Comparative Theology.

Yesterday, we took Luciya and Mirabel to the Center for Spiritual Living in Boise for the Sunday service.

On our way the the center, Luciya pointed out a Mormon temple and opined that would be more convenient if we went there since it was closer to our house.

We agreed that it would be more convenient, but O remarked that she wouldn't want to go to that church.

"Why?" asked L.

O thought hard. "Well, I don't agree with some of the things they believe in."

"Like what?"

O thought harder. "Well, mostly grown-up things."

L. contemplated this for a bit. "I think it's because Rev. Jackie (minister at CSL who L. adores) always says nice things."

We agreed that that was true.

L. thought a bit more. "For example, she would never say something like 'Everyone poop in their seats right now.'"

We agreed that Rev. Jackie was unlikely to say something like that.

But who knows about the Mormons.

P.

Stalked By Mountain Lions.

Just before we moved to our new house, we heard reports that a mountain lion had been spotted in the section of the greenbelt/river trail where I ran every morning in the pre-dawn hours. At the time I was too busy getting ready to move to do much running anyway, so I thought little of it. After we moved to the other side of town, we heard of more sightings near our old neighborhood, but shrugged them off.

Then a couple weeks ago, we heard of a mountain lion being sighted on our side of town. Next there was a dog mauled by a lion just across the river from us. The cat had jumped a six-foot fence to shut that yapper up. A little spooky, but you have to admire that kind of enterprise, and besides, there was a swift-running, icy river between us and the feline menace.

Yesterday, though, two mountain lions were spotted on our side of the river, strolling through the development not four blocks from our house. At 1:30 in the afternoon!

So, for now, morning and evening walks by the river are off our agendas. We may be old and stringy, but I think they're following us.

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Our True Colors.

Thanks to my thrifty mom and the very low real estate prices in Idaho, we were able to buy a house here. 3br, 2.5 ba, good size yard, half a block from the river, 5 min. from John and Emily, 5 min. from work for both of us, and only 5 mi. from downtown.

The place needs work--new roof, new bathroom, etc., but it has good bones, including a nice kitchen and good layout. Though it appears typical on the outside, it has a lot of interesting angles and custom features on the inside.

So we've been adding color, trying to recreate some of the vibe of our old SF house.

 Here's a view of the entry.

The view from the entry into the living room.

Looking down the stairwell at the entry.

Looking from the living room through the dining room into the kitchen.

The kitchen from the family room. The dining room is just beyond.

The breakfast nook and family room.

The family room.

The hallway and library.

We move next week. We are so excited to have our own place again. 

Thanks, mom!

P.

 

Along Came Smith.

So Luciya has decided that she must be called Smith.

Tonight she came over after a day at pre-school summer camp, and we asked what she had done that day.

Us: So, Smith, what did you do at camp today?

Smith: I pooped and pooped and pooped and pooped until I died!

We never had that much fun at camp when I was wee.

P.

Lovely Lake Tahoe

We took a long Fourth of July holiday and drove from Boise to the Bay Area. We spent a blissful few days with family and friends, eating and drinking and laughing, with side visits for our favorite SF haunts. On the way home, we decided to break up the long drive with a delightful visit with our friend Doug who has a condo in Lake Tahoe.

 The weather was lovely, so of course there were drinks on the deck of the Big Water Cafe, where we enjoyed an awesome view of the lake through a crack in the trees.

It was definitely a Fourth to remember.

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The Most Obscene Aristocrats Joke Ever.

h/t to Jon Schwarz at A Tiny Revolution:

DAVID BROOKS(where "David Brooks" is a stand-in for most any "centerist" Establishment apologist): Okay, so our act starts with us inflating a giant internet bubble. Then that collapses, taking the country's economy with it, just as we massively cut taxes on millionaires because, we say, if we don't the government will have too much money. Right after that we blow off warnings about terrorism and let 3,000 Americans get slaughtered. We use that as a chance to lie the U.S. into invading a country that had nothing to do with the attack, killing hundreds of thousands of people and turning millions into refugees. In the middle of all that we borrow torture techniques from the Inquisition and use them on people in secret sites around the planet. Then we make billions off another financial bubble, the biggest in human history, and do nothing as it collapses, plunging the world into the greatest economic calamity since the Great Depression. To fix that we open up the national bank vault and shovel out money as fast as possible to all the criminals who made it happen in the first place. Then—as the amazing finale—we refuse to prosecute anyone for that, for the war, or for torture, and we start killing U.S. citizens with flying death robots.
[LONG PAUSE]
AGENT: ...That's a hell of an act. What do you call it?
DAVID BROOKS: The Aristocrats!

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You Know You Want One.

Dutch ingenuity.

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Babysitting The Pterodactyl. Now Updated With NSFW (or anywhere else) Bonus Link!

The squawks are frequent and ear-splitting, prehistoric in their intensity. We're babysitting the Pterodactyl again.

Lovely Mirabel in a previous life.

That would be our youngest granddaughter, Mirabel. She's the world's happiest child, and sometimes that happiness becomes so great that it must be emitted in one or several loud and heartfelt yawps. Emily was the first to notice the resemblance to the pterosaur's hooting, and the name stuck.

I've even written a little ditty about it, to the tune of "You Talk Too Much."

You squawk too much, you worry me to death.
You squawk like a pterodactyl that is strung out on meth.
You squawk, squawk, squawk, you squawk too much.

You squawk about stuff that you don't know.
You squawk like a wooly mammoth with a trunk full of blow.
You squawk, squawk, squawk, you squawk too much.

You squawk too much, you quack and you quack.
You squawk like a struthiomimus that's addicted to crack.
You squawk, squawk, squawk, you squawk too much.

The squawkin' struthiomimus

BONUS LINK! WARNING! Not safe for work! Not safe for children's ears! Not safe!]

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Know Thyself.

Over the weekend, Luciya confided to us: "Dairy makes my toots awful!"

Then she proceeded to prove it so. Repeatedly.

P.

L'il Future Nobel Prize Winner.

It took William Harvey until 1628 to propose the theory of blood circulation.

Yesterday, budding scientist Luciya placed a the hollow end of a water glass on the inside of her elbow and laid her ear on the other end. "I can hear my blood smushing and whushing in there," she announced.

She's not even five yet.

P.

Dora The Tootin' Explorer.

Tonight was our usual night for watching the girls. Luciya wanted to watch a movie, so I sat down in the TV room and let her climb into my lap with her giant rainbow slinky. We soon found ourselves watching "Dora the Explorer" on Nick Jr.

For those who have never experienced it, this is an interactive show where Dora periodically asks the audience to respond to various questions. Luciya helped her take pictures of wild animals, choose the correct path to avoid a rain storm, and find the roof to Benny the Bull's house.

At the end, Dora asked us what had been our favorite part of the show.

"When she tooted up her nose!" chortled Luciya. (She knows very well that this is expressly against the Rules of Tooting.)

"That was my favorite part, too," Dora agreed.

"I don't remember that part," I said.

"Yep," said L, with immense satisfaction, "she tooted up her nose and in her eyeball!"

I don't know how I missed it.

P.

Exercising In The Dark And Cold.

One of the hardest things to get used to in Boise is that the sun comes up so late. At 7 am it's still dark these mornings, and it will only get worse when we switch to daylight savings time. Rousing myself to get up and exercise in the morning is difficult, especially when the temperature is in the low 20s. 

But I decided I'm tired of being house-bound, so this morning I got up and braved the dark and cold. I drove a half mile to the Boise River and walked a little over two miles. As I got back to my car, the faintest trace of day had begun to light the eastern sky. 

I drove home, had an espresso, and looked out the front door.

Looks like I just got home in time.

More of the same tomorrow.

P.

Phyllis Jane, August 4, 1915 to February 14, 2012.

My mom died last night, peacefully, at home after 96 and a half years full of life.

I mourn her absence, and I'm relieved that she went quickly and painlessly at the end.

We should all be so lucky.

P.

The Rules Of Tooting.

We were watching the girls this evening, and, at dinner, Luciya asked for some milk.

"Milk makes me the tootiest!" she exclaimed proudly.

"Ummm," we replied.

"My daddy told me the rules for tooting," she said, glorying in the extent of her knowledge of the world.

"That's good," we replied.

"Never toot in someone's nose, because then they can smell it," she said wisely.
"And never toot in someone's eyeball!"

Surely those are rules we can all live by.

P.

Beauty And The Bitch.

It was hard to believe. After all these months, we finally got some snow.

 But I looked out the back door, and it was true.

The story was the same out the front door, too. A truly beautiful sight.

But as with most beauties, there was a downside.

A long, snow-choked driveway faced me and my new orange snow shovel.

It was a bitch, but I got it done. And still the snow came down.

But then it turned to rain and the snow turned to slush. Not so beautiful, but easier to deal with.

P.

My Old Mom.

She's almost halfway through her 96th year, so when we got an email from my brother last week saying that she was in the hospital again with a poor chance of recovering, we got on a plane immediately. Southwest, with some prodding from O, was gracious enough to let us change the tickets we had for later this month to the very next day at no upcharge. Thanks, Southwest.

When we first visited her, she was emaciated and incoherent, but her face lit up when she recognized us. She can barely talk, but she managed to ask, "How are you?"

"We're good," said O.

Mom scowled. "You're not good. You're well," she croaked, an English teacher to the last.

O and I smiled at each other and said simultaneously, "She's back!"

Phyllis Jane in happier days.

Over the few days we were there, she gradually got better, with more moments of lucidity, and a slowly improving appetite. Now, a week and a half later, she's been moved out of the hospital into rehab, where they hope to get her eating and walking again.

But it's touch and go. She still isn't eating enough to sustain herself, though her appetite is better. The doctor says she'll be in rehab for two weeks, then we'll have to make a decision about next steps. If she recovers further, she can go to a managed care facility, or even home, though that's a long shot at this point. If she continues to decline, then she'll go into hospice care--at home, we hope.

So we wait and see, wait and see.

P.

That Word Does Not Mean What You Probably Think It Means.

I love the many misuses of English generated by Asian English users, but this example from a Japanese department store is one of my favorites.

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Eat Your Boogers!

It might be good for you. Check out this link. Even if it doesn't convince you to start snot gobblin', you'll learn far more about mucus than you know now.

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If The Snow Won't Come To Us...

No snow in Boise so far this season, other than a sprinkling one night last week. Everyone tells us they've never seen it so dry. There's enough static electricity in our clothes to power a small town.

Now we're not big snow fiends--don't like driving in it, shoveling it, or scraping it off the car--but WTF happened to our White Christmas? I mean, if you have to live in the cold you should at least have that to look forward to.

Alas, it was not to be. Christmas day was cold and clear and brown. So when our lovely friends the Smiths invited us to their cabin in Sun Valley for New Year's Eve, we hoped rather forlornly we might get to see some of the white stuff after all.

The night before we left for the mountains it rained in Boise, so our hopes were high for snow at higher elevations.

 And indeed there was a light blanket of powder on the peaks. The downside was that 

the roads leading to Sun Valley were a bit treacherous, but we drove slowly and carefully

and eventually reached our destination.

 After an excellent lunch, Steve and Jeanie drove us from 

their house to the Sun Valley Lodge. The snow was pretty light 

even here, but we were grateful for what we had.

 We enjoyed a delicious dinner and a happy New Year's Eve with our friends. 

The next day, we walked with them to the river which runs close by their home. 

The path was slippery, but the scenery was worth the effort.

That afternoon, we drove back to Boise. Most of the ice had melted from the roads, so we made good time. Thanks, Smiths, for a very happy, and snowy,New Year!

P.