Da Bunny

 Google+, when you upload photos, does some interesting things with them sometimes. Photos that are similar it groups together. Sometimes it will even turn them into animated gif files.

I uploaded a lot of pictures of Da Bunny and it returned these groups. So I put them here to share.

Enjoy!

Dug this up.... from about 5 years ago or so.

I caught my youngest son playing the other day....

Just a few fun pics and some rambling rambles.

 Hey howdy hey. No much point to this post other than an urge to write something. I pulled a few pics just at random to share. Not much story behind them, just a day at the park.

Things are as insane around here as they normally are. Maybe a little more so. The last few weeks of the school year are always just nuts. Field trips, tests, tutors are much busier at work... everyone is just tired and stressed and all that stuff.


Thank you Lord for weekends. We try - try being the operative word - to take at least a few hours, usually after church, to put away the screens and just be outside. Sometimes we get junk food, other times just bread and bologna, and pick a park, and just chill.

Sometimes I really worry if we are doing right by our kids. Was it fair of any of them to be born into a big family? Is it fair to any of them that we've always had to struggle financially? Is it fair that we've always tried to be careful about what they watch on TV (not censoring so much as just choosing less f-words and less blood and gore)? Did we do wrong by raising them in the church, but at the same time encouraging them to figure out life and faith and reality for themselves?

I guess my older kids can answer that. I don't know if I want to know the answers.

But then we spend our day at the park. And I see them play and laugh and run and we get to talk. I see how much more intelligent they are than me. I see them interact with strangers and doing things to make others smile. I see them dog pile on each other, laughing so hard their sides start to hurt.

Then I don't worry so much.

 

Head Shaving, The Video!

Hi! If you are reading this you are either a friend or a family member asking "what the heck is he doing?" or most likely one of the 200+ people a day who are coming to my blog by searching for "head shaving". And you're probably in India. Why folks in India are so interested in pictures of me shaving my head I don't know.

But I'm not one to disappoint my fans. So I for your viewing pleasure I made this. Enjoy.

The Head Shave

Note from the author: If you love these pictures, you'll LOVE THIS VIDEO!


So I decided it was time to do away with my long hair. I loved my long hair. I wanted to keep growing it forever and be totally a long haired hippie looking kind of guy.

But, my health being what it is and my general constitution slowly growing weaker and weaker, I started having really bad neck pain. Could it be the weight of the hair? Maybe. But either way, it was rapidly becoming more and more difficult for me to manage.

So I shaved it. Every bit of it. Yes, I could have just cut it, but I figured if I couldn't look hairy, I'd go the opposite extreme. Why? No reason, other than it amuses me.

My hair was a little bit longer than 10 inches, so I thought I would attempt to cut it in a way that I could send it to Locks of Love and maybe they could use it. What follows is a pictorial of the head shaving event:

Here's a before picture. Hairy and scary.

 As you can see, it's pretty long. I had it trimmed, but not seriously cut in 2 years.

As directed on the Locks of Love website, I put the hair into pony tails. Since the lengths were all uneven, one big one wouldn't have worked, so I went this route.

No turning back now!

It's all gone!

Here's the resulting hair cluster. Sadly, I don't know if Locks of Love can use it. The end from my scalp came out pretty ragged. But it is long enough. I'll send it to them anyway. If they can't use it, at least I tried.

So, yes, I am going the whole way, razor and all. Figured I'd get my cheeks while I was at it...

And here it is. My shiny bald head. 

And here's the back. You can see that I need practice with the razor.

Once it was done, I could feel the difference in my neck, so I guess that's good. It's really kind of cold in here, though.

If you are reading this, please consider making a donation to Locks of Love. This is not a sponsorship or a paid advertisement. I just think the work they do is really great. They accept more than hair and need financial support as well. If you have a couple of bucks, please send them their way. Thanks.

A story.

Thanksgiving. We had moved to middle of nowhere New Mexico the year before and while a lot of kids were singing "over the river and through the woods", my kids were whining "can we turn on the air conditioner?"

My eldest, bless her heart, wanted to do Thanksgiving dinner all by herself. I, who hated to cook, said "sure, why not". My wife, who was normally like Martha Stewart on meth during the holidays, decided it was OK to put away her recipe for homemade cranberry free cranberry sauce, and let her have at it.

The process was going well, as far as we could tell. The turkey was smelling great, the potatoes weren't lumpy, and the green bean casserole had those fried onion thingys on it.

Now, at this point, we're not sure what happened. Maybe the dog was getting into the garbage, maybe gravity decided it was time to play a practical joke. But whatever happened, a can with the lit still attached to it and poking out with it's cartoony jagged edges just waiting for someone to come by.

Unfortunately, it was the chef.

Suddenly, there's a scream from the kitchen. My wife and I take of running to see what happened.

Now, I think of my self as a tough guy. Granted, I wasn't a jock in school or anything like that, but I think when the spit hits the spam, I can hold my own.

The events that follow are reconstructed from what others have told me because the moment I looked into the kitchen, I went over like a cheap lamp. Apparently, blood and I aren't friends.

Our chef had a cut on her foot from the can lid. If you look at your foot, you can see a blood vein running across the top of it. The cut was right through there, and deep enough to need stitches. It wasn't super serious, but since it hit that vein, it bled a lot.

A lot.

So here I am, Mr. Tough Guy who thinks when the robot-alien-zombie-nazi apocalypse comes, he'll be all Bruce Campbell on their butts, running to the kitchen to the rescue, only to end up face planting on the carpet.

Apparently, when the robot-alien-zombie-nazis attack, I will pass out and miss all the action. They won't even bother assimilating me because I'm totally a wuss.

So, apparently, what I tried to do was call an ambulance because I was totally sure that she was bleeding out and was going to die. I managed to get up and get to the phone, but when I looked back at the scene, which in my mind  was a recreation of a scene from a Wes Craven movie, I ended up face down again.

My wife, totally calm, begged me to sit down. She was sure that I was going to fall and split my head open on the dining room table or something, which was a very real possibility. The last thing she needed was to have to take two of us to the emergency room for stitches. But NO! I was a MAN! I was going to do what I had to do. Unfortunately, I really had no idea what that should be because all the blood was rushing from my head and I couldn't really see from my view of the carpet what needed to be done.

In the end, Mom saved the day, dad proved how much of a wuss he was, and the other kids cleaned up the blood because it was really only a few drops. The moral of the story is, don't go to dad when you're bleeding.

One of those Christmas Card letters everyone writes.

Dear family/friends/acquaintances/random people I barely know,

Well, it's Hanukkah/Winter Solstice/Christmas/Kwanzaa/Weasel Stomping Day again. I thought I'd take a moment/hour/day and a half/7 brain wracking days to write to you and let you know how we're doing/brag about  my kids/lie about  my  job/give the impression we're  a nice normal family.

This  year  we (fill in the blank) and (tell a lie about doing something  exciting) all the while (make your job sound like more than playing solitaire) and (avoid mentioning that time you were arrested).

We hope that you are doing well/doing worse than we are/rotting in he**/still a violent drunk so I look like the "good" relative. We hope you have a joyous and merry Hanukkah/Winter Solstice/Christmas/Kwanzaa/Weasel Stomping Day.

Love,
Us

Doing it wrong

Sesame Street Turns 40

It's hard for me to believe Sesame Street and I are only a couple years apart in age. I can't remember a world without Big Bird or Burt and Ernie. My mom told me that when I was little I had a special chair for watching Sesame Street. When I had kids of my own, we had an off and on relationship with the show. Now that our very youngest are able to get something out of it, it's a large part of our daily routine.

I won't write a tribute, there are many around the Internet and we don't need another one. But it's such a huge part of who I am that I needed to mention it.

The show has changed an amazing amount in 40 years. It still teaches the ABCs and 123s, with some bilingual lessons here and there. It's also managed to change with the times, staying entertaining and relevant to compete with the huge bombardment of television our children are exposed to today. When I watched it, it was on one of 3, maybe 4 channels. The other ran soap operas or news programs in the same time slot. Now it's up against who knows how much other stuff on who knows how many channels, not to mention DVDs and video games and so on.

Now, sing along with me! "One, two, three. Four, five, six. Seven, eight, nine. Ten, eleven, twelve. And they all played games... at the Lady Bug Picnic!"

Ew

Think I should see a doctor?

Three Hundred Miles in 25 Seconds.

I was playing with my camera on the ride home from NMSU. I recorded at one frame every three seconds. The battery gave out just as we got to Albuquerque, so I captured about 300 miles. Nice scenery, but it goes by really fast!

Sometimes I catch a lucky shot

Just some randomness.

It's been a while since I've posted more than family news and photos here. Most things that cross my mind I post on my other blog since they are more personal thoughts and not related to the rest of the family.

But today I'm bored so I thought I'd just say some random things.

I've started watching "Lost" online (Netflix). I'd been wondering for a while what the big deal was with this show, since we don't pick up the channel it's on out here in the boonies. I'm on episode 16 and it's actually getting pretty good. It hasn't really blown me away like Heroes or some other things I've seen, but as you get into these characters' lives it's pretty interesting.

Healthcare is in the news. I have some very strong opinions about what needs to be done, but I'm not a politician or an expert in this area at all, so I could rant and rave all day, but it wouldn't really matter unless I knew what I was talking about. But there are some things I do know. When my company stopped paying for my health insurance, I was able to continue it under a plan called COBRA. However, instead of being double what I was paying before, it was more than 5 times as much. An incredibly insane amount - more than what I was making per month when I was working. So it was either spend every penny we had, plus more that we would have to borrow to continue my health coverage, or let it lapse and not starve to death. Also, if I had never gotten insurance and had saved all that money, I would be able to pay the bills for all the things the insurance wouldn't when I did have coverage, plus what little they did pay, plus have some left over. In other words, it cost me more to have insurance than it would have cost me to not have it. That's a broken system. Someone needs to stop the insurance companies from doing stupid crap like that. That's all I know.

My lovely wife got me an ice-cream maker for Father's Day. It's probably the greatest gift I've ever gotten. I've probably made 10 batches so far. Mostly vanilla, just because that's easiest, but I'm getting anxious to try new combos. The issue is, most recipes I find online are trying to get all fancy schmancy and stuff, saying to scald the cream and all this other stuff. If you're going to go through all that trouble, then what's the point? Others call for raw eggs. I'm not even going to go there. Just give me cream and sugar and something that blends in with it. I'm thinking my next batch I'm going to make chocolate then stir in m&ms and brownies and all that good stuff when it'd done. Death by chocolate.

One of the stupid girls from High School Musical took some obscene pictures of herself which have been released onto the Internet. My little girls love those movies. Like it or not, actors are role models. It's just plain shocking and stupid that someone who's fan base is under 12 would do something... well, shocking and stupid. At least wait until you're in your 20s, like Britney Spears, before you do something like that.

I've only been to one movie lately. I only get to see about one a year in theaters. Mostly that's due to poverty, but also because there are so few that I really want to see as soon as it comes out. I don't remember what I saw last, before this time anyway. It couldn't have been very good if it didn't stick in my brain. This time, it was Star Trek. (Thanks Mom!) Did I talk about this before? I don't know. If I'm repeating myself, I'm sorry. Anyway, a lot of Star Trek fans were worried that it wouldn't be any good; that you couldn't make a Star Trek movie without William Shatner or Patrick Stewart. But guess what? In spite of using the old stand-by trick of time travel, the movie was awesome. I heard they are already filming the sequel. Which is awesome.

That's enough rambling for today.

A Conversation with Mr. L

Mr L came into our room yesterday while Mom was cleaning.

"I wanna play the Wii!" he announced.

Mom said, simply, "No."

"How 'bout now?", the toddler asked, immediately after Mom's Denial.

"No."

"How 'bout... now?"

"No."

"How 'bout.... now?"

"No."

This exchange went on for about 5 minutes. Finally Mr. L decided to change tactics.

"I wanna play Smash Brothers." choosing to ask for a particular title instead of the system as a whole.

"No." was Mom's continued reply.

"I wanna play Wario!" exclaimed Mr. L, choosing now a character in the game.

"No."

"I wanna play RED Wario!"

"No"

"I wanna play GREEN Wario!"

"No"

"I wanna play YELLOW Wario!"

"No."

This exchange went on for another 5 minutes, the toddler going through every color he could think of.

Finally, after exhausting all his options, Mr L finally asked in frustration "Well why not???"

Watching this exchange I started chuckling at about the third "No", by the time he uttered "Well, why not?" I was laughing so hard I almost fell off the bed.

On my day

Found this from some facebook thingy. If you are on my friends list, you can see it in my feed.

1967 - Allen Andersen Was Born!
1532 - Pizarro seizes Incan emperor Atahualpa
1864 - Sherman begins his march to sea thru Georgia
1894 - 6 000 Armenians massacred by Turks in Kurdistan
1907 - Okla becomes 46th state
1924 - Cleveland Bulldogs lose to Frankford Yellowjackets ending a 31-game undefeated streak (NFL & major-league football record)
1926 - NY Rangers play their 1st game
1933 - Roosevelt establishes diplomatic relations with USSR
1950 - UN gets US govt approval to issing postage stamps
1955 - 1st speed-boat to exceed 200 mph (DM Campbell)
1965 - Venera 3 launched 1st land on another planet (Crashed into Venus)
1965 - 1st public announcement about Walt Disney World
1966 - Dr Sam Sheppard freed after 9 years in jail by a jury
1973 - Skylab 4 launched into earth orbit
1982 - 5th Space Shuttle Mission - Columbia 5 returns to Earth
1984 - 14th Space Shuttle Mission - Discovery 2 returns to Earth

It's a travesty of epic proportions!

Miss D got her first pimple. Can you see it?

We're thinking of calling in the National Guard.

A good-bye

Today we say good-bye to a friend. I wish I could say it was a good friend, but the truth is this friend was a cantankerous old grump and I'm not sorry to to it go.

Of course I am referring to "the brown van".

She came into our life to help us through a tough time. Instead, she preferred to sit in the driveway and drip fluids all over the ground. In the end, her battery just gave up and she refused to start or go anywhere. Maybe it was jealously. She knew she was only a sub, a temp, and that she would have no permanent place in our family. She was only here while our true love was sick. In the end, it really doesn't matter.

I'm happy to see her go. Why?

THE WHITE VAN IS FIXED!!! REALLY, TRULY, AND TOTALLY FIXED!! I call her Bob. My wife hits me when I do that saying Bob isn't a girl's name, but I like Bob.

Here's her baby picture, shortly before she came to us:




Sadly, she got sick after she came to us, and spent nearly 10 months in the hospital. But I've covered that in another post. The happy fact is, she's home! She's fixed! She took us to the park yesterday! We had brownies!

I'm so happy.

Scary New Images from Lunar Probe!

This yet to be identified being is apparently very happy. Either that or she wants to eat us. The hoop-like object may be a weapon of some kind.

What we think is funny

We've been following this guy for a few years now. It's nice when we can all laugh at something together.

Family Picture

Ok. So it's not a real picture. One of these days we'll have a photo taken, hopefully soon.