Sunday, April 19, 2009

Geekalishious

I was recently given a booked titled "Are You a Geek? 10^3 Ways to Find Out". The fact that I went on to spend several hours taking the Geek Quiz in the book should answer the question of my geekdom in and of itself. The results were quite conclusive. According to the book I am a geek. As such it is safe to speak to me, but they don't recommend making eye contact. My score was 937. To be classified as a geek one needs a score between 300-1000. If I had earned 74 more points I would have claimed the title of ubergeek. The book recommeds limiting all communications with ubergeeks to email.

In a way I wish I'd meraculously achieved a score of 2000 points so I could claim to be a nerdmeister general. I do like the sound of that title. Unfortunately, I wasn't bullied enough as a child. I can't speek clingon, and I have never had a sexual fantisy about any characters from Highlander. So I'm just a regular old geek. The nerdmeister general title is reserved for people who play dungions and draggons and avoid bathing.

Wednesday, April 15, 2009

Happy Tax Day

In case you haven't noticed, I have run out of ways to blog about spelling. So I'm starting to just blog about normal life. When spelling related issues come to mind, I will try to include them - but there is really only so much that can be said about phonix.

Anyhoo - today is April 15th. So I wanted to wish you all a happy tax day. Most people don't consider April 15th a major holiday, but when I was growing up it was an even bigger day than Xmas. My dad is a CPA, so the end of his hellish work schedule always called for a major celebration. I was probably in 4th or 5th grade before I figured out that the rest of the world doesn't celebrate April 16th.

Now that I am an adult, I don't really celebrate the end of Tax Season any more. I am getting together with my parents this weekend to help them celebrate. My brother is even traveling down from Seattle to help join in the festiviaties. Even if April 16th is no longer bigger than Xmas, it is still at least as big as Thanks-jiven.

This year my parents are just having a "staycation" since the economy is so crappy. But when I was growing up April 16th often warented a trip to Disneyland or some other fabulous destination.

So if you are a CPA - congrats on survive another tax season. If you aren't a CPA, at least you hopefully got a refund in the mail from the IRS. And given todays economy, a check in the mail is a cause for celebration. So go out and buy some groceries and have yourself a feast.

Friday, April 10, 2009

Facinating People

An aquaintance of mine has taken to blogging about the most facinating people he knows – I have no idea why he hasn’t interviewed me yet. He is on an unussual quest to find the most facinating person in the world by means of interviewing the most interesting friend of each of his interesting friends. The idea is rather novel, and has caused me to think about the mesmurizing characteristics of my own friends. This has lead me to an odd realization – I don’t have any facinating friends.

I would describe all of my friends as kind. As a general principle, I try to always loose mean peoples phone numbers. I also have a number of friends that are very intellegent – many of whom are experets on fasinating topics. But does my best friends PhD in imunoligy coupled with her indepth knowledge of the effects of phomonia on lung tissue make her a fasinating person, or simply a noble person?

The most catigorically fasinating person I have known is my dad’s brother Dick. My Uncle Dick died last November, so I can no longer truly claim to know him. I clearly cannot call him up for an interview. Thinking of my Uncle Dick in memorandum, it is impossible to describe him as anything other than fasinating. He was an inovative artist who developed new ways to view and manipulate color and light. He saw the world in a unique way and constantly strived to introduce others to his vission.

But when Dick was alive, I never would have described him as mesmurizing. I regularely called him weird, crazy, and certifiable – all in a loving familial way of course. Dick had so much passion for his work that he would frequently launch into unsolicited sermons about the devine powers of color, light, and pattern. He often sounded like a television evangelist. Dick was quite popular in many artistic circles and managed to convert a few followers to his artistic voodoo, but he never received anything but rolling eyes and groans from his nearest and dearest.

Attending parties with Dick’s friends was a particularely unusual experience. Like Dick, most of his friends viewed themselves as facinating people, busy in the act of enlightening humanity. As a result, nobody cared about anything but themselves and their own personal artistic agendas. An artistic coctail party seemed to be nothing more than a number of independent monologs all being recited in parallel. People may have paused out of curticy to allow others to speak, but nobody ever said anything that related to anyone but themselves.

In short, I don’t think facinating people are all that kind. Which is why I have so few facinating friends. Occationally my own huberis creaps up on me and I begin to think of myself as facinating. So I would like to publically invite all my friends to keep me in line. The next time you hear me talking about myself at a cocktail party – please tell me to shut up. I would rather know how to listen, than know how to mesmurize.

Tuesday, April 7, 2009

Do you want to white wash my fence?

This past weekend I had a total Tom Sawyer experience. A little over a year ago our fence blew down in a wind storm and landed in our neighbors yard. We replaced the fallen down fence that winter but put off fixxing the still standing section until summer. Then last summer we got so busy enjoying the beautiful weather that we never finished replacing the fence. So we last weekend provided a some beautiful spring weather we opted to attack the rest of the fence.

As we were working our next door neighbors grandson walked over and asked us what we were doing. When we asked him, "Do you want to dig a hole?"

He responded, "Yeah."

The kid was ten maybe eleven years old and the post hole digger was almost as tall as he was. Yet he spent hours digging out all the post holes - a job I througly hate and was glad to pass of on an unsuspecting child. Once all the post holes were dug the kid helped me mix the concrete to set the new posts. About that time his brother and sister wandered over and wanted to help too. Before I knew it I had kids fighting over who got to do the most manual labor.

I always thought that Tom Saywer was the master of trickery, but this past weekend I realized that sometimes kids just have odd views of what classifies as entertainment. So if you want to white wash my fence drop on by, I may be able to put you to work.