I Miss Abby and Jilly

The wife and the Bug have been gone for the last couple of days and I've really been missing them so I made this. If you can watch this and not instantly love Abby you have no soul and no heart. Enjoy!

Youthful Senility

I realize that it's been a while since I last posted anything, but I do have a somewhat legitimate excuse: I haven't been near a computer. Now obviously that's not entirely true, but it's mostly true. After packing up and saying goodbye to my beloved Bay City, TX we took 5 days to drive back to Provo. We decided to make a vacation out of it and stop by my sister's in Dallas, my Mission President's in Farmington, NM and various Utah national and state parks. All in all it was a great little trip. Almost as soon as we got back to Provo we headed 800 miles north to Spirit Lake, Idaho for my wife's family reunion. So as you can see my life has been in a transitory state as of late and has allowed little time for adequate blog entry reflection. Now that I have had some time to settle down and reflect upon any significant revelation of the last month I have arrived at the rather disturbing conclusion: I may be losing my mind. Let me explain.

For some reason ever since I got back from my mission 2 years ago a portion of my brain has slowly started to decay, leaving me with somewhat of an absent mind. A classic example of the kind of predicaments my absent mindedness puts me in occurred some months ago as I was exiting the grocery store. To make a long story short I unfortunately locked my groceries in the trunk along with my keys. Fortunately, I have a strange habit of unlocking my car door about a million times as I approach it. This allowed me to then climb into the back seat of the car to see if my back seats would fold down allowing me access to the trunk. Being out of luck with the seat I decided to call my next door neighbor and have him run me over my spare set of keys. As I sat in the back seat of my car I decided to use my honed engineering mind to brainstorm of a failsafe that could be implemented in cars that could be used in situations similar to mine. After about a minute I arrived at the conclusion that there should be some sort of button that.... oh yea. I called my friend back and told him that I had miraculously gained access to my trunk.
Now I know that you must be thinking that all of us have brain farts from time to time and that I'm overreacting when I say that my brain is decaying. But what if you were to have 4 similar "car keys" experiences in 5 days? Would you start to worry then? I'll let you be the judge.

Thurs Aug 23rd: Ever since I was about 6 or 7, bathing myself has been an activity that I could easily handle alone. Apply soap to body, shampoo to hair, rinse with water, you're done. Not much too it. Due mostly to the wife, however, I now have a much wider selection of soaps and cleansers at my disposal. This has not been too much of a problem, however, as I have taken these new options in stride. On Thursday morning it all went terribly wrong. After having used the special face soap and applying a healthy dose of shampoo into my right hand the soap bar unexpectedly slipped off its place and went sliding to my feet. After some difficulty I succeeded in securing it yet again in its proper spot. Somehow in the time that elapsed while chasing after the soap bar I had forgotten that I had already washed my face and didn't remember until I had attempted to do it again with a palm full of shampoo. At first I thought, "Good night this is a lot of face wash", but soon realized my error.

Sat Aug 25th: Every year at the Myers' Family Reunion we never fail to make a stop by a fancy hotel/restaurant on the shore of Coeur D'Alene lake to enjoy some killer desserts. As I dropped my wife and daughter off at the front my wife asked if I could remember to bring the diaper bag, I of course told my wife that it would be no problem. After driving up 4 levels in the parking garage I finally found a spot. When I finally met back up with my wife down at the restaurant she asked if I had brought the bag. I immediately turned around.

Sun Aug 26th: Since I was leaving back to Utah a few days before my wife, she tried her best to make my packing as easy as possible. She put all of my toiletries in a separate bag and reminded me to not forget the bag. After about 4 hours of being on the road with my brother-in-law, my still existent clammy morning breath alerted me to the fact that that morning I had forgotten to stop by the bathroom altogether. That toiletry bag never had a prayer.

Mon Aug 27th: With no wife and child for a few days I decided to get some good guy time in with my brother and rent a video game. The Blockbuster near my brother's house didn't have the game we wanted so we decided to travel the extra couple miles to the next Blockbuster. We got the game we wanted, but upon arriving back at my brother's we found out the game didn't work. Steve had to take care of his kid and asked me if I would be so kind as to go exchange the game. As I got to the out-of-the-way Blockbuster I informed the worker that the game we rented didn't work and that I would like to exchange it. She took the video game case and opened it to check the disc for any visible damage.... Do I really even have to tell you the rest? I forgot the dad gum game at my brother's.

Now I know this was an incredibly long post, but then again I did an incredible amount of dumb things in the past week. So now do you agree that I'm losing my mind? Whether you do or you don't you can still enjoy this slideshow of Abby.

A Man's Man.

So this past week Jill said that she noticed our brakes were grinding just a tad. This was not the greatest of all news. Although I've probably had less than my fair share of car problems (I think Steve somehow got my share) and this didn't seem to be a major malfunction, I still felt a tad miffed about my responsibility of getting this fixed. This might have had something to do with the fact that I feel about as comfortable walking into an autoparts store to pick up some brake pads as I do walking into the grocery store to pick up some maxi pads. I, like many other males whose responsibility it is to maintain the family automobile, am a car-idiot. Like any other car-idiot, I solicited the help of someone less stupid than me.

Upon asking my boss, Chris, if he knew a reliable place in town to get my brake pads fixed, he informed me that it was a simple procedure and that he would take a look at it on Saturday. So I went to Autozone, waited in line next to a 300 pound, goateed feller with a fish hook in his hat (now here's a guy who could buy the super plus tampax and look you straight in the eyes!), got my brake pads, and went to Chris's well-equiped garage. I think that was only time in my life when I actually hoped that there was something wrong with my brake pads. The last thing I wanted was for my boss to inform me that I was a complete idiot and that I should go return my brake pads (I figured if I went back to Autozone my odds of meeting ol' Fish Hook Hat were pretty good). But lucky for me, my brake pads were worn down and needed to be replaced. So after Chris and his 11 year old daughter finished replacing my brake pads I went home and thought of some way that I could repay them. After some thought I decided to continue my day of masculine activities and make Chris some of my famous brownies.

As I looked over the recipe I thought back on an experience I'd had several weeks prior. We were having dinner over at another couple's house and we were in charge of dessert. Naturally I wanted to make my famous brownies, but I didn't have the recipe. I called my parents and my dad (Doug) promptly gave me the recipe. I starting gathering the necessary ingredients for the dough, just as I had done dozens of times before, when I noticed that it called for 2 cups of butter. While cramming 4 cubes of butter into a bowl I vocally expressed some doubt as to whether this was the correct amount of butter. I tried calling my dad again to double check the recipe, but he didn't answer. I then proceeded to call all the females in my family (the only others who rival my brownie prowess) to double check. None of them had the recipe on hand or seemed too sure as to the correct amount of butter, just that every time they make the brownies they always think "man, that's a lot of butter." So after talking it over some more I mustered up enough confidence to proceed. I will now attach the email I sent out the following day.

"Hey, I just thought I warn you that even though the Thayer's famous favorite brownie recipe calls for a lot of butter, the quantity of butter should not make your brownie dough runny. At first the decreased viscosity of the dough will probably be blamed on the low elevation or the different brand of flour, all very interesting arguments. However, in the end, if you don't catch yourself in time and you decide to bake your brownie mix that contains not 1, or 2, or 3, but 4 STICKS of butter and bring those brownies over to your neighbor's house and have their 2 year old eat them, I suggest the following course of action. #1, don't panic, the brownies should come out aesthetically fine. #2, never reveal the true amount of butter, although after the brownie greases its way down your friend's throat the question may arise. And #3, promptly rename your dessert, Baked Chocolate Butter.
Thank you"

I made sure when making the brownies for Chris that I used two cubes and not two cups of butter.

Gigantaornithophobia (Fear of big birds)

Howdy! I figure after about a week or so since my last post I owe it to my adoring fan(s) (I love you Stuv) to add another one. This last weekend the wife, the bug, and myself took a little trip to the city so great that it almost redeems Texas. That city is of course San Antonio. In my opinion, it's the most beautiful mountainless city in the US. It is important that I include "mountainless" as a qualifier because I have been recently told that Cheyenne, Wyoming is absolutely gorgeous. We took a tour along the beautiful Riverwalk. It had almost a European feel to it. We also went to the Guinness Book of World Records Museum, which ironically enough is in the Guinness Book of World Records for being the most overpriced museum on earth. We also went to the Alamo. It's some famous brick barn. I think Johnny Appleseed died there or something. For our sleeping accomdations we chose the luxorious America's Best Value Inn a few miles outside of downtown. We tried checking into a hotel closer to downtown, but they said they were all booked. One kind hotel guy pointed us to a "less expensive place that keeps its rooms clean." Jill didn't want to stay there though. She has this weird phobia of staying in one-story motels with barbed wire chain link fences and barred windows. It was either that or her fear of sleeping across the street from a graveyard (all 100% true!). Whatever the reason we decided to go a tad further outside of town.

Speaking of phobias, on the following day we decided to go the Wildlife Reserve to take a safari Texas style. It was actually a lot of fun. I also found out something about myself. I have Gigantaornithophobia, or fear of man-sized birds. This is well documented in the attached video (Perhaps you could check the severity of my psychological condition Steve). I think this all goes back to the Big Bird movie I used to watch as a kid. There was this evil bird, whose name escapes me but I will refer to as Roger, that was after Big Bird and it scared the crap out of me! I honestly have a vivid picture of Roger’s face in my mind. There's this scene where Big Bird hides in this haystack to avoid being caught and probably tortured by Roger. Now that I think about it, this may have something to do with my fear of haystacks as well. I mean, if friggin Big Bird can hide in a haystack there's no telling what's lurking in there! At any rate, a great weekend of discovery all around.

Mike

A new species found at the Texas State Aquarium

With the promise of dolphins, gators, blowfish, and for some reason birds, the Texas State Aquarium seemed the perfect choice for a fun filled weekend activity. I charged my camera batteries extra long to ensure that my mighty Pentax Optio 30 would be ready in a moment's notice to capture that perfect shot of many an elusive aquatic beast. As we started our tour of the aquarium I was mildly impressed as we saw crabs, seahorses, clown fish, and the like. The neon jellyfish were actually quite impressive. As we watched the dolphin, diver, and bird shows (why again is there a bird show at an aquarium?) I let the lame, child-directed commentary pass over me knowing that I was putting up with it only for my daughter's sake... of course my daughter is only 10 weeks old... That probably explains why she didn't get along with the other kids very well last week at Chuck E. Cheese (If I served crappy pizza I would probably avoid the word "chuck" in my company name). I think maybe I should ease up on the fathering.
At any rate, back to the aquarium. So after all the shows (technically in between the dolphins and the birds) the sad realization began to set in that I would probably not come away with the rare picture of wildlife that I was looking for. But then, all of the sudden, that realization came to a screeching halt.
My heart jumped up into my throat and then slowly sank to my stomach. There it was. The rare species that I had longed for. I made sure not to make any quick movements as not to alarm it. I had seen plenty of episodes of Planet Earth and felt well trained for this moment. I took three quick pictures hoping to capture the perfect angle. Here is a rare look at a young Texas Mullet Whitetail. I'd say judging by it's movements and craving for blue slushees that it's a male and by the length of the tail he's got to be between 10-12 years old. One of the true wonders of Texas wildlife. Oh yea, we also saw a paraplegic turtle that was hit by a boat propeller. The awesome video is attached.

Welcome to my blog

Welcome family and friends to Son of Doug, Dad of Bug at 25centgrasshopper. Before going on to the particulars I will answer the question that I'm sure you all are asking yourselves right now: "Why did I limit my welcome to only family and friends?" Well, there were several reasons. Right off the bat I knew I could exclude any Internet predators from my welcome because it clearly states at the top of my blog that although I am a son, I'm also a dad, so that puts me safely outside their target range. My enemies were also excluded from my welcome because I want them to know that 25centgrasshopper is hostile ground for those that wish to draw swords with the likes of me, or just me. Do you see how serious I am? Not only should "those who wish to draw swords with me" feel threatened, but even if you weren't fully committed to being my enemy and only hated me enough to draw swords with the "likes of me" that still counts. I still declare all out war. That's how tight me and my likes are. You wanna mess with the likes of me? Well you're gonna have to come through me! Finally, my main reason for limiting my welcome to just family and friends is for the sake of brevity.
With that said I welcome you to my blog and hope you enjoy my subsequent postings.

Mike Thayer, Son of Doug, Dad of Bug