How Not to Dispose of a Whale

At the Oregon coast right now there is a sad little whale who was washed up on shore and found his final resting place. As always, there is some discussion as to the best way to move such a large and smelly carcass. That same discussion back in 1970 led to a rather hilarious, albeit messy, result.

Miscellaneous

Hey! Thanks to everyone who helped write our little story this weekend. It took on a deep, mysterious mood right from the get-go. Hmmm...I wonder what it was that she was holding??

News Updates:

* PSP starts oh-so-very soon! Our summer Coordinators, Josh & Katina, are here from New Mexico and are being put to work. Our six interns will be arriving from New Mexico, Texas, California, and the Great Northwest to begin their summer fun this weekend. We are in high gear and I'm hopeful that this conductor doesn't fall off the train. If you are in the Portland area and want to serve as a reading volunteer, contact us here.

* My Uganda family is making their way to their Oregon home and should here Friday. Welcome home, Jeff & Cheryl, Kinley, Alex, Isaac, & Silas!

* A ton of people I know right now are on health kicks. I feel super-inspired to set some goals, but I'm fearful. I hate disappointing myself.

* I'm not going to tell all of you that I have now lost my wallet. That would be too humiliating. Seriously. Is this a permanent state or do I ever have hope of being the organized and logical person I once was?

* Nothing makes the whole family laugh more thanthis site.

Don't Believe a Thing You Hear Today

I am not an April's Fools Fan. I don't particularly enjoy Punk'd or any event where someone is made to feel stupid for someone else's pleasure. BUT, there have been some good pranks pulled out there. And I'm not just talking about the rubberband that the kids and I put on the kitchen spray nozzle so it shot straight at Allan when he turned the water on this evening.

* A few years ago when I was listening to NPR, they did a long story about changing the Boston Celtics (seltics) to the Celtics (keltics), to be culturally sensitive to the Irish. They interviewed players, people in Ireland and Boston - giving all points on both sides. I was shocked - Can they change the pronunciation of such an institution? It wasn't until the next day that I realized that I had been snookered [other yearly spoofs include last year's iBod, federal health care for pets (2002), and advertisements projected onto the moon (2000)].

* Today I was checking in with one of my regular reads - Tim Ferris and his 4-Hour Workweek. Part of his regular message is smart workflow and outsourcing pretty much everything (he has even outsourced his dating - seriously). Yesterday, which he reasoned was April's Fools somewhere in the world, he wrote a post about how he was confessing to have outsourced the writing of his blog for the past year. People were outraged and disappointed - until he fessed up today.

* In 1996, Taco Bell announced it had bought the LIberty Bell, renaming it the Taco Liberty Bell. A White House spokesman furthered the joke by stating that the LIncoln Memorial was now the Ford Lincoln Mercury Memorial.

* In 1998, Burger King introduced a Left-Handed Whopper. It had the same ingredients, but the condiments were rotated 180 degrees for the benefit of left-handed customers. They received thousands of requests for specific handed Whoppers.

* In 1957, BBC made an extensive report on spaghetti trees, which remains one of the most well-known April pranks.

Boys Will Be Boys. Girls Will Be...

Boys tend to draw trouble to themselves. As a parent of a boy, I look forward with fear and trepidation and a sense of curiosity and bemusement to the antics that will undoubtedly find Connor in the years ahead. With three older brothers, I saw this principle often at work. There was the neighbor's flooded basement, the principal's office filled with newspaper, the classroom filled with mace, and BB guns used to shoot just about anything. A friend told me the other day how he filled a lady's station wagon with dirt and used his dad's record collection as frisbees. I always assumed this was an issue for the male gender since I personally never found the attraction to such revelry. I was probably just too busy, though, protecting my dolls and the small animals of the world from explosions and various forms of torture to partake in the nuisance making. So I have been a little surprised that my sweet, innocent eldest daughter has found herself in the middle of several...shall we call them..."adventures". The latest involves a garage remote and magic tricks. She and her cousin were magically causing the garage door to lift and lower - just by commanding it to do so! It's true - I saw it myself. What happened next I did not see coming, mostly because I told them to stop playing with the remote. They must have thought, "Ah, a call for the finale! We must really show our stuff now!" Here is where they pushed the remote for the door to close and then...yes, you got it...threw the remote under the closing door - kind of like Indiana Jones' hat. Yes, of course we have another remote. Oh wait, you mean the one that Fiona took out in the rain that same week, causing it to short out. Hmmm...

Maybe I should warn the neighbors now.

Connorisms

After Connor was to be in bed for a while, he came to the living room and sat down beside me.

Mom, I need to talk to you. I need to give you a hug and a kiss. You need to clean out the fireplace. And this living room needs to be picked up. And the stuff on the table needs to be put away. "I think you need to go back to bed Connor." You need to move the whole fireplace. "The whole fireplace?" Yes. And you need to change this lamp so that when I touch the pole it turns off and on. "Goodnight Connor." Goodnight!

I asked Connor to pick up a cup he had dropped from his car seat to the floor of the car.

I'm not available to do that right now.

When trying to choose a cartoon to watch with one of our interns:

This is the love show! I hate love!!

As our Life Group and the interns were gathered in our living room, Connor came running through, obviously in need of the "facilities" and announcing that he had to wait a long time while they went for a walk. Then, of course with the door wide open to the bathroom, we hear a flush and:

That was a good pee!

When discussing with my kids whom they would choose to marry:

I'm going to marry Michal. She said so! She said that if I don't marry her she won't give me any candy!

Transcribed by his Sunday school teacher on a picture Connor drew:

I love my mommy so much my brain hurts!