One Hundred Twenty Four Dead Sheep

Just in... One hundred twenty four sheep are killed by a train while escaping from a dog. Many of the sheep are pregnant, mere weeks away from delivery. Only eight from the flock survive.

What a headline. And its true. It happened in Spanish Fork, UT this week. The neighbor claims his dog is innocent, and the sheep owner's attorneys are looking to see if the sheep fit within the laws requiring railroad companies to pay compensation for livestock struck by trains. Apparently the neighbor doesn't have enough money to be worth suing. The railroad people say that maintenance of the fencing along rail-lines is the responsibility of the property owners. While the three sides bicker, the sheep are off to the great pasture in the sky.

Cute Boy

The boy had a good Christmas. He asked for power rangers. He sat on Santa's lap and told him so. He wrote Santa a letter and mailed it to him. Santa gave him his power rangers.

Dadda and the boy went to the pharmacy today and the boy brought his power rangers along. He showed the pharmacy lady all of the cool things his toys from Santa could do. He asked her if Santa brought her favorite toys this year. He certainly stole her heart at the pharmacy. Now I need to have him pull that trick on some nice single girls.

This christmas was good for the boy. He's happy, he's content, and I hope he remembers that there was a little baby named Jesus in the holiday somewhere. After all, he did come to save us all.

Isn't the History Channel Great?

Today I watched a lovely little documentary on toys! The Greeks invented the yo-yo and the pull toy was quite popular among the Egyptians.

The creator of the Lionel train company was originally an air conditioning fan motor salesman. His business always seemed to dry up when summer ended. He decided to advertise his motors in the off season by making an electric train set. His train was more popular than his air conditioners so he ditched the HVAC business to sell trains full time. Lionel was his middle name.

Billions of lego bricks are made and sold every year. They were made by a Danish man just after WWII who knew some kids didn't have the patience for the nuts and bolts of erector sets (invented in 1913). His bricks were instantly popular. In fact, Lego is a Danish contraction of the words Leg Godt which stands for play well. I know that I have played well with legos.

I think Ben is getting ready for the big boy legos. Unfortunately his ability to play with them is limited by the ever present number of small children who might view such small blocks as food. Maybe when I get married and move out of the house or something...

In the meantime he has been having fun with the larger duplo blocks. As long as he's happy its all good. I feel that one of the single greatest toys of all time is legos. It is the window to unlimited creativity. I have spent countless hours of creativity with legos. In fact, David Ashton and I reminisced together about our lego days of yore. Neither of us know where our little blocks are now.

Weird Dreams

Last night I had a weird dream. I dreamed I was at the UofU in the middle of some kind of spy/romance movie or something.

A friend (not clear who) and I who were roommates together in the student housing up by the U. The friend introduces me to another friend of his, a nice girl named Ashley. We start hanging out together and laughing about school stuff and other random things. She invites both of us roommates to her parents house.

The next day, the roommate and I walk through large snow filled university parking lots to get to Ashley's parents house. The roommate informs me that her father is an attorney and very rich. We arrive and meet the parents. Ashley's father is a very watchful hawk, wanting to know EVERYTHING about what her new boyfriend (me) is like. One of his tests is to play Pac-Man against him in his arcade room where there are dozens of old arcade machines. Good naturedly I lose and admit to not having played the game in years.

Satisfied I'm not some golddigger or other creep for his daughter he shows me around his enormous house. In the course of the tour I meet the extended family. There are hundreds of relatives living in this home, I discover.

I meet up with my roommate again and discover that the house is so full of relatives because one of Ashley's sisters is getting married and the reception is here. During the course of the reception we find out that another sister, one of the bridesmaids, has some secret documents that the government needed back before it fell into the wrong hands. My roommate manages to distract the sister while I snatch the documents and run for the waiting military police guys waiting around the block.

I meet up with a government agent on our dash to the meeting point and he verifies that the documents are the right ones. The MP Lt. takes the documents and asks if any copies had been made by ourselves or the bridesmaid. I tell him that we hadn't but we don't know how long the bridesmaid had the documents or if she made copies or sold the information already. The Lt. asks us to go back to the wedding and find out.

Once back at the wedding, my roommate informs me that the government mission will have to wait because he has to get back to class before he flunks out of college. We walk back through the snow filled parking lots and get to the roommates class. It is a combination art-puzzle invention class. While there my department manager from work appears and informs us that due to a scheduling conflict with this class, his class on computer networking had been cancelled. It will be rescheduled for next semester.

Through the class I draw my assignment but get frustrated that its not turning out well. On the way out, I light the assignment on fire in the closet where everyone kept their work between classes. After leaving I begin to worry that my little act of arson will burn everyone else's assignment too. My roommate tells me not to worry and we should get back to my girlfriend. Instead we get sidetracked by playing hide and go seek in a jumbled construction site where a new building is being added to the campus.

Then I wake up. What a busy dream; girlfriends, parents, secret agents, schoolwork, bosses, and arson, oh my!

I should blog about something

Today is one of those days where I know I should blog about something but I have no idea what. I should come up with some funny story about things going on in my life or express my latest epiphany about the gospel or something.

In the end I just typed away at my computer and really didn't say anything. But at least I can say that I blogged. See, there it is. I blogged.

School's out!

Another semester has come and gone. I finished my last final this afternoon. I think I did really well this semester, but that's not hard to do with an art class and a diversity requirement.

In a few weeks spring semester will begin and it will be back to the books. I should make a bouquet of pencils or something to celebrate continued education.

I found out that my Deaf Culture instructor Jeff has just been nominated one of the USA's most valued snow boarders and he recently took about twelfth (or was it tenth?) in the nation in a recent snowboarding contest (not a competition for Deaf but some of the best in the nation, hearing or Deaf). Deafness is not slowing down this university professor, in academics or sports!

But that is what he has been teaching us all semester. Deafness is a cultural identity not a disability. In fact not hearing the student cell phones ringing all semester has probably been more peaceful for him than for any other professor on campus. I'm really glad I could take his class.

Why did the chicken cross the road?

So I was driving home from Christmas shopping yesterday and I zip right past another roadkill on the freeway. Roadkill isn't all that rare but what made this particular lump of flattened animal was that it looked like it may have been a chicken before it got hit. Why did the chicken cross the road? Maybe to commit suicide...

Anyway. I don't think I'm cut out for shopping. I went to Toys Backwards R Us to get all of Ben's Christmas stuff so I could just be done with it. I spent an hour and a half wandering around with achy feet second guessing my selections and ultimately finding only a single toy for him. I then spent another twenty minutes standing in line behind men and women with shopping carts filled to the cealing to make my purchase. As I walked out of the store with a single rather lightweight bag I wondered to myself, "All that work for this?"

Yeah, shopping is definately not my forte. When I got home, I asked Mom how some people handle the mad Christmas Bonanza that occures the day after Thanksgiving each year. She told me some people actually enjoy it. I think those people must be crazy.

Allegory of the Olive trees

In the book of Jacob there is an allegory about an orchard full of trees. The lord of the vineyard and a servant work to bear good fruit from the trees throughout the allegory. On one level it is the history of the house of Israel in its varying states of faith and apostasy.

On another level though it is the story of each of us as individuals. There was good ground and bad ground, good fruit and bad fruit, even on the same tree. We are not all good nor all bad. We are very much a mixed tree or mixed orchard. We have an easier time believing in some doctrines or obeying some commandments than we do others.

There are two possible outcomes in the allegory. In one, the evil fruit overcome the good fruit and take over the tree. In the other outcome, the evil branches are purged from the tree as the good branches become strong enough to take the nourishment from the roots.

We are a mixed tree. Whether we become all bad or all good in the end will depend on whether we nourish the good branches in our lives and work to prune the bad branches out.

The neat thing about the scriptures are that they are like onions (no, they don't stink). There are many layers to the same text. At the most shallow layer, there is only the story about a bunch of trees. At a deeper layer is the story of the house of Israel. At an even deeper level is the story of the human soul. I'm sure there are other layers in this allegory alone that I haven't discovered yet. Time to strap on the scuba tank and dive even deeper into the scriptures.

Mad About Hats

Today while riding the bus to the Health Plans Christmas Luncheon with Sarah's brother, Joseph, I told him about my idea for a hat shop.

I would like to run a hat shop that sells every kind of hat imaginable but NOT baseball caps. There are already too many baseball caps in the world. They are the rodent infestation of hatdom.

I would sell cool hats like derby caps, fez, sumbreros, bonnets, and berets. Hats really add style to someone's appearance and they have become all too rare in today's society. Look back on the good old days when women would walk the streets with ornate hats that matched their gowns or the gentleman who could tip his own top hat to those same ladies as he greeted them in the streets. We need the classiness that came with a good selection of hats.

I once said, "I think everybody should wear a hat."
Ben promptly replied, "And a purse."

I don't plan on carrying a purse everywhere but I am a firm believer in hats. I am mad about hats!

Well I've been on mornings for one week now. I love being able to interact with real people at real people hours but I'm exhausted at the end of the day. My body still wants to be awake all night and sleep all day. Gradually I think my body is getting the idea that it belongs in the world of daylight again.

The little guy has had a hard time wondering why I crash before even getting him into his jammies or reading him bedtime stories. Dadda gets up at 3am (soon to be 4am) just doesn't make sense to him at 7 or 8pm. Oh well, we'll manage. We always do.