the past week its been raining on and off so i’ve been kept from mountain biking in the woods and forced to work out at the gym.

while watching my fellow exercise enthusiasts i’ve decided i am very thankful not to be single but if i were, the gym is certainly a place you can learn a lot about some one (unfortunately mostly bad).

you don’t even need to be intuitive to know that the sacha baron cohen look alike with his shorts pulled up too high, groaning every few seconds like a female tennis pro in a drawn out rally on the elliptical runner is best avoided.

and the short, tiny asian girl who mocks the standard inclined curl by doing leg raises at the same time is certainly worth approaching, but only with extreme courtesy and caution…

i’ve decided to take comfort in my family’s complete lack of emergency preparedness by considering how little enthusiasm i have for persevering with the remaining survivalists and cockroaches…

over the last year and our children have attended baptist, jewish and methodist preschools, so its fair to say they have a unique perspective on god.

however, i’m certain none of these schools taught logan the song she was singing last night:

god is good, god is great, god is carving out our face…

considering recent news, it’s as if the definition of “humanity” was conceived by the same ad agency who gave fox news “fair and balanced”…

hu·man·i·ty
the quality or state of being humane

hu·mane
marked by compassion, sympathy, or consideration for humans or animals

first entry in the new gallery ethan’s art portolio.

ethan looses his first tooth.

logan and eric’s mom building a projecto.

one of the nice things about staying with other people is being exposed to new things.

apparently the big find from staying at our house is the toilet paper. we have had more people tell us they have enjoyed our toilet paper than anything else i can think of.

but you don’t have to come stay for a visit to do your back side a favor, just pick up a few rolls of cottonelle on your next trip to market.

a metaphor of sorts on parenting…

http://www.break.com/index/little-girl-tosses-back-foul-ball.html

originally this was a youtube embedded video but of course the mlb had to go and piss all over that and demand it be taken down since it was theirs…

after three long weeks the daily show with jon stewart has returned from holiday.

besides being a huge fan of the show it has also become a litmus test for me.

i will ask people i’ve recently met if they have seen such and such a segment on the show.

if they provide the punch line and praise the show i know i have met an enlightened individual with a good sense of humor.

if they express at least some positive familiarity with the show i give them credit for being reasonable.

if they either haven’t heard of jon stewart or remark negatively then i figure i have a ditto head on my hands and slow down my speech real slow so they can follow.

my kids (with maybe a little help from me) built model rockets. bet you can guess who painted each.

4 of 5 launches were text book perfect with the only failure coming from a chute that failed to deploy, and even then, the well crafted rocket landed without damage.

i can’t wait to see what i get to help them with next…

my experiences don’t represent a scientific study of any kind, but given the number of people i know with september birthdays i feel pretty comfortable saying if we want to control population growth in the u.s. we need more recreation options or other diversions available in december…

a relative of mine in texas sent along this story of a trip to the dentists office:

a radio was playing in the background at the dentist’s office. i was alone with the dentist’s assistant. they had an emergency broadcast test on the radio. the assistant said that she was disappointed it was just a test announcement and not an announcement that obama had been killed. obama is apparently not what her grandfathers had fought for. even she then realized that her remarks were untoward. she asked if they were bad and if I was offended. i said they were indeed bad, but I wasn’t offended. i’ll be looking for a new dentist. they have too much god crap in that office anyway…

i could spend the rest of the year commenting on this story, but i’ll leave it at this: i wish these god loving, obama hating “real americans” could think far enough ahead to realize that joe biden becomes president if obama dies, not rush limbaugh…

obama gave a touching shout out to ted kennedy and his family.

a douche bag representative from south carolina interrupted the speech with a shout out that proves that state’s wall of shame is growing with its elected officials by the day.

other than that it sounded a lot more like dressing up a pig than real health care reform.

i’ll have to get the republican take so i can be properly informed on how seditious it was…