the breakdown:

Wood 2x12x16 (2 lengths cut to 4') $33.90
Phillip Wood Screws (25) $4.47
525' Sisal Twine $4.97
Heavy Steel U-Posts (4) $21.88

TOTAL + Tax $70.11

GRAND TOTAL $81.11

This thing is starting to get expensive. I was in a little bit of a hurry, but it's also good to note that I think I'm the least handy man alive. My brothers are very talented in this respect, and I'm more than a little jealous. It's a talent I never was given, it's a talent I've never worked on, I'm more or less useless in this regard. I don't want to dwell on the plan that didn't work, because it didn't work. After several hours of being upset, and realizing that the square holes were still not right I called it a night.

Again, no pictures. Way too upset to take pictures of the failure. Here's the mental picture. Imagine a 4 year old screwing boards together.

Tricky Thursday

2009-03-15T18:21:00.000-07:00

There really wasn't a whole bunch to accomplish on Thursday. All I had to do was dig out the other square and plan out the boxes that would later house the plants. The trick is that the wife had to be at a RS meeting and so she couldn't watch J while I was preparing to eat by the sweet of my brow. I had to go it alone.

I put J to bed and then made a mad dash to change and get outside while there was still some light. I dug and dug and fought the bugs again. When I thought I was done, I decided to re-measure the squares just to double-check my precision work. The squares were off. It's not like they were off by much, maybe 5% error. It's intensely frustrating that I can't even dig a hole to specific lengths.

Because of the late hour and declining light, there are not pictures of this day.

Wednesday in the Garden

2009-03-15T18:00:00.000-07:00

The astute follower will notice that it's Sunday and I'm writing about Wednesday. All I have to say for myself is that when there's gardening to be done, the world has to wait.

Tuesday digging was plagued by mosquitos and all day Wednesday at work I kept thinking, "Just give me a breeze and I'll be fine. There was a breeze alright, a wind storm blew through Charleston. There was about 1 second that I thought, "A little overkill don't you think?" And then I was just happy as could be that I didn't have to fight the hordes of bugs to dig my garden.

We made some solid progress as evidenced by these photos.

Tuesday's Garden Progress

2009-03-11T17:03:00.000-07:00

The first thing that I want to say about doing yard work in SC after I come from work is, "I HATE gnats and mosquitos!" There is a time near dusk that the air can be thick with gnats. Basically I pray for a slight breeze that would knock all the gnats out of the air. I'm not asking for a strong wind, or a gust from heaven, just a plain old slight breeze.

The tools were put to good use Tuesday. I marked the two 4' X 4' plots with sticks, shoveled out the edges of the plots, and was able to take the grass off of one plot. J was excited during most of the process. So much so, that he had to have something to 'help daddy' with. The wife found him an old mop, that handily had a red handle just like my new shovel, and j loved it.

The Prophet Said to Plant a Garden

2009-03-09T19:41:00.000-07:00

Last year was a great year for us. Among other things we expanded our family by 33%, we bought our first home (and didn't default on the loan [yet]), and we the wife transitioned to full-time Mom. There are volumes in each of these things, but let me stick with the home business. When we were looking for a home we were searching for a well-priced (cheap) house that we didn't have to repair. That was a tough search, but I think we found our diamond in the rough.

After about 6 months we, I, started to think about minor things that we could do to upgrade the house and make it a little closer to our, my, dream home. We, I, settled on a garden as the first project. It's not just about resale, it's also about the impending market crash that could be a disaster if you have a distinct lack of survival training and no green thumb. Rather than sign up for survival training, which I can only imagine what that entails in SC, I went for the garden.

The wife was very clear about the parameters for this project:
1. Read a book before you start.
2. Start small the first year and build on success.
3. Don't involve the wife, except when it comes time to eat the product.

I started reading "Square Foot Garden" about a week ago and I'm through the important stuff. We settled on two 4 foot by 4 foot blocks to start out with. And lastly, I've been trying to only involve the wife when I sense going it alone would result in heavy criticism in the future. The last frost was a week ago Sunday so I just can't stand it any longer, I have to get to the garden. I'll do my best to provide details as we go along. The first step was getting some tools. This is actually VERY necessary. I'm not about to turn 32 cubic feet of soil with a sharpened stick. So here are the basics.

Trowel ----- $1
Shovel ----- $10 (I got a square nose)

TOTAL ----- $11

While I was shopping I got some hedge clippers so I can clean up some twigs near my driveway that smack me in the face every morning ($14). And a 30 lbs dumbell ($26). Look, you have to get ripped so while you're working in the garden you can take your shirt off. Actually, the truth is the baby is getting too squirmy to do curls with.

Long Way Down

2009-03-07T17:30:00.001-08:00

I'd like to recommend some watching material for everyone out there; The Long Way 'Round, and The Long Way Down. These are fantastic programs about Ewen McGreggor and Charley Boorman (mostly famous because he's mates with Ewen) as they travel from London to New York going East, and from Joan of Groats Scotland to Cape Town South Africa respectively. There are some truly fantastic moments as they encounter a host of problems and triumphs. One of the truly great moments for me is near the end when they're coming up on Cape Town Ewen is summarizing the trip and he says, "I've just felt so connected with the people and with the land as we've traveled." That is a great line about why I love to ride my motorcycle. When you're traveling by car your hermetically sealed from the land and the people.

I think I've only had a few moments traveling in a car that comes anywhere close to how I feel every time I'm riding my motorcycle. The first was when my friend Dan and I were going to Jackson Hole to raft the Snake River and then going to hike Kings Peak in the Uintah mountains. While we were on our way through Idaho in Dan's old Yugo I was looking out at these rolling hills filled with wheat that was still green. There was a wind and I could see the waves of air pass over these hills for miles. It was a truly remarkable thing to see. Another time is when I was traveling with my friend Jeff from Utah to Philadelphia. We were passing through Indiana and it was shocking how the landscape really went to a new level of beautiful. It was like we were driving through a Norman Rockwell painting. I was so impressed that I turned to Jeff and said, "Jeff, this is God's country." About 2 minutes later we turned around a bend in the road and saw a local bar with a HUGE sign that said, "Jell-O Wrestling Every Wednesday and 50 cent Beer."

It's difficult to describe why riding a motorcycle is so different from traveling by car. You feel every gust of wind, you smell the city you're passing through, or you feel the temperature drop by 10 degrees for no obvious reason. There's no way to get around the sometimes large stretches of boredom. If you've got your headphones in, and your iPod is on shuffle, you might be lucky enough to be experiencing a music video. For example, I hit this stretch going to Orlando that that was so amazing, and for about 2 songs I had Bob Marley to groove along with.

Having said all that, I might be headed back to Orlando for another conference at the end of April. I don't think I'll be repeating the bike trip. My current plan is to take the wife with me, or rent a car. Romance with the road can only go so far before it smacks into practicality.

New Layout

2009-03-02T19:40:00.000-08:00

I was informed that my reader(s) were displeased at the layout of my blog. I've decided to give it an update to hopefully make it more readable. I can't say the same for my writting because my talents only go so far.

So what's happened since my post so long ago? I'll get the political out of the way first so my Utah readers won't have a sour taste in their mouth when they finish reading (if they make it to the end). The President asked for and got huge amounts of bailout money for almost everyone. Those people who argue that this is a terrible thing need to remember that President Bush was the sole Republican pushing for an auto-worker bailout. Bailouts are not a republican thing or a democrat thing. They are the reality of a market that is wildly out of whack with sustainable growth. If there were a greater emphasis on thrift and durable goods, we would be in a much better position economically as a country. That point of view is straight from a church lesson so don't give me a hard time about my political views.

See, one small paragraph about politics.

At work, my boss is getting ready to leave. I happen to like my boss. He was a main reason I moved to SC, so I could be his management resident. He offered me a huge responsibility as a resident and gave me a chance to prove that I could help turn a toxic pharmacy into a functioning pharmacy. And he's also in a fight with me about twice a month. So it's sad to see him leave, but maybe that's a good thing for my future. I honestly credit him with teaching me a tremendous amount about how to be a good boss, and how to be a much better employee. With his departure, there is some uncertainty that will follow. I'll just have to chalk it up to another 'great learning experience' (this was code for I'm going to hate my life while I was a resident).

The wife, sweet baby j, and I took a family vacation to London. I had been to London when I was 16 and it was fantastic. I was really looking forward to seeing the sites and hanging out with the people. We saw some museums that I had seen before and we saw many that I didn't remember seeing when I was 16. We also did fun things as a family, like play in some public parks, eat in parks, and try to keep j interested in sculpture (less successful). Several people have asked us what our favorite activity was. I think that the Science museum was a huge winner. J was a little young for most of the stuff, but everything was touchable, and that went a long way for him. I also had a great time hanging out with 2 old missionary companions in their home town of Nottingham. I officially became a Nottingham Forest fan. I got to go to a match against the local rivals Derby. We lost 3-1, but it was amazing fun. The crowd was loud and rowdy. We saw about 300 riot police that ultimately had to break up a riot. And we hiked around some of the English mountains.

If you'd like to hear more details about the trip, just take a look at the wife's post. She is the real family historian. Until next time...GO FOREST!!

A New President

2009-01-20T16:37:00.001-08:00

I think at some point in J's life he's going to ask me what I was doing when President Obama was sworn into office. I think this might happen because I've asked my parents where they were and what they were doing when JFK was sworn into office. It's possible he'll want to know what I thought about the speech, if anything stood out to me. I hope I'll remember enough to tell him something like this.

I was at work at the hospital and from the moment I walked in we started to plan how people would be able to see him sworn in and listen to his address. This is no small task because we are usually pretty busy each day, all day. We broke one rule right off the bat, we would use a couple web sites to stream the video over the internet. As it got closer to the time that the swearing in would take place, I decided to take my lunch break. I got some lunch and made my way to the faculty lounge, it was packed with people all watching CNN. I had to wait a couple minutes before a seat opened up.

After Vice President Biden was sworn in there were a couple musical numbers, thankfully they didn't take too long. There was a slight bungle of the Oath of Office, but to honest after a few giggles everyone fell silent to listen to the address. I won't go into detail on specifics, but I remember being impressed that this person could clearly communicate the ideals and spark of freedom. There was a call to action, and a clear tone that we all needed to pitch in to remain the leaders of the free world. There was a declaration that we would become energy independent and harness the power of the sun, the wind, and other renewable energy sources. There was a connection to our past triumphs and a clear declaration to the world that freedom will not stop or slow down.

For those readers who are skeptical about what the next 4 years will bring, I think a fair dose of skepticism isn't unwarranted. We are in unsure times. The past 200+ years of history would tell us that America will move forward regardless of those in leadership as long as we continue to move forward.

Big Day with J

2009-01-10T18:48:00.000-08:00

It was an eventful Saturday. Nothing tremendous, but it was a great day with the wife and sweet baby j. We hung around the house waiting for the temperature to warm up (it got to 69 degrees), did a little shopping, hung out in the yard, and then took a walk around the neighborhood. The walk culminated in a trip to our community park. J loves the park. We started at the swing and he just giggles and makes all sorts of squealing noises. If he's not going fast enough he lets you know. He also lets you know if he's going too high. He's no pansy, he can swing up to my eye level before he gets worried.

After the swing we moved on to the slide. No pictures for that because it was a 2 parent job. One had to hold him down the slide so he didn't bail over the side (that was my post), and the other was stationed at the bottom making a huge deal about how fun this was (the wife). J really liked the slide. Each trip down there were huge smiles and giggles.

Last, but not least, we tried the see-saw. If any of you haven't been on a see-saw in a while I encourage you to make it a point for next Saturday. A simple lever has never been so much fun.

Hail to the Utes

2009-01-03T06:02:00.001-08:00

I'm proud to say that I was one of the only folks in an SEC dominated part of the country to say that the Utah Utes had a chance to beat the seemingly dominant Alabama Crimson Tide. I guess you might expect that from a Utah alum. Right before the game one of the announcers proclaimed, "There's nobody outside of Utah, or who isn't a Utah alum who thinks Utah is going to win this game." Well spoken, but completely wrong. I didn't catch any of the pregame show but apparently Barry Switzer showed that he's the dumbest redneck to ever coach football. His absolute derision for Utah and that a non-BCS team would even be able to play the mighty 'Bama was as ridiculous as it was patronizing. Thank goodness for TV and its ability to virtually slap people in the face for the stupid crap that falls out of their mouth. Barry got his comeuppance at the half-time report when he had to eat his words.

If you watched the game you know that Utah came out and didn't blink. They didn't blink when they kicked the ball to Alabama and promptly shut them down. They didn't blink on some 3rd and longs, and efficiently crammed their brand of football down Alabama's throat for a touchdown after 1 minute 19 seconds. In the mind of the Ute players and the Ute coaching staff, this was just the next step. Their defense was built to blow past fat, slow offensive lineman and crush pretty boy quarterbacks. Their offense was designed to take short yard passes and then embarrass you with the long ball. Perhaps the most embarrassing thing if you're an Alabama fan is how poorly they tackled. Yards after catch or contact made it seem like no one on the Alabama defense had EVER been taught how to tackle.

So there you have it. A non-BCS team just spanked what many people in the SEC argue was the more dominant team of the most dominant conference. The Utes have a legitimate claim to the national championship. There is no way that we'll ever find out if this Ute team could do the same thing to Oklahoma, or Florida, or whoever. Strength of schedule is now the biggest joke of the BCS. Because the strength of the schedule is based on the assumption that Ohio State is always a good team, and this year they're crap.

I was happy that Utah finally got a chance to show that a good team can come from anywhere. The greatest team in the country can come together from any school, and not just the school who sells the most tee-shirts every year. I'm not so naive to think that this will cause a change in the BCS system, but it might result in automatic BCS bid from the Mountain West. If we're going to keep a flawed system, I think they've earned as much right to be there as any other program.

Christmas Time

2008-12-27T18:48:00.000-08:00

It's been a pretty crazy holiday season. There have been a million little, and a few big, things that have been taking my attention at work. And Christmas slowly crept up on me. Maybe it's because growing up there was a tangible marker that Christmas was close, i.e. I was usually freezing my butt off in the morning and throughout most of the day. No such ?luck? in SC, it's been a balmy 70-80 degree's for most of December. You shouldn't interpret this as complaining, but 76 degree weather on Christmas day really messes you up.

December is a big month for us. I usually have to travel the first week in Dec. our Anniversary is in the second week, Christmas and New Year's sneak up on you toward the end of the month, and then it's on to breaking whatever New Year's resolution you dreamed up. So let me give you the Readers Digest version of the season so far.

The pharmacy convention in Orlando was nice. It was great to see some folks that have help me a tremendous amount in my career so far. My primary goal was to recruit some folks for our hospital, and I think I found some good people. My secondary goal was to drive my motorcycle ~700 miles. The wife is excited that I don't want to take any other long distance trips on my motorcycle.

On Dec. 20th the Charleston Men's Chorus had it's winter concert. I've really enjoyed singing with this group of mostly older gentlemen. They are a fun group and the music is challenging at times. Because it's an older group of guys, periodically we'll have someone pass out. This concert was one of those nights. I didn't notice he went down until the end. The wife noticed right when t happened, and calmly explained to the concerned women around her that, :This happens all the time." After the concert there's a party for all of the chorus members and their spouses. One guy saddled up to me and asked how I liked being in the chorus. I told him it was great fun and I plan on doing this for as long as I live in Charleston. He said the choir is based on 3 principles, give back to the community, sing great music, and have a lot of fun. He also said the choir works so well because they put the Episcopalians in charge of the money, and the Protestants in charge of the fun. I'm not entirely sure why that joke works, but it was pretty funny in the moment.

Christmas with sweet little baby j was great. We went to the local county park and looked at a lights display that ooh'ed and awed the little one. He rode on his first Merry-Go-Round and saw a puppy that was kind enough to endure his version of petting. When he went to bed Christmas Eve we decorated the tree with ornaments and put the presents under the tree, and also put together a "some assembly required" present for sweet little baby j. That some assembly was about an hour with a power drill and some help from the wife. J woke up early as usual, but he was also crying crazily. We calmed him down and then started the festivities. He doesn't quite get the opening presents concept (something I'm sure he'll have down by the next Christmas). We got through the presents and were ready for a nap by 9am. Honestly, the rest of the day, and the day after are sort of a blur.

Next up is planning J's birthday party. He'll never remember it, but you can't just let this slip by. The wife wants to do a Hawaiian theme, and I'm sure it will be fun. That should be the big January deal, my parents are coming in February, and then we're going to visit the wife's parents in London in the last half of February. Before you know it, it will be March and I'll be scrambling to put together a birthday party for the wife.

Motorcycle Diaries

2008-12-12T18:01:00.001-08:00

Work is moving along fairly well these days. We've been able to keep folks moving from training, to working, to anticipating their own needs. For anyone whose ever tried to train someone to anticipate their needs you can empathize with the process. As a part of my job I'm forced to look into the future and decide what will need to be done 1 year from now. Sometimes I feel like Nostradamus, entirely uninspired but if I keep it vague enough no one will notice. So I looked into my glass darkly and found that we need to recruit a pharmacist and possibly a new operations coordinator. There just happened to be a professional meeting in Orlando that could bring me applicants for both of these. And since it was in Orlando, a relatively short drive from here, I decided to make it a motorcycle trip.

I've received all sorts of feedback from my dedicated readers about how dumb this idea was. They've enumerated many alternatives to take a car down to Orlando. But what they've neglected to see is that most of the time I try to be a "road less traveled" type of guy. I take that phrase literally most of the time and will seek out alternative routes to my destination. They also don't realize that an epic motorcycle trip is on my bucket list. I was literally minutes from buying a motorcycle in Peru to get me home after local rioters fire bombed the airport. I get all dreamy eyed when I watch things like "The Long Way Round", or "Motorcycle Diaries".

I had this particular trip all planned out: throw my clothes in my saddlebags, load up my backpack with provisions (Coke and Gatoraide), gas up the BMW, and roll south. I had to pack light, but it was only a 4 day, 3 night trip so I could go with a minimalist wardrobe.

The trip started out with a few hitches, I forgot some medicine I needed to get over a sinus infection. And not 30 minutes from my house I got a speeding ticket (darn those small town cops). Then I hit I-95 and I really started to chew through the miles. There are some benefits and draw backs to this type of trip: 1) The range of my beemer is 160 miles, which means I had to make several stops for gas, 2) eventhough sitting in a car for 6 hours is painful, sitting on a motorcycle is REALLY painful especialy if you have a bad back, 3) music via headphones is as essential to this type of trip as the motorcycle.

The recruitment part of the trip was a big success, I accomplished everything I set out to accomplish. On the last day someone asked me about the trip and whether I was looking forward to the trip home. Without hesitation I told him no, I wasn't really looking forward to 7 hours on my motorcycle, but that ship had already sailed there was no other option to getting home. The return trip wasn't as grueling as the trip down. Maybe it's because I knew exactly what it would take to get to my destination. Maybe I was REALLY looking forward to seeing my wife and sweet little baby j. Maybe I graduated into the class of long distance motorcyclist. That last one isn't true at all, but a man can still dream. Officially I think my days on the open road are done. Unofficially, if anyone wants to be Charlie to my Ewen McGreggor, I've got a plan for Anchorage to San Diego all teed up.

Lights..Camera....ACTION: PART 1

2008-12-04T17:36:00.000-08:00

I fulfilled something on my bucket list this week, I was in a Hollywood movie production. And when I say in, I mean hopefully in as I was cast as an extra, a doctor to be exact. I volunteered to be an extra in a movie that is partly being shot at my hopsital and is almost completely being shot in the Charleston area. The movie is supposed to be called "Dear John". It's based from a book of the same title from the same author as the "The Notebook". A lot of people liked "The Notebook" but I wasn't going to be caught dead seeing it so I can't judge (but my judgement is that it was a cup of crap).

The shoot day was this past Monday and I ran into a little bit of a snag, I had a 103 temp on Sunday and it was 102 on Monday morning. But the show must go on, and I was mostly delirious so why not go for it! I had to check in by 6am at a temporary base camp set up in a public square in downtown Charleston. I filled out some paperwork to be payed for my hard days labor, was checked out by the wardrobe folks (they thought my interpretation of my role was spot on....I brought my own stethescope), and then had some breakfast. It's Hollywood so of course there was a variety of granola, soy yogurt, and freshly squeased (by you) orange juice. It's the South, so there was also grits, eggs, sausage, and corned beef hash.

I piled into a van that ushered us to the set location, my hospital. We waited for a while as they were setting up the camera's and arranging the set pieces. Periodically someone would walk through us extra's, grab 1 or 2 of us with questions like, "We need a girl with a size 7 shoe?", and usher them away to the set. Then all of the extra's were ushered to the set where we were beginning to learn our roles. When they shouted for 2 doctors I leapt at the chance. A rookie mistake. No one does the important folks first, they do filler first, then important. I was shown where to start, to walk when they yelled "background", get to a second doctor, look over a chart as the 1 of the stars approached 2 of the other stars, then cross the room to walk out of the door. And that's what I did for the next 9 hours. Starting walking on "background", talked to the other doc, and then walked out the door.

It wasn't always mundane. Even though it's SC it's still December, so walking outside and then staying there until the scene was done started to get chilly. They would reset, we would walk back inside, barely get warm and they would start the scene again. As the day progressed, they would reset the camera's to get new angles for the scene so instead of walking outside we would break right, and then after 6 takes, we would break left for 10 takes. The bonus of resetting the camera's is that we didn't have to go outside anymore. And for several hours they filmed a part of the scene that happened while I was outside, so I got to wait in "holding", i.e. the place with the chips and drinks.

I think I have a better idea of why movie tickets are $15. I still don't agree with the price, but I understand more of production costs. The total shoot for the day lasted 14 hours. I don't think I'll get much over $90 for the day. It was a good experience that I'm not hungry to duplicate. There are a whole host of other options for work, my favorite is the stand-in. But I'll save that for Part 2 (which will be poorly written, ill conceived, and just feel like a tack on that wasn't necessary to the plot).

New Nose

2008-11-27T19:55:00.000-08:00

An interesting thing about medical insurance is that when you have it, you find ways to use it. My current coverage is going to end in December because it costs way to much money to the State. I had to choose a plan that included a deductible and so I promptly started looking at myself wondering what needed to be seen or fixed before my coverage was changed. So Isettled on my nose.

There's a slick little surgery that can correct anatomical defects in your nose, that in theory, can help you stop snoring. The wife noticed my snoring getting much worse and decided that I needed to do something or deal with her sleeping on the other side of the house. I'm sure the snoring has little to do with my gaining 25 pounds since sweet little baby j was born. Daddies have as much trouble shedding baby weight as mommies. So a couple visits later I had a surgery scheduled for this past Tuesday.

It was a great reason to take Thanksgiving week off from work. I even got to use a special type of leave because the surgery required general anesthesia (SWEET!). It was a little weird to be the patient, and not the supportive partner. I had to quickly tell the wife that if anything happened she needed to contact Carlos who would give her access to the Swiss Bank accounts and would provide her with a new identity. I guess I was a little nervous going in. It really wasn't that big a deal. They asked me a thousand times what my name was and what I was having done. They slipped me 3 mg of Versed and wheeled me into the operation room. Before I could start to ask about all the equipment someone gave me the rest of my happy cocktail, fentanyl, propofol, and another dose of Versed. When I came too I was in the recovery room and people were talking to me. I honestly don't recall what they were saying but they wanted to get me into a wheelchair and then I was getting into my car. The wife got lucky that my legs didn't give out as she was guiding me from the car to our bed. I bet she was also wishing I had done a better job at losing the baby weight.

It's been 2 days since the procedure and all in all I feel fine. There's been a little bit of discomfort and pain, but not that big a deal. My nose is still a little plugged up because I'm not confident enough to really blow my nose and clear out the surgery leftovers. I'm sure the swelling will go down and everything will clear up just fine.

Now I just have to get re-committed to the sledgehammer workout. I should be back to my playing weight by Valentine's Day.

The Windy City

2008-11-22T07:58:00.000-08:00

There are some weekends that are a family affair, and some you have to spend alone. Last weekend I was in Chicago for a friends wedding. I made a couple observations, 1) I really don't like being single. No one to talk to. No one to tell me to stop flipping channels. No one to try to make laugh. 2) I'm sure whatever your faith is, your faiths wedding ceremony holds a special place in your heart. The friend that was getting married is Indian, and he's Pentecostal. I have several other Indian friends who are varying degrees of Evangelical. I was sitting next to my Hindu friend and her husband. It was a lovely ceremony and I'm sure they will have a wonderful life together. I found myself thinking about my wedding, surrounded by those people who know me best, and making sacred covenants. I tried not to compare and contrast, but I did. I wouldn't change anything about that day.

After the wedding I got a chance to spend some time with my friend Betsy and her husband Jaison and 2 of their friends who live in Chicago. We went downtown and had a great time. I've been to Chicago before, but this was definitely the most fun that I've had there. We saw the Christmas tree and displays at Macey's, we walked by Millennium Park, and we ended up at The Chicago Firehouse for dinner. If you're ever in Chicago and want an amazing steak, the Firehouse is the place to go. I was panicking silently over the price pretty much the entire meal. And then Betsy surprised everyone by picking up the tab. I owe you BIG Betsy!

When I got home, I was certainly glad to be home. Back to the love of my life, and my sweet little baby j. Back to work and the stress. Back to Charleston and the great weather (although right now it's colder here than it was in Chicago). I'd like to say that I'm done traveling alone, but I don't think that will be the case. I guess you just have to enjoy the time that you have together.

The Wisdom of our Elders

2008-11-08T08:13:00.000-08:00

When I was in high school our choir sang a piece by Randall Thompson, "Choose Something Like a Star". The words come from a Robert Frost poem and it's not an easy piece, or at least it wasn't in high school. It was tough to learn and our choir director listened patiently to our complaining. One day he told us that if we read the poem separately, and thought about it we would understand what the music was trying to portray. He also promised that at some time later in our life, we'd hear this piece again and a flood of good memories and respect for the music would come to mind. This might be high concept for high school, but it's true.

The Charleston Men's Chorus is going to sing a Randall Thompson piece, "Nowel" at our Christmas concert. I was searching Youtube, and iTunes for a version of it and I came across "Choose Something Like a Star" performed by the Mormon Tabernacle Choir and set to a slide show of Hubble Space Telescope images. If you have 5 minutes check it out.

Here is the poem by Robert Frost.

Choose Something Like a Star

by Robert Frost - 1947

O Star (the fairest one in sight),
We grant your loftiness the right
To some obscurity of cloud --
It will not do to say of night,
Since dark is what brings out your light.
Some mystery becomes the proud.
But to be wholly taciturn
In your reserve is not allowed.

Say something to us we can learn
By heart and when alone repeat.
Say something! And it says "I burn."
But say with what degree of heat.
Talk Fahrenheit, talk Centigrade.
Use language we can comprehend.
Tell us what elements you blend.

It gives us strangely little aid,
But does tell something in the end.
And steadfast as Keats' Eremite,
Not even stooping from its sphere,
It asks a little of us here.
It asks of us a certain height,
So when at times the mob is swayed
To carry praise or blame too far,
We may choose something like a star
To stay our minds on and be staid.

Vote Early, and Vote Often

2008-11-04T18:26:00.000-08:00

The wife and I decided that we should make the most of the fact that there was no early morning seminary this morning, and get to the polls early. We dutifully got sweet little baby j ready for the walk to the polling station and I got ready for work. I had expected to be able to come back after voting, eat some breakfast, and then head into work. As we rounded the last corner to get to the polling station we saw a huge line of cars. And as we approached the polling station we saw the huge crowd of people. This was the first time that I voted, since the first time I voted, that I was almost moved to tears. There were old and young, black and white, poor and wealthy, all lined up in the most orderly way to make their will known. And through the 3.5 hours that we waited in line, no one left their spot in line. As I exited after casting my vote there was still a huge line, each person with an obvious look of determination to cast their vote.

Later in the day I vented a little to the folks at work. Why did it have to take more than 3 hours to cast my vote? None of my other colleagues waited nearly that long to cast their vote. As I talked with my technicians, most of whom are minorities, they had similar stories. Some were in line for 4 hours, but none of them turned away. I think this year we had 100% voter turn out for the folks in my pharmacy. I'd like to take some credit for sitting down with everyone yesterday and talking about when they would go to vote, before work or after. But that would wrong. Everyone was committed before we sat down to make their voice heard.

And even though I'm not obligated to declare my vote, I'll tell you I voted for Obama-Biden. In the last election I voted for Bush-Cheney, Bush-Cheney before that, and Dole-Kemp before that. I'm proud of each of my votes. They are the decision that has made the most sense as I've weighed the options in front of me. My parents taught me to vote my conscience, and today was no different. You might ask, "Why the break from basically a straight Republican ticket vote in the past." I believe the current administration has done a marginal job of managing the government, and a poor job leading the American people and the world toward democracy. There has been little if any fiscal responsibility from the government. Which is as much an indictment of the Congress as it is from the White House.

I'm currently watching the election results on mute, I really don't like pundits. Before I muted it I heard a great quote by Rudy Guiliani. When asked about a potential Obama victory he responded by saying that the great thing about America is that tomorrow we will have a president elect. And we will work to make him succeed, because if he fails, we all fail.

Political Affiliation

2008-10-29T19:53:00.000-07:00

My faithful readers know that I've been going back and forth about who to vote for this coming Tuesday. I think I've detailed my hang-ups with both candidates. As I was on Facebook I saw a friend of mine posted a link to an older article written about an interview with Marlin K. Jensen about political affiliation. The family members reading this post may know that we have somewhat of a connection with Elder Jensen. I encourage you all to read it, but because I know most of you won't I'll tell you what I thought was interesting. Near the end Elder Jensen says, "You know, the Republicans came very close last time to bringing a pro-abortion plank into their platform. That was maybe the biggest battle of their [1996 national] convention," he said. "Which shows that if you're a pure ideologue, eventually you're going to have trouble in either party."

I guess that sums up the quandry I've been facing. There are 1 or 2 issues that really give me pause, namely abortion rights and an early declaration against the war in Iraq (being so against the Iraqi war from the beginning was most likely being an opportunist hedging a bet that the war wouldn't go well, and later trying to make the point that he was right from the start). Something that Elder Jensen also talks about is the need for a strong debate of ideas in the political process. With a room full of folks that agree with each other, it's rare that the best ideas will emerge. In my own retrospection, I think that was my hesitation about our response to 9/11. Our political leaders were coming together to support a wounded country, and wound up being asked to support an invasion or be viewed as on the side of terrorists. And by the way, that world view, you're either with us or against us, enabled somewhat oppressive governments all over the world to label any government opposition as terrorists. It added fuel to the Israel-Palestinian conflict and within days Russia was making strong statements about Georgian "terrorists".

I had a great discussion with a coworker today about politics. She is a lifelong Republican and for about 15 minutes we really hashed out some of our main concerns and feelings about the current political environment. It was refreshing. It was refreshing to get a well thought out, detailed viewpoint of current events that didn't surround itself with sound bites. I'm tired of the clear propaganda that both sides have shoveled in the home stretch of the campaign. Calling Obama a Marxist, calling Palin a fool, and calling McCain an incoherent old guy is not helping the national debate (no one calls Biden because their afraid of what his response will be).

In the end, I may take this presidential decision to my grave. No one says I have to disclose my vote, I just need to vote. I'll proudly let you know when I cast my constitutionally given vote.

Philly Madness

2008-10-29T19:03:00.000-07:00

It's hard to believe the Phillies finally won the World Series!!! I'm not sure when I started to get back into baseball, but it had definitely happened when I was living in Philadelphia. It seemed like the team always did great right up to the end of the season and then would self-destruct. We were mostly beaten by the Atlanta Braves, and I'll always hate the Braves for that.

This year was different. They didn't collapse in the close of the regular season, or the playoffs, or the final series. As a matter of fact, they really played solid baseball for about a month. It helped that it was the most important month in baseball, October. The wife will be thrilled that the season is finally over. I've been wearing the same Phillies jersey and hat for about 2 weeks straight. Ladies, it's not disgusting it's loyalty.

I hope this is the spark for many championships in Philadelphia. The Eagles may be able to pull something out this year. The Flyers could turn things around. And the 76'ers might not all get thrown in jail. This could be the start of something great.

Congratulations Philadelphia!! Let's enjoy this while it lasts. It might be another 25 years before we get another one.

Powell-Obama Lovefest

2008-10-20T18:34:00.000-07:00

Did anyone catch the interview with Colin Powell on "Meet the Press?" If you're under 60 you probably didn't. I say that because I think my dad is the only loyal viewer of that program, and he's a smidge over 60. As an aside, I remember every Sunday morning my dad ironing his Sunday clothes while watching "Meet the Press." Some Sunday mornings I turn on the TV and try to get away with putting on my robe and setting up the ironing board. Church is at 10 so I rarely get away with it.

Anyway, Colin Powell announced that he would vote for Obama come November. I'm not entirely shocked by the announcement, but I was a little surprised by what he said in the announcement. For all of you internet junkies out there, I'd encourage you to take the 20 minutes and watch the clip on MSNBC.com. The snippets you get in the news are more than likely misleading. I will not be taking this opportunity to tell Internet America whom I'll be voting for. Although I will tell Internet America that the reasons that Powell mentioned were compelling and things that I'd also been thinking about.

First, have you noticed that the current Republican party doesn't really resemble the party of Reagan. My liberal readers (primarily the wife) will tell me to stop pining for the Reagan era. The Reagan era is still relevant because ALL of the current heads of the Republican party talk about it like the Golden era of politics. Just listen to 1 of the early Republican debates and you'll know what I'm talking about. The party has decidedly shifted to being less inclusive, "Let's build a gigantic wall between the US and Mexico!" I'm sure that's a great idea because when Reagan told Gorbechev to "Tear down this wall!" he really meant that we should just transport it to our southern border.

Second, Powell talked about a seemingly unsteady response to the financial crisis from the McCain camp. Suspending a campaign to go deal with this issue was an okay idea, but wouldn't you like someone who can multi-task? Recently McCain has attacked Obama's solutions to the financial crisis as socialist. Frankly, I can't think of a more socialist thing than to federalize several major banks, have the government become the single largest holder of personal property, and infuse BILLIONS of federal dollars into Wall street. There was a great article in Newsweek titled "More French than France" which basically characterized the plan proposed by a Republican president and accepted by most of the Republican Congress members as taking what France has done over the past 30 or so years and going one step further toward socialism. I want to be clear that I think the plan was the right thing to do, but the real Republican or "Free Market" thing to do would be to let the country twist in the wind. It's simple greed that got us into this mess, and it's simple self discipline and personal responsibility that needs to get us out. This current generation has yet to be called on to sacrifice for the good of the country like previous generations.

You might think most of what I've said means that I'll clearly vote for Obama-Biden in November. You are mistaken. I truly haven't decided yet. I'm absolutely torn. I think Obama clearly understands what is facing this nation, and how we need to continue to be leaders in the world community. I'm scared to death of him appointing 2 maybe 3 Justices to the Supreme Court. McCain has a personality disorder when it comes to labeling himself as a Maverick. Yet he has not said one single thing that would lead me to believe he would actually propose, encourage, or stimulate the country to reaching for something better. Being unpopular and accomplishing goals are not the same thing. We're currently unpopular on the world stage and people don't sit back and think, "Oh yeah, those Americans are so awesome because they do whatever they think is best for us lowly people in 3rd world countries. And often it just means perpetuating our poverty and encouraging us to spend what little we have to be consumers of first world goods."

This country is becoming more polarized and we need a Great Uniting. Some of the polarization is an effect of the internet which allows us to connect with people that only think like us and talk like us. We are discouraged from engaging in meaningful debates with friends partly because we have sought out the 1 chat room that caters to our mindset. The term patriotism has become synonymous with accepting whatever comes out of the White House. It might be me, but the lesson I learned from the Founding Fathers is that you need to speak up about what you think is right. You need to engage people who don't think like you do and clearly state your reasoning for believing like you do (the Federalist Papers). And if after all avenues of redress are exhausted (which is typically a long time) you need to stand up for your rights as a human being.

I hope you don't consider me a fatalist. There is a lot of hope left in us as a country. What we are as a nation is certainly the sum of its parts. And the vast majority of our parts are good, honest, giving people. Whoever I vote for, it will be a vote for my belief in our future. It will be a vote for a better tomorrow.

October Baseball

2008-10-15T20:05:00.000-07:00

If you know me, you know that I'm not a huge baseball fan. But I am a fan of the Phillies. My dad took me to my first major league game with the then #1 Phillies playing the then #2 Cardinals in Philadelphia at Veterans stadium. It was many years ago, John Kruk was hitting homers for the Phillies and Ozzy Smith was doing backflips for the Cardinals. We sat in the right field lower deck of the old Vet stadium. Halfway through the game 2 really fat and really drunk guys got into a shouting match that ended because neither was willing to walk the 20 feet to punch the other one in the face. Does this explain why I love the Phillies?

When I lived in Philly I was REALLY tempted to skip school almost every Thursday afternoon when there was a home game. There is an allure of sitting down with a bunch of corporate suits and government workers that called in sick to watch the Phillies. For the last several years the Phil's have been flirting with October baseball. They never were able to pull it together, and usually got edged out by someone who made a late surge as they were falling apart. It looks like they've finally kept from coming unglued long enough to make it to the World Series. I don't have cable right now, so it's hard to watch a lot of games during the season. I'll watch every game of the Series, because why would I miss it? It might be another 15 years before they get back to the big dance.

Good luck to the Phillies!! I'll be decked out for all the games in my Phillies jersey and hat hoping to get the chance at a Phillies world champion commemorative mug.

The Great Debate

2008-09-26T20:01:00.001-07:00

At some point in the next couple days I'll need to give the wife an overview of what happened in the presidential debate last night. You see, she LOVES TV but can discriminate when she has to. She might watch a 3 day marathon of every episode of Angel, but she will proudly skip a debate where one of the folks talking will be deciding what we do and where we go as a country. It's almost like someone who will eat at a buffet every night, but never touch the cottage cheese in the salad bar.

I'll give you a brief rundown of what my opinion was of the debate. McCain started out slow, but did a good job towards the middle. He might have shown his age; needing some time for the pills to take effect, going strong for 20 minutes, and then looking for a chair to rest in before the other parties finished. Obama was fairly steady throughout and didn't appear to be a candidate with extremely limited experience. There were decries by both about fiscal irresponsibility by "Washington" (I didn't know a city spent money all by itself. I could swear the pork is cooked up by real, live folks who want a slice of the GDP).

I'll be completely candid with you, I'm not entirely sure who I'm going to vote for come November. McCain, the man of my party, has gone back on most of the things that made him seem like a great candidate a few years ago. A quote that sticks out in my mind from the debate, "[Jim Lehrer] Due to the economic crisis, what specific things would you delay because of this massive expense to the government. [McCain] I'd call for a spending freeze on everything except Defense and Veterans Affairs." Boy, that's very altruistic of you Mr. Senator who claims veterans benefits and promotes massive defense spending. How about millions of children with chronic diseases who will go untreated because the government won't fund for low income children's doctors or hospital care.

Obama has plenty of warts as well. It's pretty easy to sit on the sideline and call the coach a hack. It's very different to really insert yourself into the national debates in Congress and bring about meaningful change. By the November election Obama will have been campaining for as long as he has been serving the people of Illinois and the United States as a Senator. I'm betting that his campaign material for the Senate don't include, "Elect me so I can run for President, neglect your needs, and bring about change (whatever that means or is possible).

Next week I'll be posting about the Vice Presidential debate. I don't mean to give a spoiler alert, but if you thought this post is a little harsh, I REALLY don't like either VP Candidate. Palin can't talk herself out of a box, and Biden would gladly jump in a box so he could hear himself speak all day long. I'm predicting an absolute bloodbath of a debate. Or, Palin pulls out of the debate. From the couple interviews I've seen so far, she has a soundbite grasp of the issues. If Biden can find his dentures he might go for the jugular by the middle of the debate. STAY TUNED.

You're such a Maverick

2008-09-04T18:34:00.000-07:00

Does someone at the RNC have a fetish with the word "Maverick"? It seems like this particular term is being thrown around liberally, or excuse me, generously. Heaven forbid I use a form of liberal to describe anything to do with the Republicans. I just saw a short video piece about Governor Palin and I think in about 3 minutes they used the title "Maverick" 40 times. McCain's a maverick, Palin's a maverick, Tom Cruise was Maverick (I had to throw in the Top Gun reference somewhere). Both parties have reached a level of absurdity with their respective conventions. I've got a set of gripes with the Dems, but dem's ain't the ones I'm talkin' 'bout right now! Back to the mavericks-McCain is the original Maverick. Or is he the extra crispy recipe? Palin's the Alaska Maverick. How can that possibly be, she loves hockey, she hunts, she knows more about oil rights than her own daughter's whereabouts, and her husband works as a fisherman. That's the description of 85% of all Alaskan women.

Just for the record, I like John McCain. Not because he wants to be called Maverick which is so 1984 of him. As an aside I'm not sure he remembers 1984 all that well, he was 65 and making all those tough decisions about his eventual retirement. I like John McCain because he's been willing to make compromises and work with the Dems to propose meaningful change in things like, ethics reforms, immigration, and energy policy. I thought it was great when he talked to Arizona folks about immigration policy that preserved migrant workers. He told them they weren't tough enough to pick lettuce in Arizona. We need immigrants from Latin America because Americans are not interested in work that is in the sun, hunched over a crop. Latins want work, period. They want to provide for their families struggling to make ends meet in their country of origin. In the face of every migrant worker we should see our own ancestry, instead of a threat to American jobs.

I like John McCain the senator. But I really don't like John McCain the candidate for president. He has a different message and is trying his hardest to appeal to a Republican party that really wants Pat Buchanen in office. This post is starting to spin out of control and my Utah readers are probably getting concerned that I've switched parties. Maybe what they don't remember is that I'm a pretty middle of the road type guy. I have some views on the left and some on the right. McCain should have been my kind of candidate, but instead I've gotten a sound bite driven....Maverick.

The Storms Ahead

2008-09-04T18:15:00.000-07:00

In case you haven't heard, we in SC have been bracing for a possible hurricane. For the past week my hospital, and specifically my leadership group, have been making plans to continue the services we provide if the hurricane made landfall in Charleston. The funny thing about disaster plans is that a really good plan is specific to the type of threat at hand, the resources available, and is flexible enough to change as the situation changes. That last point is the funny part. In order to be specific to the threat we had to start thinking about alternate paths of the storm, varying levels of intesity, and enacting the plan at different hours of the day. With each different answer to the previous questions, we found that the resource question would be answered differently. And trying to come up with a plan that would be flexible enough if something unexpected happened started to border on insanity. Since Tuesday I think we have made 5 different plans, each contain several slight variations. As the storm meandered past Haiti (killing ~60 in the process) I was putting my OCD to good use by checking the National Hurricane Center website.

In the end I think we've come up with a good plan. We only had 1 real dissenter who I had to threaten to fire if she went through with her plan to stay in the Upstate if we were dealing with a disaster in the Low-Country. That talk went as well as could be expected, she understood that I cared about her situation and would only call her if it was absolutely necessary. She agreed that if it was really that bad, she would fulfill her professional obligation and support our efforts.

You might be thinking to yourself that I'm overreacting with all of this planning talk. I've included a few pictures of a recent rain storm that passed through here. Keep in mind that this was a normal summer storm sort of thing.

So many posts...So little time

2008-08-23T20:57:00.001-07:00

I'm not saying any of my posts are good, but I think I've had many good topics to write about lately. The problem of course is that I haven't taken the time to actually write about them. So I'll leave you with a line or 2 about each idea. We'll poll America and the topic that wins will get a full shakedown.

1. Brett Favre. If you're a loyal post reader (I think there might be exactly 1 besides my wife) you'll know that one of my first posts was a lament about Brett Favre's retirement. You might think that I would be excited that he decided to step back out of retirement. You'd be wrong. It was awful that Joe Montana played for the Chiefs and it's awful that Brett is playing for the Jett's. I've got about 6 more pages to say on this subject.

2. Hurricane Season in Charleston. I thought that worrying about hurricanes would be all that I'd have to worry about in Hurricane season. It turns out that "almost" hurricanes can produce pretty nasty tornados and floods as well. So no hurricane has hit Charleston (count your many blessings), yet we've had several tornado watches and some minor flooding. No home damage or harm so no foul. I could find more to say about this.

3. Obama has a VP. This is new news and it turns out to be old news. In that I mean Biden's like 75 years old and he started working in the Senate when he was 20. If the message of the Obama campaign is "Change" then it's the worst move in the world to pick a man that will celebrate a Golden Anniversary as a Senator. If you can choke down the hypocrisy of the Obama campaign with this move, and look at the decision with a purely political eye it's a brilliant move. Obama clearly lacks, well, a lot of things: specific ideas regarding reform, realistic goals for a country built on the principle of slow measured change, and relevant experience to be the leader of one of the largest economies and the largest military. I've got plenty more to say about this, but I'd like to continue sleeping in the same bed as my liberal wife.

4. Political Discussions with Spouses. On the coat tails of that brief post I'll cautiously add a word about talking politics with your spouse. The day before I left for 2 years to serve a mission for my church my next older brother told me never to bring up politics with the people I taught. His point was that the top 2 most dividing conversations anyone can have revolve around politics and religion. I was specifically asked by the leader of my church to talk about religion so that topic was unavoidable. It was an excellent point that I mostly carried into my marriage. I learned early that there is no sense talking about religion or politics with my spouse. Her ideas are hers and my ideas are mine and it really doesn't do anyone much good to get into a heated conversation about them. I want to be perfectly clear here that I don't feel like she has "the wrong idea" when it comes to either topic. She has a different perspective and different views. I'll leave it at that, please America don't ask me to elaborate.

5. The Olympics. Glad they're here, glad they're over. I watched 7 out of 8 Michael Phelps races, and I silently cheered for all of them. There are many moments in the olympics that are exactly why we should continue to gather every 2 years as a world and compete with each other. The medal count is ridiculous, and we probably won't care as much when China completely dominates this silly statistic. I'm staying up to watch the US basketball team play Spain for Gold. Don't give me a hard time about staying up to 2:30am to watch basketball. I hate basketball, this is the only basketball game I'll have watched all year. Just because I hate the game doesn't mean I can completely ignore it. I could dig up plenty to talk about on this one.

6. Bath, Ballad, Bed. Almost every night I'm putting sweet little baby j to bed. About every other night this includes a bath. I'm working down a system to get him really clean in as little time as possible. The rest of bath time is him splashing all over, and kicking his legs in the water. I used to sing a U2 song to him every night while I was feeding him and he was falling asleep. A couple weeks ago I realized that it would be very cool for him to know U2, but better for him to get connected with our church hymns. So I've been singing from our hymnal. Some songs are emotional to sing to your baby boy, and some are really funny. To keep things fresh I've decided to sing a new hymn every night, starting with 1 and going to the end. I might have more to say about this, but I'll leave it between me and j,

Heart Healthy: Part 1

2008-08-06T18:37:00.000-07:00

Maybe it's just me, but I think everyone needs to find a cause. I didn't think I would find mine, and we would find ours as a couple, quite so early in life. The cause that was so rudely thrust upon us was to bring awareness and research money to help those affected with vascular diseases like heart failure, heart attacks, and strokes. If the wife wants to she can describe how our lives changed when she had a stroke 4 years ago. She's a survivor. I don't want to diminish what she's gone through, the speech delays, word confusion, frustration to express herself (she's an English major after all). Comparatively, I was effected in a small way, but those effects seem to come back to haunt me. Like the time I was reading a chart of a guy who had a stroke at home with a presentation very similar to my wife's, and how I had to go back to my office to work through my emotions. Or the movie that we watched where the lead character's wife passed away from a stroke. I've got a couple reasons why I think the outcome was as good as it was, but you'll have to ask me in person about those.

As the husband of a survivor, and as a manager of a children's hospital that performs many surgeries for children with heart abnormalities, we participate every year in the Low-Country Heart Walk. We try to raise money that will be used for research at my hospital to try and solve one of the largest public health issues in America. The solutions that can be found will not only benefit folks like my wife, but also the many millions of people around the world who suffer from a heart attack or a stroke. In many countries there isn't really a point in having a heart walk with survivors because so few people would be able to participate.

If you'd like to donate please follow the link. If you don't know the wife very well, think about someone in your own family who has been affected by one of these events.

Those were the good old days

2008-08-01T18:56:00.000-07:00

The wife and I were watching PBS while we were trying to distract sweet little baby j and keep him up. Now I realize that watching PBS is probably not our best choice to keep the baby awake. Anyway, we were watching a travel show about Northern England. The trip started with a visit to a town where the Industrial Revolution began. The town was complete with a village reminiscent of the time. Is it just me that thinks there was a lot about the Industrial Revolution that shouldn't be memorialized? I'm pretty sure the museum didn't spend a whole bunch of time on the fact that children were working 16 hour days near the new fangled blast furnace. The town did have a couple of sweet faced little kids selling dried flowers for a penny. Ahhhh, street urchins. That's so cute how those kids were forced to sell dried flowers to keep a small portion of food on the table. It's better for tourists that the kids don't have caked dirt all over them, and forlorn faces from their abject poverty. "Please sir, can you buy some flowers so me mum don't whip me tonight?" Yep, that's as Disney a moment as you'll ever find.

I wonder if the town also had a character that played the factory owner. You might not ever run into him because he'd be in his manor, smoking a pipe, eating the freshest vegetables and meat trying to figure out how to build another factory. If you did see him, chances are he'd strike you with his riding whip and tell you to loaf in someone else's town.

Yep, I sure do miss those good old days. For all you optimists out there, even though you can find situations and places that look very similar to the good old days, you can find many other instances where people are paid fairly for their work. You can see that the dominating upper class are more the exception than the rule. When you look at a successful America you can see a middle class that, for the most part, improve their situation with each generation.

Speaking of bettering your generation, a friend from work and I were talking about the importance of the middle class and the astonishing social mobility of pharmacists (I realize this probably isn't a fascinating conversation for most folks). Anyway, this friend mentioned the concept that it takes 4 generations to work your way up to the upper-middle class. And at any point it can all be erased by one generation forfeiting the work of a previous generations. If I had done a better job with my genealogy I could rattle off the professions of my previous 4 generations. In the example that I'm the 4th generation this sort-of holds true. The obligation is to always capitalize on the advantages that are given you because of the work of the previous generation. The notion of doing it all by yourself without the help of parents or grandparents is basically throwing away the American Dream. Maybe that's going a little too far, but you get my point.

That's all the sunshine I can spread for one post.

Our Phones Were Not Meant To Be

2008-07-22T19:34:00.000-07:00

I guess it's safe to say that I'm a huge Apple freak. I can stand in a crowd and declare, "My name is ... and I have Apple fantasies!" I guess it's not safe enough for me to divulge my name on the web along with that declaration, but that's not important right now. I feel like I'm a day away from the holy grail of personal organizers. Tomorrow I will hold my iPhone and start the process to import my life into a small plastic, glass, and silicone box. I've had several PDA's over the course of my professional life. There have been at least 3 that I can think of right away. One worked for about a week before it was toast, one had an untimely demise after a run-in with a pear, and one has been losing a battle with my hospital's IT department. This last one had me going for about 3 months. There were 3 months of electronic bliss. I'd decided to try to make it work for me and I had real hope that it could live up to my expectations.

It's with all this build up that I think by the weekend I'll have more of my life organized and available at the touch of a button. There might be some unhealthy expectations to go along with this purchase. I try to tell myself at work to under promise and over deliver. I just can't take that advice when I bury myself into a new device. I think of possibilities and things that might come in a new software update and so on and so forth until the reality of the device drags me down.

There was supposed to be more than an iPhone, it was supposed to be ourPhone. We would both have the same phone that we could coordinate a calendar with, and share contacts between (because what if I wanted to call the gadfly on a Tuesday randomly?), we would share our minutes, and it would solve little J's sleep problems, and Palestine would tell Israel that it was probably wrong about some things and Israel would agree that it could have handled things better. Is this really too much to ask of a phone? There is no joy in Mudville and there will be no ourPhone in Charleston. The wife laid all my scheming aside and rejected her iPhone after it had arrived in SC. To me, that's like getting lined up with the hottest girl in school and then telling her you've got plans to hang out at the arcade all night playing Dance, Dance, Revolution.

Ultimately, there are a thousand things I can think of that someone could do with an iPhone even if they don't have a massively complex calendar, or 100 emails a day, or are expected to be on call for any problem 24/7/365. And that is the problem, only I can think of those thousand things. The wife doesn't care enough about a bit of plastic, glass, and silicone to use the features and bells and whistles. It's absolutely not because it's hard to figure out. It's just that she has more interest in studying linear geometry than think of possible uses for an iPhone. I need to respect her decision and allow her to use technology the way she wants to use it. Such as pounding the computer with a rock because she needs to let it's spirit fly away.

Holy Long Post Batman

2008-07-13T19:09:00.000-07:00

Is anyone else excited about the new Batman movie coming out. I saw the first Batman movie with my mom while we were on vacation together in Cedar City, Utah. She HATES to watch movies but took some pity on her teenage son so we caught an evening showing. There was some juxtaposition that, now that I'm looking back on it, was oretty funny.

We were in Cedar City because she was teaching an art thing to other teachers. While we were in CC, the annual Shakespeare festival was going on, so we caught a couple plays. I went for 2 year with my mom so I can't tell you which year we saw what, but in the 2 years we saw A Merchant of Venice, Romeo and Juliet, MacBeth, and at the moment I'm drawing a blank on the fourth. Anyway, here we are most nights watching these great plays, and then one night we go see Batman. I think we also saw Dick Tracy one night.

These were great trips that made a big impression on me. My mom taught me how to play poker, I spent much of the day in an arcade, and then in the evening we would watch live theater. Now that I'm thinking about it, we also went to some art galleries and took a day trip to see Cedar Breaks National Monument. I was never really good at the arts, but I have been good at appreciating the arts in its many forms. I could go on and on about the events that my mom took me along to see. I don't remember being dragged to any of it. She was very good at suggesting that something might be fun and worth coming along to see. I'll stop this trip down memory lane now before this post becomes as long as the last one.

The Joy of Cooking

2008-07-13T18:36:00.000-07:00

If you are one of those people who read the blog and have only known me for a couple years this post may be somewhat of a shock (I realize that my readership can be counted on one hand by someone missing several fingers so this a silly first sentence). There was a period in my life that I LOVED to cook. While I was in Canada I had a few stretches where I wasn't stressed out by what I was doing each day and I decided to become a good cook. This was partly out of necessity, we had a very small budget, and partly out of a desire to know what was good food and what was a food atrocity. Food atrocities aren't hard to find in a lineup: Liver and Onions (I don't care how their cooked there is no recipe that can make a filter organ edible), lasagna prepared with ham steaks as a layer, or Jello with ANY meat inside. The really good food is also hard to find if you have never had REALLY good food before. There are flavor combinations that heighten your senses, spices that can bring the perfect amount of heat, meat that can be delicate without being in a Crock-pot for 8 hours. I'm not turning my back on my roots, I'm just proposing that if you take a step back while your eating and wonder what you're actually tasting, how does it feel in your mouth, does it satisfy you, then you might let eating become more than just a necessity.

One of the items that we've received in the local farm co-op are jalapeno peppers. I'm not a huge fan of hot, spicy, burn your mouth, and scar your guts type food. I like spice, but I still want to taste the other parts of the dish and meal. My love of spice includes curry in many, many forms. So the wife and I were at a loss with what to do with these peppers. We diced one up and put it in a squash dish. I made a fresh salsa. There were still a dozen peppers to be used. So I decided to jump back in the kitchen and play around a little, and learn about jalapeno's.

I made 2 kinds of Jalapeno Poppers. The wife was convinced I had no idea what I was doing, she was partly right. The first kind was very straight forward. Halve the peppers and de-vein and seed them, fill with cream cheese and bake at 350 F for 15 minutes. These were very simple and showed off the flavor of the pepper without melting your face off. Apparently, baking a pepper takes away a lot of the heat. I think I would go for 18 - 20 minutes with the next batch, to roast the pepper a little more and dry out the cream cheese more. These would be a great appetizer for a party.

The second Popper was a recipe I found on YouTube. You start by halving the peppers, gutting them, filling them with cream cheese, then you put them back with their mate, and wrap them in bacon. The Youtube guy grilled them, but I already had the oven hot so I baked them at 375 for about 20 minutes and then 400 for about 5 minutes to crisp the bacon. I guess for full disclosure I need to tell you I was using thick cut bacon so that might add time to the cooking. What I found is that much of the heat of the pepper was left after this cooking method. I think the more exposed heat did more to calm the pepper, which if you're me is a good thing. I don't know that I liked the bacon as much as the more plain version. There was a nice salty, savory thing going on, but with the thick cut bacon that's pretty much all I tasted. I love bacon, but I was hoping to highlight the pepper a little more.

I decided to skip the more traditional breading and frying method for poppers. I'm sure that I could have pulled this off, but I couldn't bring myself to fill a frying pan with oil. Also, the wife always wants to start frying things before the oil is hot enough, which just makes for an oily mess of food. It was a prudent thing to just avoid the oil all together.

A few life lessons were learned with this prep.

1. When working with peppers, remove all jewelry. The place under my wedding ring is trapped a buch of the pepper heat which was painful.
2. You can never wash your hands too much. My right hand, which did most of the work, was burning for at least 2 hours after the prep. Maybe more frequent washings would have helped.
3. Rubbing bread on your hand does not take the heat away like it does when you eat the bread. Listen, my hand was BURNING for 2 hours, something needed to be done. Fresh dinner rolls did nothing for the pain.

July 4th Memories

2008-07-07T10:32:00.000-07:00

This past 4th of July I had to work at the hospital during the evening shift. To keep everyone's spirits up I asked people to tell me about their best July 4th memory. One guy talked about how his parents would ship him off every summer to spend time with his Aunt at a beach house on the Isle of Palms. On the 4th he'd go to the dock and drop firecrackers on the blue crabs.

I talked about how we'd usually end up at our family cabin. Shortly after I'd eaten my weight in hamburgers and home made root beer I'd try to keep up with the older kids hiking around the cabin property. We'd usually get lost (or at least I was lost) and then make our way back to the cabin before it got too dark. There was also the ritual of checking for ticks when we got home. My parents did a very good job scaring the crap out of me about ticks.

As a tick side note, my older brother had a tick that was found by the barber. These old guys were trying to figure out what to do about the tick. One guy thought that lighter fluid would suffocate the tick, so they squirted the lighter fluid on his head. That didn't work and so they thought about using a cigarette to burn the tick off. My dad astutely decided that the lighter fluid and a lit cigarette were a bad combination. As a second tick aside, I was hiking once on my mission with about 7 other missionaries. We had stopped the van at a random point in the road and decided to reach the top of this peak. It was a great day, only me and this other guy reached the top. On the way home I noticed this bug crawling down the sleeve of my jacket. When I figured out it was a tick I freaked out and started screaming, "TIIIIICK!!!" Everyone freaked out along with me and started pulling off our clothes to get the ticks and squish them. I don't think we found any other ticks. After we all calmed down we got our clothes back on and got back to our day.

This year because the wife and sweet baby J were in Utah the 4th just didn't really feel like the 4th. That's until my Bishop gave me a pity invite to his brother-in-law's birthday party. I rode with his family to the BIL's house in North Charleston, and it was seriously funny. His 4 kids were mostly talking all at once about the most random stuff. I love little kids and how their minds work. A small scuffle broke out in the back seat between the youngest boy and oldest girl. There was poking and pushing and blaming each other for who started it. Again, this takes me WAAAAY back to my great childhood. If I wasn't smiling on the outside, I was grinning ear to ear on the inside. All of the in-laws and cousins were very nice to this stranger who invaded a family gathering. After dinner the kids migrated to the outside and played ball and had a great time. As it got a little darker they pulled out some sparklers and smoke bombs and had a great time. I loved watching the kids running through the smoke and making circles with the sparklers. Again, this took me back to when I was a kid running around our front lawn with a sparkler, writing my name in the air, and making circles. All told, I really appreciate the pity invite. It really saved the holiday from being lonely and gloomy.

As we speak the wife and sweet little baby j are approaching Charleston by plane and not a moment too soon. I was talking to the wife while she was in Atlanta and she mentioned that this was a very hard trip and she would not be traveling solo for a long time. I agree whole heartedly! I'm just not good on my own. Luckily my wife and I have grown together for the past 5 years in such a way that we just need each other. And sweet little baby j is no exception to that growth. It's a sculpture that is organically growing over time and removing any part just seems like your destroying the intent and integrity of the whole. That's my waxing philosophically for the morning. Don't mind me, I miss my wife.

July 4th, 2008

2008-07-04T20:09:00.000-07:00

I guess my previous negative attitude was unfounded, there were no fireworks related admissions to the hospital. In fact, I spoke with a midnight pharmacist who claims to seen 0 fireworks related admissions in the last 10 years. On the adult side of the house apparently they are quite common. So Junior doesn't get to play with fireworks, just Dad and his tipsy friends.

As I was leaving the hospital tonight I had to stop off in the ED to drop something off and heard about the next admission. "I've got an 18 year old male with 4 stab wounds caused by a broken bottle. The first is above his left breast and is fairly deep, the second is near the navel on the left, the third..." That dude was going to have some wicked scars and will probably have a nasty story to tell.

I decided to not try and play golf this morning before work. I woke up and couldn't grip my toothbrush, my left ankle on the outside was extremely sore, and when I bent over my back popped 5 times. I feel fine, but I thought it might be a good idea to give my old body a chance to get me back for all the swinging. I'm not a good golfer, I haven't broken 100 in several years, so if I were to average the golf cost per stroke golf is an extremely cheap sport for me. If I were to try to make a complete accounting of the costs I would have to include 5-10 balls per round (I find a bunch on the course so it's not like I pay for each ball), the guilt of swearing on the course (and much more cursing in my mind), and the 2 gallons of GatorAid I have to drink to keep sort of hydrated.

I was thinking that a good goal for this coming year is to drop my score by 10 strokes and start playing in the 90's. I think with a few more rounds close together and a little driving range work I could easily get in the mid 90's. To go much further I'd need to seriously look at my awful swing and work on the mental aspect of the game. First things first, I'll let you know when I break 100. I'm sure if my older brother heard about this goal he'd think it's like making a goal not to wet your pants. It's an accomplishment, but not something you go around telling people you've mastered. I'll catch you all later.

Independence Day

2008-07-03T19:58:00.000-07:00

I thought I should give ya'll an update on how I'm surviving sans wife and Sweet Baby J. So far the scurvy hasn't set in, but I expect it at any moment. I was telling my coordinator what my plan for food was and he took pity on me and invited me to a sushi place for dinner. Aparently this guy loves Conch Sashimi so when he saw that on the special menu we had to get it. It wasn't the worst Sashimi I've ever had but it wasn't the best either. I'm a little bit of a sushi/sashimi pansy. I love crab, salmon, and shrimp. I can get by with eel but when I start to see tentacles I just can't bring myself to chomp down.

We went to the sushi place after we had played 9 holes at the local municipal course ($8 after 4 pm). We also played 18 holes at a different course this morning. I was completely beat by 2 this afternoon and had to take a nap. That's how hardcore indoorsman roll! I'm thinking about getting to the muni real early tomorrow morning for another 18 before I go to work. The downside is that I'll be at work from 1:30 to 10pm and I'll need to be very sharp the entire shift, no naps allowed.

Tuesday night after work I went to see The Incredible Hulk. It's a decent version of the Hulk story. If you're not a diehard fan you most likely won't enjoy it. If you have some nostalgia for the 1970's version you might like the traveling loner aspect, and many of the nod's in the dialogue. On Saturday, since all of the golf courses will be completely booked, I'm planning to do an all day marathon of movies: Wanted, Wall-E, Kung-Fu Panda, and Hancock. There's this great deal at the movie theater for a refillable large popcorn and large drink. I'm not sure anyone has tested the concept of refilling these over a 12 hour period. This will be terrible for my cholesterol, but it'll keep me off the street and not sitting at home missing my wife and baby.

Stay tuned for the missing finger count after a July 4th weekend at a Children's Hospital. I'm going to go out on a limb and say we'll have 15 major burns and 3 missing digits by the time Monday roles around.

The Bachelor

2008-06-29T19:02:00.000-07:00

This next week the wife and sweet little baby j are going to be in Utah, and I will be living on my own for 6 days. This will take all of the "indoorsman" skills that I've acquired. First I'd like to say that I've wanted to be married with children since I was 21. The past 6 years have been wonderful. A friend at work was joking around at how cool it will be to live the bachelor life for a week. But I have to be completely honest here, I hate the bachelor life. For me that means waking up alone, coming home to an empty place, talking to myself, and staying up WAY too late. Old and married suits me just fine. Again, I wouldn't trade the last 6 years for anything, and I'm looking forward to many, MANY, more to come.

So back to survival mode, sweet little baby j and I made the first trip to Sam's Club for some food rations. While I was living in Philly I basically never cooked for myself....EVER. There were great street vendors that I would eat at 3-4 meals a day. The best part about it was that it was fairly economical as well. Breakfast was $2.50 for a HUGE tin of fresh fruit, lunch was $4 for Mexican, Chinese, Middle Eastern, or a Cheese Steak (it has to be capitalized because after you eat them for 3 years you are the size of a small country), and dinner was whatever I didn't have for lunch or wings at the bar that I lived above. Now that I'm trying to eat from a grocery list I realize that eating out for less than $10/day was pretty freakin' good. At Sam's Club I was sent to get the essentials for survival, Hummus (we have a separate line item in our budget for hummus), Gatorade (living in the South during the summer you have to battle a losing war against dehydration), and Hot Pockets. At Sam's the Hot Pockets come in a package of 17. Think about that for a minute. Who chose a prime number for the final package size? Did someone think that 2 rows of 8 pockets wasn't a good enough deal, so let's just cram 1 more in there?

Then we busted over to Wal-Mart for some other provisions like toilet paper and some cleaning supplies. Any indoorsman knows that being caught without proper amounts of TP is tantamount to being stuck in the Amazon without a knife and compass.

I'm not completely confident that my wife will return to find me huddled up in a corner with a roll of TP in one hand and Hotpocket wrappers strewn around me, while I utter under my breath, "Don't panic...someone will find you."

Seriously I'll be fine for a week. Eight days might kill me, but 6 I can handle. I plan to eat what's left over from the vegetable experiment (I'll post about what I concoct), watch Wall-E, the Incredible Hulk, Wanted, and whatever other man-movie is left, and do some test driving for a BMW motorcycle. She hasn't left yet, and I already miss her tremendously.

A Busy June

2008-06-22T18:47:00.000-07:00

So it's been a busy June and I haven't posted much...okay I'm actually MIA. The last couple weeks I sit down to crank out another sub-par post and then I stop myself because not much has happened. The fear of posted something "worthwhile", on my random blog, in the vast nothingness of the internet is pretty absurd. In fact, it could be pathological. I think I need to see my therapist and talk about this specific chapter in the DSM IV that I so neatly fit into. Okay, I don't really have a therapist. Unless you call the wife my therapist. But she will be shocked to find out that she's been treating me for free these past 5 years.

WORK
There are days at work that I find very interesting and engaging. There are many days that I want to poke my eyes out with a hot poker and beg for money. Let's focus on the good days. For all you casual readers who might not know me well, I work as a pharmacist at a Children's Hospital. I had to work today because I was forced to fire my temp pharmacist. And, because all the little kiddies need their meds someone (read me) had to come into work and dispense all the colorful goodies. Today, early in my shift we found out that one of our Heart Failure kids was going to get his heart transplant today. This is great news for him and the family. Pediatric Heart Transplants are very taxing on the child and the family, but those hardships are definitely a "trade-up" from their current situation. About an hour after we found out they were going to do the transplant I got a phone call asking for this crazy solution the medical team uses to stop the kids heart. Since the OR pharmacy usually handles this I was a little shocked and panicked. I asked the very nice woman on the phone when they would need the med, and of course, they needed it in 30 minutes so they could start the case. Why didn't someone think about this earlier? Isn't there a list of things that have to get done for a very complicated surgery like a heart transplant and someone needs to check every box in order to get started? Do they have such a list and pharmacy is at the bottom of this mythical 10 page list?

Shortly after we solved the mystery solution question (which involved calling in the OR Pharmacist from home) we got a phone call that someone was going to get a liver transplant. And true to form, the transplant team called about an hour later, right before the case was to start, and asked if we had any meds to knock the kid out. At first they said anything would do, but after a little prodding they had some very unique requests, and we had nothing to give them. We asked if they had an anesthesiologist who could go to their secret stash and get what they needed. That's when they told us they weren't going to use one on this case. HOLD THE PHONE! Who starts a very in-depth case like a liver transplant without having someone there with much experience on keeping the kids completely unaware that major organs are being replaced?

How did I get so lucky to have 2 transplants on 1 day? We are a major transplant center in the state, but we only do about 30 transplants in a year, so to do 2 on the same day (from different donors) is at least an impossibility. When it rains it pours, and it pours transplants. As a side note, we are in the middle of a kids bone marrow transplant regimen. So all we were missing was lung and a kidney to get organ Yahtzee. As another side note, everything went fine with the transplants. Our hospital has a very good record with transplants and children. If, God forbid, we ever needed a pediatric transplant, I would feel very comfortable going to my hospital to have it done.

It's been a busy June at work and it will most likely be an even busier July.

HOME
Did you just read the "Work" portion. Very little "Home" section happens when work is like this. Little Baby J is very cute, and is getting cuter every day. He's got these little sumo thighs that make me want to fashion a small Thigh Master to slim and tone.

J is possible at the beginning of his first ear infection, or as we say in the biz Acute Otitis Media (AOM). He's right at one of the cut-offs for age, less than 6 months, or greater than 6 months - 2 years. If you go by the days he's less than 6 months, but I'm not sure the "Watch and Wait" plan will pan out. I'll keep you posted.

Until next time, good night and good luck.

A Wild 6 Minute Ride

2008-06-09T18:55:00.001-07:00

All hail the "random" setting on my iTunes. In the last 6 magical minutes I listened to an intense song by Annie Lennox "Cold", one of the Goldberg variations for keyboard, "Variation 30" performed by Glenn Gould, and "Bye, Bye, Bird" by Sonny Boy Williams.

There was an article I read a while back that talked about someone's innate musical taste. The proposition was that we all have a more hidden preference for music that doesn't break down according to the fictional lines we've set up, Gospel, Pop, Country, Rap, etc. Our preferences are more aligned with beat, complexity or simplicity of the song structure, or even key. There are actually people that you can go to and have a diagnostic listening session. They play a variety of music and you tell them you liked it or you didn't. All the while they are leading you to a "musical diagnostic" very similar to an eye doctor, "Did you like the Rachmaninov more than the U2 or are they the same. 1 or 2. 1 or 2." I really like the idea that someone is just as likely to enjoy a jazz number by John Coltrane as they are to get lost in "Jupiter" from Holst's The Planets. I had this argument once with my grandma on my fathers side. She was very knowledgeable about music, and I guess classically trained. She talked once about taking a music class from Randall Thompson. Crazy. Anyway, this wasn't a heated argument. She was old and wise and I was petulant and in my early teens. So I got served by my grandma. Now that I can form my argument better I think I might have a chance to last more than 3 minutes. I think I would try the argument line, "Grandma, you don't like Pearl Jam because it doesn't contain the complexity that you prefer. Furthermore, you've only ever liked songs that are in the G-minor 7th. I think you would really get into this song by Ben Folds Five, 'Selfless, Cold, and Composed' it's in 12/6 time and has the type of repetition of theme that speaks to you." I can see her chuckle and then change the topic quickly.

The Sledgehammer Workout

2008-06-04T19:23:00.000-07:00

There are some pretty crazy things out there on the internet these days. A little while ago we had someone come in to our hospital because they overdosed on nutmeg. All of the folks over 30 were making jokes about how impossible it would be to ingest too much nutmeg. Meanwhile, all of those under 30 googled "nutmeg high" and found scores of websites talking about the difference between a nutmeg high and pot high, and how not to kill yourself and still maintain a buzz. I took a moment of inner reflection about how naive and not net-savvy I actually am.

A short time later, I was watching TV and saw an interview with the really big guy who starred in "Green Mile". He was talking about how to play the role he had gained a bunch of weight and after the movie rapped his MD told him to lose weight or buy a coffin. He decided to buy a 25 lbs sledgehammer and a tractor tire, and beat the tractor tire 50 times from the right, 50 times from the left, and 50 times over head. This workout seemed too good to be true. I finally had a reason to buy a 25 lbs sledgehammer and a medical reason to use it every day.

I decided to Google it just in case the actor had forgotten a key point, and what I came across was the "Sledgehammer Workout".

I've included a picture of my favorite fellow "athlete". For all of you who think that this is an uncivilized form of exercise I will refer you to the very strong endorsement given by Prince Charles and his new wife.

For those of you who would like to jump on the bandwagon and begin this workout, the sledge is about $30 and then cut down a tree or buy a used tire at a junk yard. They are all one time expenses that are worth the investment.

Not My Strongest Post

2008-05-31T16:47:00.000-07:00

When you live with an English major, or English Master as I sometimes call her in my head, you are bound to get some fair criticism of the things you write. For those of you who have been with me from the beginning, you'll remember that I started blogging partly to become a better writer. And also at the beginning, I was hoping that the wife would read over the blog and give me some pointers on what to do to become a stronger writer. Over the past month or so the wife has laughed at many of the posts and given me random comments about how I have no clue how to use an apostrophe "s". We haven't talked about how many grammar rules I manage to screw up in each post, but I can hear her grumble in the background about how why it's so baffling that I don't know how a possessive is influencing the gerund or something to that effect.

Anyway, the main criticism of the last post was that it was way too "stream of consciousness" and "confusing". That may be because I write my posts late in the evening after I've taken my sleep aid. I'm actually impressed that it's taken months to have a post that was so confusing that it warranted a comment.

After a little internal bristling that I'd been found out to be the blogging hack that I am, I asked for some clarity as to why the last post wasn't my strongest. We had a wonderful little chat, and now I'll be paying more attention to my thesis. I'll also be paying attention to the length of the posts. Did anyone else fall asleep half way through? Sheesh I'm long winded. In the interest of brevity and clarity of thesis, I'll stop here.

The Bottom 98%

2008-05-30T18:41:00.001-07:00

I watched this really interesting documentary this week, "My Kid Could Paint That". One of the special feature's of the documentary was a discussion by Michael Kemmelman, a New York Times art editor, about....well....art. If you have a service like Netflix I'd recommend the DVD just so you could watch the whole discussion about what art is, why it's important, and why it's the beating heart of our culture. The actual movie is interesting as well, and for this reason I'd like to talk about who is included in the bottom 98%.

This is a very exclusive club by the way. Not because there are so few people in it, but because if you're going to exclude someone from a club it's really daring to exclude the best 2% in whatever field of interest the club is intended to collect. If you really want to be exclusionary you would exclude the top 2% in everything. So if you were the absolute best cake maker, we don't want you. If you can spit better than almost everyone else, sorry, this club is not for you. Yeah, that's right! I'm not just excluding intellectuals here. I'm not just talking about that kid in your physics class that laughs at the insanely stupid physics joke your professor cracks whose punch-line is one of the universal constants.

In the spirit of communism, we need to throw out the bourgeoisie and rise as the bottom 98% to claim what is rightfully ours! Is there any irony in banding the bottom 98% with a rallying cry against those bourgeois in our midst? Is it up to the top 10% of the bottom 98% who know how to pick out the bourgeois in a crowd and cast them aside? Is it gauche to use French where it's not really necessary?

As an aside, when we were searching for a name for our son we ran across someone named Gentry. My wife got a huge laugh out of it because she thought it was very presumptuous of the parents. We brainstormed for about 10 minutes and thought that a great name for first son would be Proletariat Maughan. Or if we had twins they could be named Fief and Serf Maughan.

Calling to unite the bottom 98% may be thought of as an admission that I'll never be achieve genius, or greatness in any chosen sphere. I'm comfortable enough with myself to be fine with that admission, although I know I'm going to hear from my mother who will inevitably say something like, "You've always been special to us." I'm also fine with that because that's her role as my mother. And all you who are children of supportive parents know exactly what I'm talking about.

Maybe it's the time of year that I'm stressing out over our budget, and at the same time I'm looking at everyones pay and compensation I'm thinking, "Is this the range I'm looking at for the rest of my career?" Don't get me wrong, as far as pharmacist go I do very well. But again, when I look at the everyone side by side I think to myself, "Here I am stressing out every day. Going in to work early, coming home late. Thinking about working a whole bunch of weekends, and all for what? Just more stress so someone else goes home at a decent time and spends the evening with their family."

I think I'm ready to embrace the bottom 98% because there is a whole lot of company down here. I still feel like I have 1 maybe 2 ideas that could land me in the top 2% but I don't have the courage, energy, or stupidity to stop my daily grind to reach for the next standard of deviation higher than where I'm at right now.

Those who are with me let your voices be heard!!

Blogs are so 2000

2008-05-25T19:49:00.000-07:00

I've just cruised around most of my friends blog posts and was greeted by the same old posts that were there the last time I checked. I understand that ya'll are busy, but I'm trolling for information here. I want to be able to have things to talk about when I see you next, instead of spending half our visit catching up on the last 5 years.

I spoke with my parents today on Skype. We've been doing this for the past 4 months (conveniently the same time sweet little baby J was born). I'm a lover of most things tech, but Skype is amazing. I get a chance to see my parents without having to be on a plane for 4 hours next to a large woman who falls asleep and then farts the entire trip (this was a true but very sad trip). It also allows my parents to see sweet little baby J on a very regular basis. That's a bonus because, as I'm now experiencing, babies grow like little weeds. They are changing shapes, growing huge kissable cheeks and enormous baby thighs, and also marking off a bunch of first's. Such as first sounds other than squeaks, first kisses given by the baby, first temper tantrum, and first differential equation solved (I'll be waiting for that last one for at least 10 years but there has to be SOMETHING to look forward to).

I'm a late comer to the blog-o-sphere, but I'm embracing it wholeheartedly. I'm not interested in gathering up a legion of folks who all agree with what I'm saying or want to engage in lengthy online debate. I'm most interested in being able to sit down with a friend who lives elsewhere and just start talking about what happened last week. All of the preliminary conversation will have already occurred. I want to be able to recognize your kids and hope that in some way they would recognize me too. A side story here is that when my grandfather died a strange woman came up to me and hugged me telling me she was so sorry, but it was great to see me. I was shocked and more than a little disturbed because I had never seen this woman before in my life. I was even more shocked and disturbed when I learned this insane woman was my aunt who lived in Boston. To put this in context my whole extended family was pretty close. We all hung out together on holidays and were all kept up-to-date about what everyone was doing. To find out a funeral that there was an additional aunt that you

know nothing about has apparently scarred me for life.

I'm a big fan of blogs, picture sharing, and video conferencing because they are the tools of the 21st century to keep extending families tight groups. I looked up to my Uncles and Aunts almost as equal role models to my parents. In turn, I'd like to fill that same type of role with my nieces and nephews. I remember that I always waited for my Uncle Kent to come visit so we could play cards together. He very graciously spent a little time with me at each family function he attended. I spoke with a niece recently via Skype and she was upset that she didn't know what to say. I empathized with her because that's exactly how I felt when adults asked me questions about what I was doing. The only solution I can think of to reduce the anxiety is to have more frequent talks. If you know that you'll talk to this person next week or soon then there's less pressure to say something brilliant or have an achievement to declare. You get the chance to just communicate. If there's nothing to report, no biggie, maybe next time there will be.

And for a completely unrelated picture: this is the SC Family at a Serpentarium in, you guessed it, South Carolina.

Honey, what happened at work today?

2008-05-21T19:47:00.001-07:00

This is a very straightforward question right? I remember when I was an intern at Johns Hopkins and I would come home from work pretty exhausted. The wife wasn't working for most of the summer and was basically reading and waiting for me to come home so she would have someone to talk to. So anyway, I would come home and she would want me to give her the rundown of my day. To her dismay, most of my answers were summed up in about a sentance.

"I got to work and spent my day running reports, staring at a computer screen, and going to meetings I only partially understood."

As you can imagine, the sentence or two run down weren't satisfactory. I maintain that a true rundown of the day would've been boring, monotonous, and possibly depressing. Don't get me wrong. I learned a tremendous amount from working at the best hospital in the nation. But only the global view is interesting.

So here I am again, engaged in fairly tedious, monotonous, mundane work. It's satisfying from a global view, but the day-to-day doesn't tell you much. It's like walking outside, looking at a tree, and then asking someone to tell you all about it's day. The tree worked hard doing what it does best, it was successful, and I'm sure its proud of its work, but the impact of what it did won't be seen until a storm comes along.

There was a great presentation today about an Iraqi boy who was treated at the Children's Hospital I work for. I was proud of what we did as a team. Even though I didn't perform the surgery or even prepare the medications, in a global sense I kept the pharmacy running so great stories like that can be told.

Thinking about the title question a little more, there is a more bleak view that someone could take from hearing me describe my job. Almost all of the things that absorb a day are small, medium, or large crisis that must be dealt with right now. No talking or thinking is allowed, only reaction to the issue. And quite bluntly, after dealing with that type of stuff for 9 or 10 hours I really don't want to go over it all again.

To be very clear, my job is going well. When I look back at what I was doing a year ago, we are in a much better place now. When I look to the future, there is a lot of things that can go right and we could be set up for many years of striving for excellence instead of solving the next crisis. To be balanced in my prognostication, there are still weaknesses in my team and plan that need to be ironed out. If I'm not careful we could end up back at square 1. And for full disclosure if that happens we'll be looking for a new place to call home (square 1 is conveniently placed adjacent to the 9th circle of hell). So let's focus on the positive! With enough hard work, prayers, and planning my team will gel and transform into a pharmacy butterfly. They will see why it's important to strive for perfection, to obsess over details, to document the great work that's being done, and to CYA where needed. So let's all raise a glass of Metamucil to toast a bright new hopefully future.

Life on the Ponderosa

2008-05-18T18:04:00.000-07:00

It's been about a week since I last posted anything. I guess I was waiting for that life altering event to happen so I could rush to a computer and blog about it. That didn't happen so what do you do when there isn't anything else to write about? I guess you just write about life on the ponderosa.

If any of you have ever been to Charleston you should be laughing at the idea of me associating it with the ponderosa. Here's a great photo of the July 4th party we went to last year, it's representative of the area.

Yesterday I was golfing with a friend and while I was lining up a shot at the green a deer jumped out onto the course and bounded into the woods on the other side of the fairway. On another hole a fox darted out of some brush and ran across the green. He was completely safe because he was on the green and near the hole. I am so rarely close to that specific location on a golf course there was no danger to the wildlife. When a friend of mine learned that I played golf he asked me what my handicap was. I told him it was my golf swing. I think I stole that from Bob Hope. It's a classic line, so feel free to steal it.

I really love golfing, and I haven't really put my finger on why. When I was growing up it seemed like golf was always around the house, but only one of my brothers really played well. My grandfather learned to play as a kid and was a caddy at the local Country Club. I would hit wiffle balls in the yard around the house. After a while that was boring so I graduated to real balls. Keep in mind that I was young, and not talented. I would stand by the house and hit balls into the backyard. Then I would go out to the yard and hit them back toward the house. One day I hit the perfect iron shot. It's one of those that was so pure that the moment the ball comes away from the club your whole body and mind find it's own singularity. Some people say that that moment of complete unison is the way that the golf gods reward the diligent hacker and hook them to continue their hacking ways. Anyway, I was in my own Nirvana until I noticed that this pure golf shot was headed right where I was aiming...at the house. A cold streak of fear raced through me and I didn't know to hope it would somehow clear the house completely or fall short. My mental indecision probably sent out confusing vibes because the ball came down right into a large glass window. That cold streak of fear decided to do a victory lap around my body. I ran up to the house to see the damage. I had shattered one of the panes on a double paned window. A million little glass pieces to testify to my prowess as a golfer. I did the only thing any red-blooded American boy could do. I told no one and hoped it would go unnoticed. About 15 years later I was talking with my parents and they were telling me how concerned they were that there might be some local kids who were damaging the house. I eventually asked what brought on the concern. They told me that a window in the basement was broken, but something must have scared off the would-be burglar because the second pane was undisturbed. Then it all came back to me and I had to let my secret out before they bought $10,000 worth of home security to ward off nonexistent neighborhood ruffians.

I've heard some retired folks talk about how tired they get of retirement. I can only imagine that they aren't trying hard enough to be a slacker. I am doubly gifted in my ability as a slacker and a weekend golf hacker. I would love to combine my two great loves in retirement and slack off at a local golf club. If I could somehow find a way to overeat on a golf course I would have my trifecta. I have these dreams of joining a golf club and playing in a men's league. Having an excuse to spend 70 hours a week losing golf balls in woods, ponds, and to phantom sand traps. As an aside, while I was golfing yesterday I lost a ball in a sand trap. All of you who know anything of golf courses should know this is impossible. It was 160 yard par 3, it was late in the evening but there was still plenty of light out. I hit a decent 8 iron for the front pin placement and for once my gentle draw was shining through my otherwise snap hook swing. The ball was headed to land on the edge of the green and dribble in place for a birdie when it caught the top of the sand trap. I was an inch away from a birdie attempt. When I got to the sand trap there was no sign of my ball. After a couple of minutes of searching around the green (I checked the cup just to be thorough) we couldn't find any evidence of the ball. I was so desperate to find the ball I actually dug into the sand trap to find the thing just in case it plugged, but I came up empty handed. If you're familiar with the cutting edge of physics you should know something about "String Theory". In simple terms String Theory describes 11 dimensions that all vibrate to create all of what we have observed in physics over the last 500 years. The largest is about a millimeter. I think I have found a 12th dimension that is the exact width of a golf ball. Somewhere in an alternate universe my doppleganger hit an 8 iron shot into a sand trap and found 2 balls waiting for him. And with that I will close, see you next time on the ponderosa.

WARNING: Don't Touch The Clock

2008-05-10T22:44:00.000-07:00

There is a joke in my wife's family about the way her father works with computers. I think several times he has come across some file, didn't know what it did, so he deletes it mistakenly thinking that he has just saved himself from a virus. Unbeknownst to him, he has just deleted a system file that crashes his computer.

The jokes on me this time. I was having problems with the Windows partition on my iMac. For those of you wondering why I installed a piece of junk like Windows on the most beautiful piece of plastic and silicon known to man, I have a slight weakness for computer games and I don't like paying HUGE Mac prices for them. So anyway, I picked up a random virus that completely shut down the Windows partition. As I was trying to fix the problem I decided to change the system clock on my computer so I could access a program on my Mac that would potentially help with the Windows problem. Are you still with me?

After a day or 2 of trying to understand and solve the problem I noticed that a bunch of programs on my Mac OS were acting funny, i.e. not working. Okay, so I started to get really bent out of shape and starting to throw silent glances of disdain at my otherwise wonderful computer. I even contacted Mac Support and got all irritated at the Mac Support guy because what he suggested didn't solve the problem. I started to have cold sweats that I may have picked up some nasty virus on my Mac OS, or that somehow the filthy Windows partition had seeped its electrons over to my virgin Mac OS.

And then out of nowhere at 2 am I remember that I monkeyed with the system clock. I change it back to the right day, and BANG, WHIZ, everything starts to work just right.

Let this serve as a warning for all of you out there who think a little monkeying under the hood can't be a bad thing. Well, it can be and it may lead to a whole bunch of name calling and under-the-breath swearing.

The Big 3-0

2008-05-01T20:13:00.000-07:00

A couple days ago at work I realized that I was just a few days away from my birthday. I was amazed that I really hadn't given it much thought until that point. It was sort of fading in and out of my consciousness, and then I decided to really think about it. I thought about what I could do, or how I could turn the tables on the wife and get her something instead.

And then today as my birthday was floating around between my ears I remembered that this year I turn 30. I've never thought 30 was a big deal. I mean there is no mile stone to look forward to, 16 you drive, 18 your vote, 19 you can buy cigarettes or go on a mission (I chose the latter), 21 you can drink or come home from your mission (I chose the latter), 25 you get a reduced rate on insurance, kicked off your parents insurance, and are able to rent a car. And then your basically done. Nobody cares that you've turned 30 except people who are 40 because they can wistfully remember when they turned 30.

I've already told my wife that I'm compressing the whole, "Oh my gosh I'm turning 30" into a single night of self loathing. Tomorrow I'll be back to the same old oblivious self that still thinks of himself as a very mature 18 year old. And after the reveling in the fact that I'll never be as skinny, fit, or unattached as I once was, I can look at how plump, smarter, and wonderfully attached to 2 of the greatest people ever. I love my wife and can't think of another person who I would want to spend every waking moment with. And there is a new wonderful addition to our family that gives me lopsided smiles and is completely fascinated with ceiling fans. He gives me kisses that are basically him opening his mouth and drooling on my cheek (I always can't wait for the first one when I get home from work).

So there go 30 years of growth and learning. I'm looking forward to another 30 years of growth, learning, excitement, family details, and home-ownership. And another 30 years after that of service. If you stop reading a book after the first third, the chances are the problems won't get worked out, the treasure won't be found, or the world won't be saved. Cheers to another 30 years.

Earth Week On My Own Terms

2008-04-26T18:49:00.000-07:00

I found out that it was earth week as a side note to some other conversation I was having with someone at work. So it snuck up on me this year. That's not surprising considering that Valentine's and my wife's birthday snuck up on me as well (they both worked out okay in case you were wondering). When I became aware I really wanted to do something this year.

Now is a good time to admit I'm a Republican who really enjoyed "An Inconvenient Truth". Not Al Gore's biggest fan, but it was a very good documentary. So I thought we are going to do something this year to reduce our carbon footprint. We're new homeowners so I checked into alternative (solar) energy for the house. Being green sure costs a lot of green. I scrapped the energy independent house idea and decided that a quick, easy, and relatively inexpensive fix would be to replace our light bulbs with energy efficient bulbs. It wasn't exactly quick, or easy, or inexpensive.

I went to Home Depot to get a lawn mower (I'm a new home owner remember) and decided to pick the bulbs up while I was there. Note that the nearest Home Depot is across town. There are 3 light types that you can get: soft, daylight, and real light. There were WAY to many variable to consider so I went with daylight, and I bought enough to change every bulb in the house. The total came to about $80, i.e. not cheap.

I got home and opened a package and loaded the new wonder bulbs in, flipped the switch, and nearly blinded myself. We had soft light, energy inefficient bulbs before and these new ones were exactly like having true daylight in the house. It was freaky, headache inducing, and a real problem. So I had to truck myself back across town to take another guess at what type of bulb to buy this time. Again I struggled with the variables but decided if we were used to soft light, then that was what we would continue with.

They work like a charm and I don't have as much green guilt about my home. I'm sure our energy bill will go down, and we'll recoup the $80 investment over the next 12 months. For all those folks out there who haven't made the switch, I'd like to urge you to take the first step. Here's my informal, non-binding list of green projects to embark on.

1. Change to energy efficient bulbs (check)

2. Replace the car with a vehicle that has at least double to fuel efficiency (won't be replacing the car until it actually dies)

3. Solar panels on the roof.

4. Landscaping my yard with local types of plants that thrive on natural water supply.

5. Write a letter to my Congressman expressing to them that the environment is a priority for me, their very mainstream constituent.

Ferber Meets Gerber

2008-04-23T18:59:00.000-07:00

Hey there Mr. Ferber (if that's your real name)! I just wanted to tell you that your training of small children works. Before we had our sweet little baby J, I wasn't sure how much soul or compassion I had left. I work as a pharmacist in a Children's Hospital, and more specifically I spent a bunch of time on an Oncology unit. The first several months I worked there it was really difficult to listen to children in pain or distress for 8 hours at a go. I just kept telling myself that I was there to do my best for the kids and hope that what I was doing in some way was easing pain, instead of causing it. After a while I guess a flip switched in my brain and I didn't really think about the crying anymore. The job is fairly stressful all by itself, so it was probably best to leave the emotional baggage behind. But then I had this little baby of my own, and his crying really sent me into a swirl of emotion. It was unbelievable for a couple reasons: 1) that he was right there in my arms crying, 2) I might have some power to keep him from crying, 3) life was tremendously better when he was not crying, and 4) my lovely wife was so much better when he wasn't crying.

So along came this idea that in order for my sweet little baby J to grow and learn we might have to LET HIM CRY?!?

That in order for him to sleep at long stretches and give us back some sanity we would need to leave our little baby J in a crib....all by himself.....crying.....in the hopes that at any moment he would fall asleep. The first night seemed cruel by any standard. He was pretty inconsolable. He cried like there was a pestering bully in the shadows, twisting his arm and telling him to give up his favorite cookie. I had to tell myself that there was no one in there pinching his leg because I could see in the dark, thanks to some high tech night vision baby monitor. And then SILENCE. It was like he was flying through the sky and then his parachute opened. It was so sudden I had to check the monitor to see if I could see signs of life, had he suddenly lost his airway and he needed me to jump to his rescue. He didn't even stir. I had to act quick, but judiciously. I couldn't break down the door and possible give up on the eve of triumph. I also couldn't bare the thought that my heartlessness had caused him to cry himself to death. So I went on a commando raid. I opened the door silently and crawled across the floor up next to his crib to listen for his shallow baby breath. He was still alive, and it was now advantage Dad.

The rest of the night was cake. The next day we slept like kings. Him in his swinging chair and me on the couch. After some food and playing he was starting to look like a nap was ensuing. So I thought, "Here we go back to the crib for a nap." But he wouldn't have it. He cried and refused to be consoled. I was resolute, until I went into the room and he was consoled. He stopped crying and looked up at me. His voice was still quivering, he pleaded with his sad eyes. I couldn't take it anymore. My sweet little baby J needed me, he needed his daddy. Advantage baby J.

It was night again and it was time for a gut check. Was I prepared to have this kid sleep in our bed forever? Was I prepared to be the parent on "Super Nanny" that tells the camera, "I just can't say no to my kid. When he gives me the look, I just have to give him anything he's asking for." Some sincere, earnest prayers were said and we went into the routine. I put him down, and he started the wretched crying. The game plan says you go in at 10 minutes and then 15 minutes. I was getting ready to walk in at the 15 minute mark, standing by the door looking at a clock waiting for the silent buzzer to tell me to save my sweet little baby J, and then silence. Was this another trick, was he just taking a long breath the start in on a squeal-scream? No, it was just silence. Blissful "I'm walking in a mountain meadow surrounded by wildflowers" type of silence. The rest of the night was clockwork goodness. Set-Game-Match --- Dad.

Our sweet little baby J is an amazing little kid. He sleeps for long naps just like the books tell you babies do. He eats vigorously just like the books tell you babies do. He's stretching out his feeding at times throughout the day just like the yada, yada, yada. I guess I needed to look at what I felt like my Achilles parent heel was, being calloused to a babies cry, and get through it because my sweet little baby J needed me to. He needed me to be strong in this thing, so I could help him be strong in other things.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not stupid enough to think that I've just conquered all and parenting will be all down hill from here. That would be a special brand of stupid that can only be found at WalMart. I know there are mountains of things to come, but I'm going to relish in the first parent thing that was a success.

Shout Out

2008-04-16T19:24:00.000-07:00

In philly there was a radio station that every night, afternoon, or whenever would take callers who wanted to give a "shout-out" to their friends. For those uninitiated few who have no idea what I'm talking about let me give you a few examples of how the shout out works.

"I'd like to give a shout out to my rockin' cousins Aly and Heather! They read the blog and posted a comment, and are always so fun to hang out with. Rock on rockin' cousins!"

"I'd like to give a shout out to my amazing mother-in-law who gave me some wicked awesome CD's and chocolate covered blueberries and pomegranate seeds for my birthday. Perfect selection for gifts!"

"Here's a shout out for Tom Jones! There's always room in this world for oversung, strangely lyric'd songs. Keep belting those odd tunes Mr. Tight Pants!"

"My shout out goes to my wife who is taking the baby right now because the baby is rejecting his daddy. I knew our secret agreement that he would fall asleep whenever I picked him up wouldn't last forever."

"This shout out goes to my fellow co-workers! Keep sticking it to the man, which means that you make my job 100 times harder than it already is because I represent the man!"

Get the idea? Post some shout out comments and you might make it into future posts.