Introducing Colter's Stack of Stuff

Google Reader has a feature that lets you share articles you come across, sort of like clipping articles from the paper.  It's like a mini-blog on the side of our main blog.  It can be funny, sad, touching, thoughtful, or completely random.  Whatever strikes my fancy.

And if you use a feed reader, the Stack of Stuff has its own feed.  Enjoy!

Quando Omni Flunkus Moritati

Every now and then, I collect a quote that I want to keep.  Right now, they're sort of scattered all over the place, because I haven't come up with a good way to store them all.  The most recent one is "Quando omni flunkus moritati," which, being interpreted, is "When all else fails, play dead."

Early to Bed or Early to Rise?

For a while, last year, I was able to wake up, without an alarm, within 5 minutes of 8 hours after I went to bed. Three days in a row, the first time I saw on the clock was exactly 8 hours after the last time I saw. When I'm getting enough rest, I'm like 8 hour toast – I pop up, and I'm ready to go. (Can you cook toast in a crock pot?)

My ideal schedule maintains the missionary schedule of going to bed at 10:30 and getting up at 6:30. This keeps sliding back, however, because I'm not ready to go to bed at 10:30. Lately, it's been closer to midnight before I get to bed.

(To those with children or pets that prevent 8 hours of sleep: I'm living vicariously for you.)

When I have to get up after 7 hours, or 6, I'd love to have another hour or two to sleep in. If I'd just get to bed an hour or two earlier, guess what? The problem is especially pronounced on Saturdays, when Friday night has eaten away at sleep time, and I find it's closer to time for lunch by the time I get a shower and dressed.

I used to think the best way to correct my schedule was to get to bed earlier. That didn't work, because I wasn't tired at 10:30. I'd keep doing "one more thing" because if I'd just lay in bed awake for and hour, I'd rather get something done. But what I'd really rather is getting an hour of something done in the morning.

Now I think you have to work the problem from all three ends: what time you get up, what time you go to bed, and why you think you have to be out of bed for more than 16 hours before you go back. It can be a tough question to answer, and it assumes that you do value getting 8 hours of sleep. Or 7, or 7.5, or whatever. I've never heard someone complain that they were getting enough sleep.

How much sleep we schedule ourselves depends on how we prioritize sleep compared to the other things we have to do. I have found that I do more and better in 16 hours with 8 hours of sleep than in 18 hours with 6 hours of sleep, so I'm trying to be more careful about giving proper priority to the 8 hours.

I Found It: Why 1820

It is a happy day.

On my mission, I had two favorite talks: "The Purifying Power of Gethsemane" by Bruce R. McConkie and "Why 1820?" by Hyrum W. Smith. Loved them. The former was pretty easy to track down – it's in the April 1985 Conference. The latter wasn't so easy.

For three years, I've been trying to find it, and I finally stumbled upon it via a random blog post. (I google for it every now and then, hoping to find it.) In one of the comments, someone identified the talk. It was given at a Ricks College devotional on September 27, 1988.  The title is simply "Restoration of the Church".

I love the Internet.

Apple Skimmers and Edible Skivvies

You really can't blame kids for getting words wrong. They do the best they can, and go with what they hear. As we get older, we experience more words, so we recognize more and more of what we hear (in theory), so language gets easier.

Apparently these things are called "Ebleskivers". They're Scandanavian. Somewhere between a pancake and a muffin. We received an ebleskiver pan for our wedding, and we finally got to use it this morning. They're pretty tasty, and these were just the plain ones. You can also cook them with stuff inside of them, once you get used to how the pan works – it's somewhere between a frying pan and a muffin tin.

Snow!

About once a year we get snow on the surrounding hilltops here.  This morning when I looked out the window I could see glorious white capping the hills.  One of my co-workers, who lives in Santa Cruz, said she drove through a winter wonderland to get to work today. 

Apple Cider Vinegar: Towards the Red End of the Scale

There are things that I like, and things that I don't like.  It's true for all of us.  It's natural.  The problem is when we don't actually try things, and just assume we're not going to like something. Or assuming we will, although I think it's more common that we assume we won't. It's like the kid that continues to scream in dread anticipation of the needle because he didn't even feel the shot.

I knew I would like Toad in the Hole before I tried it.  I looked at it, decided it was just like pigs in a blanket, and sure enough – I loved it. Experience guided me.  I knew I would like shrimp monterey – wrap any meat in bacon and smother it with cheese is going to be good.

While I was in England, one missionary team was invited over to an African family's home for dinner to celebrate their baptism that day.  Dinner was a deep-fried pig head.  I understand it's quite the delicacy, and I gave them due props for eating it.

A few years ago, I adopted a policy of not nocking things I don't understand. Consider it: how can you speak on something you don't understand?  Like any guiding principle, there are times I exercise it better than others.  One of the applications of this principle is trying something someone is eating before criticizing it.  If they're eating it and enjoying it (and there's nothing pathological involved), then it's probably just my own preconceived notions about what's edible and what's not.

Maybe I have Charlie Love to thank for this. He's why I've tried crickets, mealworms, and other stuff I'm probably repressing.  It's how I discovered SuperFood.  Asparagus, brussels sprouts, egg plant, quiche, dried mangos, and a whole slew of curried foods I can't pronounce, let alone get close enough for the spell checker to correct, have all had their audition on my palette.  I don't even think about it any more. It adds a little bit of adventure to life. I highly recommend it.

This weekend, I heard of a new fad sweeping the nation.  Drinking apple cider vinegar.  Diluted, of course.  Straight up, it's strong enough to burn your esophagus.  But a tablespoon or two in a glass of water is supposed to eliminate any desire you have for sweet drinks.  It probably does.  All I remember is throwing out the last half of the glass (after forcing the first half down while reading the evening news) and popping a couple of Tums afterwards.

It's great stuff for cooking with.  I add it to chili all the time.  But it's an ingredient, not a beverage.  I'm sticking to the SuperFood.

Stuck in my head today

Red - the blood of angry men!
Black - the dark of ages past!
Red - a world about to dawn!
Black - the night that ends at last!

Do you hear the people sing?

Google Reader

I've been trying out Google Reader this week. Instead of checking a dozen different sites, when I remember to check them, if I remember to check them, and constantly wondering what I've missed, it does the work for me.  It keeps tabs on sites that publish an RSS feed (blogs do this inherently), and brings everything together for me, so I just have one site to read.  It even keeps track of which articles/entries I've already seen.  They even have a version of Reader that works wonderfully on an iPhone, so I can check the news from anywhere.

Now I just need to see if I can get all my comics on Reader...

Weekend Getaway

We have just returned from a short visit to our friends, Ray and Maureen Summers, in Folsom, California.  Colter and the Summers served together in the Church mission office in Birmingham, England.  When Colter and I became engaged to be married last year, the Summers invited us up to their home to visit.  It took us until now to find the time to make it up there!  

The drive to Folsom was long and tedious.  Our plan was to leave right after work on Friday in the hopes of beating some of the Friday traffic and arriving at the Summers around 8:30pm.  No such luck.  It ended up taking two hours simply to get out of the bay area, crawling along crowded freeways at 15 miles per hour.  We finally pulled into the Summers' driveway at 9:30pm.  But we quickly forgot the frustrations of the road trip as we talked and looked at mission photos, drinking hot chocolate and sharing mission memories.  The Summers' little dachshund, Missy, tried to join in the conversation, going from person to person, begging for some pats and tummy rubs.

Saturday morning we had a leisurely breakfast and then got ready to go to the Sacramento temple.  This is where Colter and I were married, so it was a special experience to be able to return and serve there again.  The temple really is the happiest place in the world.  

After we returned from the temple, we sat and talked and watched the latest updates on the presidential primaries.  From there, we went to dinner at a Thai restaurant in El Dorado Hills.  The food was delicious, and we had a lovely view of a small river from the restaurant window.  

Back at the Summers' again, we watched a movie on the Hallmark channel while we waited for an apple pie to bake.  It was from one of the local farms and was absolutely delicious.  We ended the evening talking again around the dining room table.  Our original plan was to drive home Saturday night.  But we decided it would be safer and more enjoyable to spend one more night with the Summers and drive home in the daylight of Sunday.

We took our time getting ready Sunday morning.  While I did my hair, Colter played keep-a-way with Missy all through the house.  In doing so, he became her friend for life.  We enjoyed another leisurely breakfast with the Summers.  Then we packed up the car and headed home.  Traffic was much better coming back and we arrived home in the early afternoon, with plenty of time to unpack, unwind...and warm up our apartment!  Brrr! After a full day and night without heat, it was chilly in here!

All in all, a delightful, renewing weekend.  It was wonderful to get away for a couple of days and even better to to spend it with such warm, wonderful friends. 

It's a MacWorld After All

Every January, the publishers of MacWorld magazine put on a consumer expo at the Moscone Center in San Francisco.  Steve Jobs usually gives the keynote address, and it's one of the highlights of the Mac year.  Rumors fly, and certain groups within Apple scramble to make ready the new products which will see their first light of day before an adoring crowd.  This year was no exception, with the MacBook Air floating out on stage and iTunes movie rentals making their welcome debut.  I'm curious to try the new version of Front Row rolling out to AppleTVs everywhere in two weeks; the self-updating content is good (I can't wait for iPhones to support updating podcasts by themselves), but the interface looks more cluttered than the graceful lines of Front Row 2, standard on every copy of Mac OS X Leopard.

I went up on Thursday to check things out.  This was my first trip up to MacWorld; I've been to the Moscone Center twice now for WWDC.  (I think it was also my first trip to any consumer expo.)  It was neat to get to put some faces to companies, and a delightful change to get to talk to people who actually represent the company that makes a product instead of a third-party retailer.  They know their product!  (Except maybe for the Google gal who was demoing Google Maps on the iPhone, but doesn't actually own an iPhone herself.)

I had to chuckle at the contrast between some of the smaller booths, crammed with product, and Apple's gigantic theater in the center, crammed with people waiting to see the MacBook Air, AppleTV Take 2, and various iPods.

On the way back to the CalTrain station, I walked a little out of my way to see a bit more of AT&T Park (the old Candlestick Park).  From the outside, it looks a lot like Coors Field, but I don't remember Coors Field having free WiFi access.  I may have to see about going to a Giants game this season...

Looks Like Jamie

Posted Tuesday over at ICanHasCheezburger.com. As I was scrolling down (ie, before I saw the text at the bottom of the image), I was thinking "Wow...that cat looks like Jamie."

Something to Reed

My sister just started a blog for her family.  Nicole and I started a blog for our wedding, but it hasn't been updated since.  Let's give this another shot.  We'll see how it goes.