I think Isaac may have watched to much TV

I walked through the kitchen the other day, and Isaac was sitting next to a cup with a dinosaur on it. He went through the following discussion with himself.

"If you see a dinosaur, say dinosaur."
"I see a dinosaur."
"You see a dinosaur? Where?"
"Right! There's the dinosaur."

He also somtimes yells for help... in spanish.
"¡Ayúdeme!"

How to be a Man... Based on The Cosby Show

Step 1. Wear sweet sweaters
Step 2. Use great facial expressions and hand gestures
Step 3. Listen to your wife

That seems to be the primary things. I don't know what else there could be.

Are we a Christian Nation?

This seemed to be a bit of a question on the world wide web today. President Obama made a comment in a speech that we are not a Christian nation. Also today, Vermont voted to legalize homosexual marriage. Also this weekend, portions of an explicit movie was shown at the University of Maryland in the name of free speech. I look around at the people in my workplace, in my neighborhood, and on TV. I look at the divorce rate. I look at the abundance of ethics probes and greed. If this is what a Christian nation looks like, then yipes. So I think that the President is correct. Our nation is not a Christian nation. I wish it was, but I think that we will not be in a true Christian nation until the end times. This is not to say that we shouldn't try and influence our nation to have more Christian values. We should definitely desire for our nation to have stronger Christian values. Thoughts?

Dear Verizon,

I am sure your Fios service is very good. I appreciate your sincerely desiring me to switch from my cable provider to you. I am sure you want me to only have the best service possible for my money. In regards to your sending me the same offer via the United States Postal Service, I think it would be a better use of your money to not send quite so many copies. I know that the post service has been struggling, and I appreciate your trying to help them employ more postmen. Your advertising strategy does not make much sense to me.
1. If I do not accept an offer sent to me on Monday, then I will probably not accept an offer sent on Wednesday. Also, I will probably still not accept the offer the following week. Maybe if you waited a few months you would have more luck.
2. You must think I have cable, or you would not care about advertising to me so much. You would be correct. As you may have already figured out, this means that I often see your TV commercials giving me the same offer.
3. You probably think I have internet as well. You would again be correct. Which means I have already seen your web advertisment offering me the same deal.

In light of this, I think you might reconsider your frequency in which you mail advertisements. You could probably offer a better deal on Fios if you did. Also, you might save some trees.

Sometimes when I get really bored...

I play this game Hedgehog Launch. Truthfully I have not played in a while. The object of the game is to build a slingshot that is able to launch a hedgehog onto space. For some reason I find the concept of this to be amusing.

2 more days until the Race To Register 10K. I would like to break the 1 hour mark. I think that I will, and will finish the race in ~58 minutes. Then I will sign up for the Marine Corps Marathon.AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHhhh!!!!!
Sometimes I wonder what I could possibly be thinking in signing up for a marathon, but once I pay for it I am commited. Oh... I still have all of my Elite Eight teams in the tournament.

Confirmation of unluckiness...

I am so unlucky, that the day after I blog about being unlucky I immediately beat my wife at cards and have the best two days of a March Madness bracket ever for me. I mean come on... I don't even get to say that I blogged correctly about it. (shaking head)

Not that anyone cares...

So far I have gotten 10 out of 12 NCAA picks correct. Depending on how the rest of the day goes, this might be my best NCAA tournament day in my whole life. Since I live in metro DC... Go Terrapins!

I am one of the unluckiest card players ever

Amanda and I often play cards before bed. More often than not she wins when I give her just the card she needs. Just now I put a card down and she says, "I was just thinking about that card." She wins probably 70% of the time. Also, once when I was in high school I played poker with friends and was the ONLY one to lose money. Mind you I only lost like $20, but still this is the story of my life. I can go months and not get a good hand. I lost again tonight at Gin Rummy. Oh well. Cards anyone?

I have won bingo multiple times on cruise ships. Also, I have been known to win raffles at work sometimes. For me though it is either win big or get nothing. I never win a little raffle. I am also terrible at picking winners of games. I put in a bracket for fun for march madness just to see how I do. I picked Louisville to win. Sorry Cardinal fans... you now have 0f a championship.

So I am unlucky at cards and picking games. Sign me up for Vegas... Or maybe a better bet is charity bingo.

Number days

As we are about to have our second Friday the 13th of the year followed by pi day, I decided to celebrate another day later this year.

My idea was to celebrate "Largest Prime of the Year Day". Unfortunately it turned out this follows on none other than 12/31. 1231 is a prime. Clearly I couldn't pick that day. People will think I am a big nerd for celebrating that instead of New Years Eve. And the smallest prime is clearly the next day 1/1 (11). So I have decided this year to celebrate "Largest Prime that is not the Eve of a National Holiday Day". Turns out this falls on 12/29.

To all of you who are paraskavedekatriaphobic. I wish you well tomorrow. You should stay in bed.

Some more great odd news headlines

It's a sad state of affairs.
Distracted kindergarteners turn to gambling
I would love some teacher's opinions on this. Is this a problem in your classrooms? I could believe a headline that was about distracted college students gamble online in class.

Look out if you drive a green Ford Escort.
Ore. arsonist targets 1990s green Ford Escorts
I knew a guy who drove a red escort in high school. If this ever starts happening to red escorts, then I think I could pinpont the culprit.

Leave God a message at his Dutch answering service
Can you leave messages in English?

Man robs gas station, then tells clerk he's sorry
Does this count as repentance?

Mouthwash???

I am currently stuck in the San Diego airport awaiting a flight that will leave in approximately 7 hours. Luckily, they have free wifi. Yesterday i got to go on a pleasant jog starting in downtown and going a little ways around they bay (I think it is a bay). The most interesting part of my trip happened just a little bit ago. I went into the restroom to change from my work clothes. I stepped into a handicapped stall (because it is big enough to change in). There on the back of the toilet, much to my surprise, was a small bottle of mouthwash. I suppose if I had a bottle of mouthwash and I put in on back of a toilet in a public location, I would probably leave it there too. I just can not figure out why someone would leave it there, or have it out. Oh well. I have 7 more hours to wonder about it.

In Preparation for this weekends race...

I just ate a cup of ice cream. George Washington Birthday 10K this weekend. Trip to California and back before Saturday. I am going to predict a 10K finish of 55 minutes. I believe that is a little better than 10 minutes per mile. So I may not be able to pull it off. Any guesses from someone else?

Still reading Ezekiel. Also started rereading 1 Samuel. Let's just say Ezekiel is not the easiest book of the Bible.

Tomorrow I commute all the way to Stafford. The 15 minute commute will be very nice relative to the 70 minute commute I normally have. I feel more relaxed just thinking about it.

Umm... About Yesterday's post

I think it may convince me to not post any more late night blogs. It seems that I can just go on and on after 11. Also, I am not sure I will use any more blog ideas that I come up with on a run. I may stick to what I know best. Of course people may stop reading when every post is on booklights. By the way, has anyone ever bought a book light only to find out when the batteries eventually die that to replace them is actually very expensive. It turns out it is often easier to just buy new ones.

OK.... I admit it

Confession of the evening: I like to read the odd news headlines. I don't really care about the articles. The headlines are interesting enough. For instance...
1. Lost Thief Holes Up In Bank Lavatory
And why wouldn't he?
2. Its a Catastrophe for the Apostrophe in Britain
Somebody actually wrote this article.
3. Tortoise Thieves make Quick Getaway
Very clever...

Anyways, every day at lunch I scroll over the odd news headlines just to see what is there.

No running today. Definitely tomorrow. I plan on getting signed up to use my work gym. Also, we bought a treadmill off of Craigslist. Have I mentioned we are on Craigslist all the time. Some time ago Amanda made our home page the Craigslist Free Page. People put some great stuff on their too. I like looking at them almost as much as odd news headlines. I really like it when they are completely random like "2 Free Spider Monkeys" (these are always taken off quickly because I believe they are aginst the rules of Craigslist) or tonight we have a "egg cartons!" (clearly, an appropriate use of an exclamation point). The other day I saw a free firewood posting. I opened it up and the first sentence actually says, "You chop down." So wouldn't that just be a free tree...

Goodnight.

I love book lights

Well... At least I collect a lot of them. Actually I have found that in some cases it is cheaper to buy a new book light than it is to buy a battery. So I have managed to buy somewhere around 10 of them. Of course I can only find about two at once, but I know they are out there. My new favorite one is my newest one. It is good because it uses a standard battery (2 AAA's). What I really like about it is that I can turn it on to help me get to a light to help me get ready in the morning. Then I go to turn it back on so I can find the stairs and it does not turn on. It always does this when I need it the most. This ability to fail when I need it the most makes it my favorite. I like the exercise in probability. Oh well.

If anyone has any topics they would like me to talk about let me know. Otherwise, next week I might blog about my least favorite book light.

How to keep a nose warm?

This is what I need to know.

Stats for second run:
19 degrees and clear starry skys
Feels like 19 degrees
31 minutes 25 seconds
Longer run too
Felt better than first run
Hips stiff at first
loosened up after a few hundred yards
nose so cold that it was running ice cubes

On a different note, I finished the book of Numbers in my quest to read through the Bible this year. I am trying to decide where to go next. I am having trouble picking a next book of the Bible to concentrate on getting through. I considered something easy like Revelation, but decided to hold that off until I need a little light reading. I have read 1 and 2 Samuel and 1 and 2 Kings more than any other books so not them yet. I am not sure of the best way to read Psalms yet, so it will wait. Acts is good but we just finished it at XFold. Proverbs should be read one a day for a month, and clearly the next best month to start that is March as there are 31 days. So I think I will read one of the prophets. Not Daniel though, I have read Daniel a bunch too. Will let you know which one it turns out to be. Isaiah is currently sounding good, or maybe Ezekiel. I think I will need to skim over a chapter in "How to Read the Bible for All Its Worth" for tips on how to best read Psalms. I would like to get into Psalms soon, and I seem to recall the book providing good advice for it.

The Rightful Place of Science

Today was a historic day. People who marched on Washington with Dr. King came and watched President Obama take the oath of office. There were several interesting things in the speech. The thing that has caused me the most thought since the speech was the following quote. "Science will take its rightful place." I believe this is pretty close.

So the question is what is the rightful place of science. First I suppose we would need to define what it means by rightful place. The rightful place of stockings are over the fireplace. I understand that this quote is likely referring to the comparison of science to religion or moral beliefs likely in regards to items like stem cell research though I suppose it could also be talking about global warming as well. So he is using the rightful place as an ordering. So I have been pondering, what else gets ordered with science. Maybe we order the group of items: science, morals, democracy, freedom of speech, ... I am not really sure what would get ordered with this. If it is really science vs moral beliefs then what is the rightful place of science? It seems to me that science clearly should come after moral beliefs. I am not sure how there could be any other way. Ok so really what the truth is that everyone would say that science comes behind moral values. Right? What people really differ in is the definition of moral values. Thoughts?

How to use a defroster?

Answer:
I have no idea.

Being from below the tropic line I rarely had to deal with fogging windows in the cold because of using the heater. Being from Florida I definitely know how to use windshield wipers. I know how to recognize turn signals that are left on indefinitely. I can also use the air conditioning just fine. The defrosting mechanism for the windshield is next to impossible for me to figure out. I can get it to defrost, but then I tend to get cold. I switch back to heat and the windows fog up again. My wife on the other hand can work it perfectly, and she is from Florida. Oh well.