machtyn.com

Okay, so I’ve been getting a little jealous of all the blogging going on. And I want to say stuff, but have been swamped… er, overwhelmed at all the projects that have yet to get done. More on the projects later.

Anyway, here I am starting yet another project, and already I don’t like where this is headed. Let me tell you. The one thing that really, REALLY annoys me are blog postings that are optimized for an 800×600 screen resolution. Good Grief! Most of you out there, if you don’t have a flat panel monitor have a 17″ or 19″ CRT monitor. Their native resolution is 1024×768. If you have a flat panel, it is likely 1024×768, 1280×1024, or something higher. If you have a widescreen flat panel, it is likely 1440×900 or 1280×960. As you can see, none of these are even close to 800×600.

Why am I complaining about this? It’s because when I view a post, it is usually accompanied with pictures… which is great. What isn’t great is that I get 2 or 3 words at most per line.

So you get this much text per line. It just doesn’t work.

Anyway, I’m going to hijack my wife’s page and upload a treat for everybody. Her link is to the right. Enjoy.

I’ll eventually fix this layout or create my own… this width issue stinks.

Update: Okay, the width looks fine. But this template had a nice little shading thing going on. I need to bring that out again. Be careful! I just learned what CSS is and I’m not afraid to use it!

So I was tagged by Marla. Here are the instructions:

• Find the book closest to you with at least 123 pages.
• Turn to page 123.
• Find the fifth sentence.
• Post the next 3 sentences.
• Tag 5 people.

There are three books piled on top of each other on my computer desk. They are:
1. Are Mormons Christians? by Stephen E. Robinson. Technically there are over 123 pages, but from page 115 to 133 there are only footnotes and the index, so I guess this book is excluded. I will say that it is a very informative book. Many LDS people are perplexed by the question posed by the title, but in the book the author explains where the question comes from, then proceeds to logically explain to people of other faiths why the accusation of Mormons not being Christians is flawed. Good book.
2. Hymnbook. I could go to hymn number 123 (I don’t think it is technically on page 123, but whatever), and find the 5 sentence, but there are no sentences after that (and besides, I don’t really feel like it).
3. What to Expect the First Year by Heidi Murkoff, Arlene Eisenberg, and Sandee Hathaway, B.S.N. – so here it is.
The hunger cry is often preceded by hunger cues, such as lip smacking, rooting, or finger sucking. Catch on to the clues, and you can often avoid the tears.
“I’m in pain.” This cry begins suddenly (usually in response to a stimulus – for instance, the jab of a needle at shot time) and is loud (as in ear-piercing), panicked, and long (with each wail lasting as long as a few seconds), leaving the baby breathless. It’s followed by a long pause (that’s baby catching his or her breath, saving up for another chorus) and then repeated, long, high-pitched shrieks.
“I’m bored.“

That is pretty exciting stuff! I should have pretended I didn’t see the tag, judiciously place intellectually stimulating or exciting books close by, then read Marla’s blog again. Sorry!

I tag Meredyth, Marlene, Karen, Shanda, and Malauna. If you’ve already been tagged, sorry.

Addendum: Okay, I don’t follow directions so well. I was reading someone else’s blog who had been tagged in a similar manner, and I noticed that the instruction was to write the next three sentences. I wrote the next five. Sorry. But don’t you feel now that you have a better understanding of baby crying?

Tonight there was a lunar eclipse. It was really cool. I tried to take a picture of it, but my camera is not exactly designed to take awesome pictures of celestial bodies. So I took some pictures, but they are terrible, and I doubt you could even tell what you were looking at. So instead I took the old fashioned video camera outside and shot a quick video of it. I’ll try to post it in the next few days. (Jeff needs to take the camera and create a digital file of it.) In the meantime, here is a preview of the video. (I told you the pictures are really bad!)
In the mean time, here is a picture . . . This morning Rachel was sitting in her exersaucer. She spit up. Always on spit-up patrol, Scout dashed over to her, and Rachel immediately grabbed his ear. Scout just stood there saying, “okay, now how do I get out of this.” Rachel has a pretty good grasp!
Here is a picture of Rachel sneezing. I thought it was kind of funny.

Hi. I are Rachel. This has been a awful exciting week for me. First we had lots and lots of snow. I didn’t really play it it. Mommy says I too little. But Scout played in it, and he’s the same size as me!

Then one of Daddy’s friends at work sent me some really cool things. I got a hand-me-down new carseat. It’s a good thing too, cuz I is almost too big for the one I got when I got borned. She also sent me some new toyz. One is a train with numbers. I don’t really know my numbers yet, but Mommy said they’re numbers. Another is a spiral thingy that makes noise. I like noise. A lot. And the last thing is a castle that I can put shapes and letters in. Apparently there are four shapes and four letters, cuz that’s all the castle have. Cool, huh?
On Tuesday I ate cereal for the first time in my whole life. My first meal of cereal I ated in my carseat (you know the one, the one that’s too little). Buy my mommy bought me a fun little high chair that you can strap to the regular kitchen chair. It will convert when I are bigger into a booster seat. It’s wicked awesome. Mommy bought it from amazon. She ordered it on Wednesday, and it came Friday, so now I are in high chair heaven! I also learned how to hold my bottle all by my little lonesome. I think my milk tastes better when I holds it all by myself!

Thursday was Valentine’s Day. Daddy stayed home from work that day because he was sick. Poor daddy. He is feeling better now.

On Saturday we went to a swim meet where my cousins Austin, Waveny and Grace were competing. It was really fun. I can’t wait until this summer when mommy says we can go swimming.

It was a dark and stormy night. Well, it was dark and it was night anyway. Technically it wasn’t stormy, but it was stormy the night before, and the week before, and the week before that and, well, you get the picture. Anyway, back to our story, Rachel was starting to show signs that she wanted a little more chow than the bottle alone could offer, so we got ready for delicious rice cereal.

Rachel: Ah, what a nice nap. Do you know what would be nice right now? A nice delicious bottle of formula.

Mommy (aka Noelle): Well good morning (actually evening) Rachel, are you hungry?

Rachel: What did I just finish saying? Why don’t you ever listen to me? Of course I’m hungry!

Mommy: Okay, okay. Well, I have a special treat for you this evening for dinner.

Rachel: Oh yeah? What is it?

Mommy: Rice cereal.

Rachel: Never heard of it.

Mommy: Well, you are going to love it, (aside) I hope.

the audience laughs

Mommy: Everything’s ready.

Rachel: Okay, let’s give this a try.

The video is six minutes and 15 seconds long. There is not much of a plot – think Napoleon Dynomite – but it’s still cute. The lighting is not very good (sorry – you know how these independent films can be) , but the acting is brilliant – the baby is especially believable!

I’ve heard rumors that solid food will make poopies more yucky (as if formula poopie isn’t yucky enough). Say it ain’t so!

You might have noticed the lack of a high chair. I don’t have one yet, so I just used her car seat. It worked okay. I have ordered a high chair, though, which I will hopefully have by next week. So stay tuned for next week’s episode of “The Rachel Show” where we will see our young heroine’s solid-food-eating skills improve, (we’ve already seen that she has plenty of bottle-eating skills – and by that I mean eating from a bottle, not actually eating a bottle!) and the addition of a cute little high chair.

It started snowing yesterday at around 4:00 p.m. By nightfall there was a pretty good layer of snow (around 4 inches). The forecast indicated that over night the temperature would go up (that’s weird!), and then we would get sleet and freezing rain, so I knew that if I wanted to enjoy some nice snow, we would have to play in it before we went to bed. After Rachel went down for the night, I took Scout outside. He loves the snow, but we don’t get much opportunity to enjoy it, so I wanted to take advantage of our chance. He romped and played, and had a great time.

Scout had to get dried off before he could come back in the house.
The sleet/freezing rain started around 11:3o pm or so. By morning there was a nice 1/4 inch sheet of ice on top of the snow. When I took Scout outside in the morning to do his business (Did you realize that Scout has his own business?), first he couldn’t get out the doggie door. He is used to the plastic just magically making way for his royal highness, but this time it didn’t move. With (very) little effort I kicked the ice out of the way and out he went. Scout has a weight problem, as in he doesn’t weigh enough. He often didn’t break through the ice, so he just slipped around. When he tried to step, especially with his bad leg that really doesn’t support any of his weight he slipped and slid. When he tried to make a corner, he skidded off his feet. It didn’t seem to bother him, though, because all during breakfast he kept asking to go out (as he does every morning when we’re eating breakfast).

Last night I shared the sweetest time with Rachel. She had been kind of cranky all day, mostly because she was tired, but couldn’t seem to get a good long nap in. She kept waking up after 30 – 45 minutes, and she needs a least one nap that is 1 1/2 hours or more. She finally got it kind of later in the day. At night when it was time for her to go to bed I had her all wrapped up like she likes, and was just sitting on my bed cuddling with her. Her right arm was tucked under my left arm, but her left arm was free. With her free arm she touched my neck, my chest, my chin and my mouth. Just soft gentle touching. It was so sweet it brought tears to my eyes, and I couldn’t help but think how lucky and blessed I am to have Rachel as my daughter. Even as I sit here typing this I am welling up with tears. I love her so much.

I thought I’d just throw in one picture. Here she is during her bath time. I was trying to give her a shampoo mohawk, but her hair on top is so long that it kept falling over. It is now my quest to give her the most awesome shampoo mohawk ever. I’ll keep you informed of my progress, don’t you worry about that!

Jeff here:

Sorry for the hijacking of this post . . . It is something that I can’t leave to just one or two posts on inconsequential forums. So, I’m going to let our friends know my feelings.

Noelle has mentioned she doesn’t want to turn this blog into a political forum . . . I just can’t remain silent.

McCain’s ONLY chance to win is to put Romney as his VP. It is his ONLY chance. Otherwise Hillary or Obama will utterly DESTROY him in the general election.

True Conservatives will sit on their hands.
True Conservatives know that you don’t turn your backs on veterans as McCain has done in 1994.
True Conservatives know that you don’t limit political free speech.
True Conservatives don’t grant amnesty to lawbreakers.
True Conservatives don’t RAISE taxes on gasoline to cater to global warming nuts and ruin the US economy.
True Conservatives know that “It’s the economy, stupid!” The economy, which McCain admitted in December he doesn’t know much about, is what defeated Communism, what will beat China, and is what the terrorist will attack (WTC) as much as possible. A weak economy will be our destruction.
A True Conservative knows that you don’t ask JOHN KERRY to be his running mate and ask to switch to the liberal Democrats.
A True Conservative does NOT lie about his opponents and then deny lying even when everyone, EVERYONE, calls you on it.
A True Conservative, is NOT John McCain. And the ONLY, ONLY, ONLY way to win the Presidency is to beg and plead for Mitt Romney to be his running mate.

/end threadjack