My new plans for mowing the lawn

A few days ago, I saw this video.

If any of you know me at all, you know how much I hate mowing the lawn. Figuring out how to get this to work is my new mission in life.

My New Nickname

My daughter just gave me a new nickname.

The other evening, I was giving her a hug goodnight and said, "I love you, [INSERT DAUGHTER'S NAME]."

Her head was perched on my shoulder and one of her hands was playing with the hair above my neck when she replied, "I nuv you ... Prince Phinnup."

She still has difficulty saying her "L" sounds, so I'm now Prince Phillip from Sleeping Beauty.

The next day, I got a repeat of the same thing, so it is now official.

Although, the motivation for this might have come because she was wearing her Sleeping Beauty nightgown.

I would watch an entire movie like this ...

This video is pretty much the best preview/trailer I've ever seen, possibly because it crams every Oscar-winning movie into one.

Boy Crazy

My daughter has made no secret about her interest in boys.

She's only 2 years old.

Does anyone else have a numbing sense of anxiety about those last two sentences? Maybe that only happens to the father (or mother) of the boy crazy 2-year-old. I'm guessing everyone else is too busy laughing at our predicament to feel any fear.

Exhibit A: In my church, 12 year old boys pass the Sacrament to the congregation. For a while now, she has been interested in watching them and has even tried to chat some of them up while they line up next to our pew.

Exhibit B: This one just happened yesterday. My daughter was in the nursery during the last part of church. There was a new little boy in the group, and she immediately latched onto him, following him around, playing with him, giving him hugs, etc. The nursery leaders even heard her tell him, "You're my prince and I'm so happy!"

Obviously, I can't lock my daughter up in the basement. I have a plan in place to keep the boys at bay, but I didn't even consider my own daughter's boy craziness. Any advice on how to stifle this (at least until she's the appropriate age)?

How To Article of the Week

This week: How to Make a Visual Baby Monitor with Skype

How awesome would this be?

Seriously.

The only problem is that I'd have to run a computer in the baby room for this to work. Minor catch, but in theory, I would have loved this.

Jaw Dropping

Technically, I play the piano, but after watching the video of this guy flying through La Campanella by Liszt, I'm ready to admit I've been lying because if this is what playing the piano really is, I kidding myself.



It doesn't get really insane until around 1:36-ish, and it gets insane at around 2:38. And the ending blew my mind.

I never thought I'd say this, but ...

I have now attended a baby shower.

And I almost got to host it too.

My wife was planning a baby shower for a girl in our neighborhood, and at the last minute got really sick. So, I packed up all her supplies and took them to the location. Then I made a feeble attempt to decorate the room to the specifications of my wife's internal vision.

Right before it started, my wife was feeling well enough that she wanted to attend. Needless to say, I was relieved. I don't know what goes on during baby showers, so I wasn't looking forward to trying to host it.

I'm just glad my wife had tasteful plans for activities. The only thing they did was chat, eat and make a couple custom story books for the baby.

I've heard rumors of some pretty interesting baby shower activities, and I can't imagine subjecting a bunch of women to guess what kind of candy bar has been melted to the inside of a diaper in the microwave.

Do people actually do this at baby showers? It makes me wonder what else I'm missing.

How To Article of the Week

This week: How to Become a Civil War Drummer (Re Enacting)

Sign me up!

I've been listening to this song almost constantly

This video makes me laugh, and I think I've decided that I like the group who made it (Vampire Weekend).

I'm not sure, though, if it was the video that made me like the song more than I would have if I had just heard it on it's own.

Battle of the Sexes

When I was single and in college, a bunch of people got together to play Battle of the Sexes.

It's a game where the guys are on one team and the girls are on another. Then the guys have to answer questions that only girls typically know and girls have to answer guy-type questions.

Since the game was hosted in the apartment of the girl I liked (i.e. my wife), I felt some extra pressure to do well at the game. My idiot brain told me this would make me appear more sensitive and would show her how much we potentially had in common.

(Tangent)
Fortunately, she never got the memo that girls are supposed to like bad boys who wear leather jackets and ride motorcycles.

If she had, my plan would have been doomed.
(End Tangent)

We were well into the game, when it was the guys' turn to answer a question. By this point, the stress and adrenaline had turned me into one of those nervous little dogs who shake uncontrollably all the time.

With my senses on high alert and my body on some kind of natural caffeine high, the girls asked the following question:

"What were the names of the three fairies in Sleeping Beauty?"

I blurted out the answer without thinking of the repercussions it would have on my social life:

"Flora, Fauna and Merryweather!"



In unison and in slow motion, the entire room turned toward me and gave me one of these:



The moral? Some things don't make you look sensitive and approachable. They just make you look odd and a little unbalanced.

How To Article of the Week

This week: How to Get Super Glue Off Skin

I may need to frame this and put it on the wall in my house. I always end up getting more super glue all over me than I ever do on the thing I'm trying to glue.

My Blog Email

I tend to be a little paranoid. That's why you don't see pictures of my little girl plastered all over this blog. That's also why I don't use her name. I know it's probably more likely to have a plane land on my house than for something to happen, but I can't get over the sick feeling of thinking about if something did happen and it was because of this blog.

So, I've resisted putting my personal email address on here, and now I don't have to. I'm officially moving up in the world, graduating as it were from blog preschool. This means I now have an official email address to go along with this blog. Unfortunately, my blog name was already taken, so I have a close second over on my sidebar. If anyone wants to give me any feedback or tell me how amazingly funny I am, or even if you want to give me money just for breathing, feel free to use it.

Or don't. I won't be offended. I just figure it was time I got one.

And don't mind the weirdness of the format. I don't like spammers, and I hope that this will deter some of their automated email finders from realizing it's an email address.

Church Geeks

For the Mormons out there, it was General Conference last weekend. That is where we all have a bunch more meetings and listen to our prophet.

(Tangent)
I don't want to get all sappy, but I had an eye opening experience last weekend. I was blown away by some insight into my personal life, which happened because I was sitting and listening to the speakers. It clarified things for me and I'm amazed how powerful it was.

I guess that's what happens when you're in the right place at the right time, doing what you should be doing.
(End Tangent)

Last weekend, also meant it was time for our third semi-annual Conference Jeopardy.

My brother and his family were in town, so the teams were huge, and let's just say everyone got really passionate about their point totals. I guess they don't trust my math skills (which is probably good because I don't trust them either).

I also tried my hand at a trophy again, but this time I tried to make it a little more "humanoid" shaped (adding a second arm), And I tried to make a base so it would stand up on its own.

Since my creativity has taken an early vacation this year, I went with the Angel Moroni again. Here it is. To compare to the real thing and to my sad attempt in October, you'll have to click the above link (or you can click here).

I actually digested a huge gust of wind on my way to work.

Obviously, this isn't exactly how women act when they get together, but it still made me turn blue from laughing so hard.

(Sensitive ears may want to stop before 3:58.)

This is thanks to Mindi.

Yet Another Reason to Love the Federal Government

One prominent feature on this blog has been how I get mistaken for a woman on the phone (i.e. here and here).

Yesterday, I called the IRS with a question about our taxes.

(Tangent)
I keep putting them off, but I'm determined that this year, I won't end up filing them on April 15 at 9 p.m.
(End Tangent)

After the slow death of the phone queue and the inability of the automated system to understand anything I told it ...

(Tangent)
Automated Phone Thingy: Please say and spell your first name.

Me: Nathan. N-A-T-H-A-N.

Automated Phone Thingy: I'm sorry. I'm having trouble understanding you.

Me: Nathan. N-A-T-

Automated Phone Thingy: Let's just skip that question. (I kid you not. That is what it finally told me. I've never had a phone system give up on me so quickly before. Usually it's the other way around.)
(End Tangent)

... I'm sure the guy who finally came on the line was about as thrilled to be talking to me as I was to be talking to him.

Here's how the conversation went down:

Bored Sounding Federal Employee: May I have your name?

Me: Sure. It's Nathan. N-A-T-H-A-N. (See how well the automated phone system trained me?)

Bored Sounding Federal Employee: Are you Nathan?

Me: Yes.

Bored Sounding Federal Employee: You don't sound like a Nathan.

Me: ... Uh ... Well ... I am.

I see some sensitivity training in that guy's future, especially since my call may have been "recorded for quality assurance."

Does YOUR Internet look like this?

According to this video, the future is now!

How To Article of the Week

This week: How to Make Chewing Gum

Just in case you like to make things harder than they need to be (i.e. going through all of this instead of just heading down to the grocery store).

My New Nickname

Yesterday, I finally got some pants altered to fit my stick-figure body. My wife lovingly bought them for me for Christmas, and I have only now managed to drag myself into the store to get them fitted.

(Evidently, a 30 waist is still too big.)

When the store called for a tailor, I was greeted by a pleasant, older lady who proceeded to graffiti my pants with her little fabric chalk thingy.

We chatted about how drastically skinny I was, and she assured me that it wasn't a big deal because she had a son just like me.

She also brought a few clips with her to help manage all the excess folds of soon-to-be useless fabric.

Apparently she underestimated how many she would need because she suddenly exclaimed: "Oh ... I need another clip. Can I get another clip for the tush-less wonder over here?"

Yep. The tush-less wonder. This may sound harsh, but it was the funniest thing I've heard all week. It was so funny, that I forgot to feel uncomfortable about having some strange woman feeling me up a little to get the measurements right on my pants.