Be The Pigeon

Been a while since I've had any reason (or time) to blog. This one was fun, though. Yesterday, I went to my 3rd BYU football game of the year. The first two were pretty much duds, though still fun. Yesterday's game, though, was altogether different. They finally found their mojo! I had seats on the front row of the visitor section of the CSU stadium in Ft Collins. 4 foot of legroom in front of me, and polite fans behind me. Couldn't ask for more except for the 35-degree weather. CSU has had a bum season, and all their fans either gave up or just got so wasted they couldn't find their way into the game. Either way, the home side was less than half full at peak, and by mid way through the game, it was an embarrassment. The game was 100% BYU. 35-0 at half time. Each time the team scored, the TV cameras came over to do the dutiful screaming-fan pan. As we were on the front row, I got face time with every touchdown. I'm not very well practiced as a screaming...

I've been traveling lots lately for work. The joy of traveling is that I get to observe firsthand how obnoxious society has become. For example, I find idiot guys talking on their phones in the bathroom every week now. Stalls, urinals, everywhere. Yeah, it's totally acceptable for you to talk to your boss while taking care of business. NOT! This week I was in Omaha. Went through security and got tagged for the "backscatter" machine. If you haven't been watching the news lately, these are the machines that have x-ray vision to ensure there's no sharp objects hidden in my armpits. I've gone through these machines several times before, and I've learned that you need to remove EVERYTHING from your pockets to avoid problems. This time, I went through a different form of machine, so I didn't think to remove my wallet, and Mr. TSA didn't ask me if I had anything in them. That's me in the photo! After I got scanned, he asked what was in m...

I suck at blogging now. I freely admit it. The good news is that I know no one really cares. I just finally figured out how to get pictures off my iPhone (which I've had for 4 months or so), and I managed to grab pictures from lots of different activities this summer that I meant to report on, but which got forgotten. So, working backwards in time, here's some neat things I've been involved in. LA Trip I have been traveling lots for work in recent months. Recently I had a trip to SoCal and managed to take an evening to go back to the Los Angeles Temple, where I was sealed to my parents in 1979. To my knowledge, I hadn't been back since. Just prior to that, I also drove over to Santa Monica and found the house my grandparents lived in until I was 12 or so. The home is nearly completed obscured by landscaping now. Absolutely amazing neighborhood, though. It's within walking distance of the beach, right up on the hill above the Santa Monica Pier. Serious bucks...

When I was a kid, my parents taught me in the ways of the force by having me scoop dog poop and mow the lawn on our hilly yard. I hated it. No, I loathed it. Now as I raise my own kids, and though we don't have any animals, it's fun to pass down the tortuous activities. A month or so ago I decided Amy was old enough to learn how to check, start, and run the mower. At first it was fun for her, new activity and all. I had her help me push the mower around the yard, and she enjoyed helping her dad out. Shortly after that I informed her that it was her turn to mow the front yard all by herself. Insert weeping, wailing, and general girl drama. However, after a tough 20-30 minutes, she got it done. Since then, I've had her do it a couple more times, and though the wailing and drama always precede the work, Amy has really stepped up to get it done. It's made me proud of her. Pushing that no-frills mower around our not-flat yard isn't easy. I'm sure it'...

We're having all sorts of interesting home-related things right now, it seems. A couple weeks ago Jo told me to "come here" while she was in the other room in the basement. It was one of those "come here now" kind of inflections, so I complied immediately. I went over and saw a nice fresh hole in one of our window wells. The wells are 5 feet deep or so, so this was surprise. We definitely had an uninvited guest who was a digger. We stood there long enough to even have a welcome-to-the Kline-zoo experience through the glass by watching Mr Digger come up to dump some of this dirt. I think he even smiled at me faintly. My enemy was visible. Jo looked it up online and found that it was most likely a mole (did I get that right?) We went over to Home Depot and observed a plethora of rodent-killing options (who would have known?) I settled on the pyrotechnic approach and bought gopher-bombs. After all, fire is the answer to many of life's toughest proble...