whenever someone gets snarky with me about being a macintosh fanboy i like to ask if they can think of an mac euphemism equivalent to “blue screen” or “red ring of death”, euphemisms that seem to be an accepted part of life while living in the world of microsoft.

so i’ll pay my “job’s tax” gladly for a product that works day after day without the thrill of blue screens or red rings of death…

so lou dobbs is in trouble for trying to cast doubt on president obama’s citizenship. lou hasn’t been right about much before so i’m a bit perplexed why anyone would pay any attention to this story, but there appear to be a group of folks out there calling for cnn to let lou go.

a reasonable argument against this position has been put out there, and that is if you don’t like lou dobbs, don’t watch and poor ratings will ultimately be his demise. no need to clamor for anyone to fire him.

during the news tonight while i was contemplating why i hadn’t voted against the news with my remote, i discovered the final straw in the commercials. obviously real men don’t watch the news because all the commercials i saw were for erectile dysfunction pills and home security systems.

but its advertising genius, who could get it up worrying about these scary people breaking in to your house any moment?

the best response i got after commenting on my loud house was from a friend who observed the same behaviors in himself and his family.

he however was more ingenious and went to radio shack to buy a digital and an analog decibel meter and placed them out in the open for everyone to see and use. he said after the “scientific evidence” was presented, there was a notable reduction in volume.

care to guess where i’m going after work today?

cutting down the tree in my front yard is even more impressive in light of my father’s response after telling him what i was doing:

We had two Bradford pear trees in the backyard at White Road. They were the tree to buy in those days. I also grew to hate them, especially in the fall when they dropped billions of leaves that were like hard cardboard. The last time I fell a 40′ tree was when I was 30 and we lived on Ashland, in Sycamore Hills (not Overland). It was a 1/2 dead apple tree. I ended up in the emergency room and I still have no sensation in the finger I cut, or should I say mangled. Good luck with your tree. As for me, anything living and 40′ tall is staying right where it is. I won’t tell you about the chain saw incident at our house in Texas before I came to Germany. It backlashed into my face (the engine part, not the saw part), ruined my safety goggles (good thing I had them on) and gave me nice bump on the head. The chain saw was also ruined. We had a big (huge) branch break off a tree in the wind in the back yard while I was home last time. I cut it all up with a bow saw and not a chain saw. Interestingly, it was the same bow saw I used to shred my finger when I was 30. We Feldt’s ain’t got no common sense.

everyone in my house is loud. not a little loud, but quite loud.

me, i love quiet (except if i have itunes working its way randomly through my 30.2 days worth of music).

my wife is losing her hearing (although she is reluctant to admit it) so she talks at about twice the normal volume.

my son is hyper excitable and could run and yell all day long and often times does.

my daughter likes to emulate her brother and is quite good at holding on to a temper tantrum. all this at that distinct young girl pitch that is capable of killing brain cells.

all my attempts to lower the ambient volume of the household have failed and so i’ve resorted to modeling the behavior by talking more and more quietly.

pretty soon you’ll have to lip read anything i say because there will be no sound emitting from my mouth, not that it would matter around my house because even at full volume no one could hear anything i was saying…

i cut down a thirty foot bradford pear in my front yard this afternoon.

not impressed? go find a thirty foot tall, thirty foot wide tree in your yard and see how long it takes you to cut it down.

i’ll certainly pay professionals whatever price they ask the next time i need an equally large tree removed and i can no longer deny that a forty year old body is not the same as a twenty year old body…

remember yesterday when i said i was writing a treatise? well, it happened to be on health care and my primary complaint was on the absence of a serious discussion about how best to fix what is obviously a broken system.

then tonight with the tele on in the background and i hear this:

i thought for sure i was watching comedy central but this turns out to be a real life political action committee spot. so much for elevating the discourse…

i initially started writing another post for today but noticed it had grown past three hundred words and i wasn’t even close to finishing my thought.

for those of you who have been long time readers may have noticed my affinity for brevity so i tabled that thought in favor of this:

if only it had occurred to me that others might enjoy expressing their thoughts in 140 characters or less, i would have invented twitter, sold it to the highest bidder and would now be writing on my progress to visit all the sites on the unesco world heritage list.

ethan was telling me about a cut he got earlier in the day. i asked if it went deep. he said:

“no, just to the layer of chalk under my skin”.

the second set of pictures from camp:

ethan
sewer rats
in the dining hall
bungy trampoline

logan
friends-arazzi
playing tetherball
bungy trampoline

the end
first night home, washed and in their own bed