O' Christmas Tree

My wife and I went up into the mountains today (well, now, yesterday) in search of a Christmas tree. The whole ride back I was formulating a blog posting about my disdain for popular culture's excuse for Christmas music. I've decided that post will be for another time... but definitely in the next few days.

Right now, that tree is what's on my mind - and not for any good reason, either.

I'll start this off by saying that I should have learned my lesson last year.

The first Christmas my wife and I were together we started a tradition of having a real Christmas tree in the house. We had both grown up with artificial trees, for whatever reason neither of us are certain. So picking out a Christmas tree for us has become a tradition that we look forward to each year.

Up until last year, we would go to the same Christmas tree vendor - a friend of ours from my wife's home church who has his own Christmas tree business. He would always help us pick out a great tree (although one year we got one that thought it was Spring again and started dripping sap all over the presents), recut it, drill it, bale it, and load it on our car.

But last year we went to a "choose and cut" Christmas tree farm in Maggie Valley, NC, picked one out, had it cut, they did the drill, bale and load routine, and we brought it home. Then I found out not only was the bore crooked, but the cut was also.

So I borrowed a friend's drill bit because I didn't have size that I needed, broke out my excuse for a handsaw, and went to work fixing the tree. A hour later, there it stood, in its stand, ready to be decorated.

This year, we went to a different tree farm - figured we'd try a different place. And this one definitely was different.

They had Santa in a little cabin, a lake with fish and ducks, a store, a wreath making department, a (small) fire for roasting marshmallows, a few wooden elves and snowman for children to stick their heads through and get their pictures taken with, about 3 or 4 times as many trees to choose from, a hayride... and about two or three hundred families each with at least two or three kids.

Understandably, I can imagine that all of that compounded on top of the holiday craziness can stress out and distract the people that work there.

Well, we took our hayride to the top, picked out our tree, they tagged it, we rode back down, got some hot cocoa, roasted a couple marshmallows and went to go get our tree and head back home.

They didn't have our tree. We waited - for 45 minutes. They hunted. They didn't have our tree.

Me and our first tree (the one they lost)

Now I can imagine what Clark Griswold would do in a situation like this and it probably wouldn't have been as nice or diplomatic as how I handled it; but I definitely was rather annoyed. I explained we had just driven nearly three hours, we both really liked the tree we had picked out and since they had lost it, we'd like to pick out another. So with what little light was left, we went back up the mountain, found another one, loaded it, and headed home.

Three hours later, I'm hunting down the trusty handsaw and wishing I had that drill bit back. I've been working with one not quite the size I need and it's just not doing the job.

Had I not asked for a discount because of the fact they had lost our first tree, I would have been really, really mad to have paid the full amount only to find out that the cut and the bore in this tree are so crooked you would have thought the Christmas tree farm was run by a bunch of Democratic congressmen.

Needless to say, there's been a lot of unChristmaslike language targeted at the tree in the last two hours. I've got about an inch of the tree mount pin in the tree so it's a balancing act right now.

There's about at least a vaccuum bag's full of needles on the carpet. And I don't know how much sap I just washed off my hands into the sink.

Home Depot is going to be seeing me in the morning. For some lucky drill bit and power saw, they're going to see a new home in the morning. And that tree is going to see the business end of both.

Sidenote: If you've never been to Black Mountain, NC, you need to stop at Berliner Kindl. It's a German restaurant and deli - and they have the best sauer kraut and German potato salad I have ever had.

Giving Thanks

On this day of Thanksgiving, my wife and I had the opportunity to see her sister's family - our neice and two nephews - and have lunch with them. Due to an unforseen turn of events due to a new home kitchen glitch, lunch was at Fatz. Then we spent a little bit of time with them at their house -- playing scrabble with the nephews and chasing the neice around the house.

Then on to my sister's house to spend the evening with her and her husband and our newborn neice Laken, along with my parents and several members of my brother in-law's family. I'm extremely thankful this year for such a blessing in our family, Laken's birth, her good health, and her spirit. That, and I'm very thankful that my parents don't live in Indiana anymore and we are able to see them more often and on holidays.

People don't always give thanks for the good things in their lives. I am as guilty of that as the next person.

Giving thanks for God's gifts is something that we shouldn't just reserve for one day out of the year, but should practice every day, every year.

What am I thankful for this year? The same things I am thankful for each day.

My safety, my job, my cars for not giving me any major problems lately, my country, my freedom.... all kinds of little things and bigger things.

My friends... ( I really have some awesome ones)

Our men and women in the armed forces....

And above all, my family, my wife, and my God and savior.

For all of you out there to whom I haven't wished a Happy Thanksgiving, I extend those belated wishes to you.

Meet Molly-Kate

Molly-Kate is my oldest neice. She turned three today. Here's some of my favorite shots I took today at her birthday party.

Excitement

Deep thought

Curiosity

Welcome to The Husbands' Hangout

Usually when I go with my shopping with my wife it ends up be a very long, tiring experience - one which she tends to enjoy more than I do.

We went to our local mall this evening. It started off being a trip to buy one Hello Kitty themed item - a shirt, a pair of pajamas, something. No, I'm not into Hello Kitty. But my oldest neice is and her birthday is tomorrow.

I figured we'll hit one store, find something, buy it, and be done with it. At the first store we went into we found something my wife liked in minimal time.

Since I have a very 'get in, find the specific item as quickly as possible, buy it, and get out' mentality about shopping I thought "OK, item bought, time to go." Not so much.

Four stores and three hours later of trying to find something "better" (in my wife's opinion), with a brief stop in some gadget store that sells all kinds of cool electronic toys (can't remember the name of it), I start getting dragged into several of the smaller, more obscure children's stores.

At this point, well, frankly alot earlier, I was ready to go. My wife, not so much.

The unfortunate part(s) about our local mall is that it doesn't have any really cool "guy" stores, it doesn't take long to peruse the tool and electronics departments at Sears, and there is no arcade.

Here's the tangent to the story:

When I was little and I heard we were going to the mall, the only thing on my mind was going to the arcade, trying out the new games, and trying to kick my dad's butt at Defender.

Aladdin's Castle was the name of the arcade. And it was the end all, be all of video gaming for all males in the Venango County area of Pennsylvania. My dad and I spent many a quarter (actually, we had to trade our quarters in for tokens before playing) at Aladdin's Castle. Mom would disappear into the mall - sometimes dad with her, sometimes not - and I would immerse myself into a world of barrel throwing monkeys, cotrollable yellow blobs eating little dots, and centipede and millipede erradication.

I miss those video games. They're hard to find, but still so addictive. I actually saw one of my favorites - the Star Wars video game (the one where you get to pilot the X-wing down the trench of the death star) at a local comic book store recently. I asked how much they wanted for it; and needless to say it would take many years to gather enough quarters to purchase it.

OK, back to the main point of the post.

Midway through the second store of the night, I started to hatch an idea. Malls need to do something more for husbands.

My initial thought was to station a TV outside of the entrance to every women's dressing room area. You know, the area where the husbands stand around with an armload of bags, pacing back and forth, waiting on their wives to come out and say "What do you think about this on me" and the only thing you know they're all thinking is "As long as it gets me out the store quicker, it looks fine." The area where sometimes there may be one chair -- and nobody wants to be the one to sit in because you don't want to be a complete wuss in front of the other guys and you want to seem like a gentleman if there happens to be a daughter/child, mother, sister or female friend of someone who is in the dressing room and may want to sit down.

We're guys, we can take it.

Well, having a TV outside of the dressing room would be nice. But here's a better idea. It's called The Husband's Hangout and it's going to be my first business endeavor some time in the future. It will be franchised nationally at ever major shopping mall.

The exact schematics or floorplan, if you will, have yet to be determined, as well as its maximum capacity. But the experience would focus on The Chair.

Now this is not your average, ordinary lounge chair. It comes equipped with an Ipod docking station, wireless internet accessibility, head to toe heating and massage capability, and an integrated control pad that allows you to control.... wait for it...

Your own, individual monitor that swings out from behind the back of the headrest, swivels around, and locks in place at a comfortable distance for your viewing pleasure. The monitor allows you watch movies (you have access through your control to any movie ever released onto video) or any TV channel imaginable, play video games (you have access to any video game ever released), along with some other yet to be determined functionality.

From your lounge chair, you can order what's called Hangout Hospitality, i.e. the equivalent of room service. Have a burger, popcorn, or pizza and/or drink delivered to your chair from the in-facility kitchen.

Along with the yet to be exactly determined number of The Chair in each facility, there would be several foosball tables, air hockey tables, pool tables, several widescreen TVs on which groups of husbands can watch the game(s) of the day, and, yes ---- an old-style arcade, complete with all the best stand up arcade games and pinball games we played as youngsters.

The main rule of The Husband's Hangout:

• Only husbands are allowed in, and, even at that, only those husbands whose wives are currently shopping at that moment in that particular mall, and once their wives are done, they must leave until the next time they return to the mall with their wife

Obviously there are some logistical issues relating to verifying the conditions of the rule.

We don't want just any Joe Husband coming in off the street into the hangout. You can only be there while your wife is shopping at that mall. And we have to watch out for the single guys trying to take advantage of The Hangout's luxuries. Having single guys inside would defeat the purpose of The Hangout.

I guess we would have to implement some sort of membership. There's some other things that will need to be ironed out, but I think that can all be worked out over time before the first location opens.

Things I Would Have Asked During My White House Visit

Barack Obama met with President George W. Bush this week during his first visit to the White House as president-elect.

I can only imagine what an overwhelming, yet electric experience that would be for anyone in such a position. Such a historical event, in such a historical place.

No matter who the person, you have to respect the president, whether outgoing or incoming, the authority and trust they represent, and their role as our commander in chief. And to meet with the president, whether you're a common citizen or the president-elect, is an both an honor and a privilege. You have to be in awe of the White House itself too. It represents our 232 year history (Ok, it's a few years shy of that, itself), has countless stories to be told (and many secrets that we will never know about) and is the residence and office for the most powerful person in the world.

I've never met a president before. I met many presidential candidates and even met George W. Bush once during his 2000 campaign. I got him to autograph an issues publication of his.

That being said, if I were Barack Obama (or any president-elect meeting a sitting president in the White House the first time after the election), there are a still a few questions I would have to ask that probably are not on the typcial list of things to ask:

• Do we really have an alien ship stashed at Area 51?
• Will they let you hook a Playstation or a Wii up to the projection system in the White House theater?
• Have you ever wanted to go off script with a knock-knock joke?
• They do carry chocolate chip cookie dough ice cream in the kitchen, right?
• So this button right here, bad.. OK, and this one is for room service?
• Where are all the secret passageways?
• Think they would mind if I played paintball in Rose Garden?
• It's pretty fun to slide down the banister of the main staircase, isn't it?
• Those headphones they give you to listen to at international meetings -- you can plug those up to an Ipod, right?
• Can I issue an Executive Order that all of Congress participate in Dress Up As Your Favorite Star Wars Character Day?
• Have they ever let you go out into the woods with the presidential station wagon in the dead of winter to select and chop down the First Family's Christmas tree?
• Who do I need to to give a 6-month vacation to in order to be able to fly Air Force One for a few minutes?
• What's the best game you've ever bowled in White House bowling alley?
• There's a massager and heating unit built into the big chair in the Oval Office, right?
• Would you really call it an Oval, or more of a Circle or Ellipse?
• Will they let Air Force One buzz the tower at Andrews, or do they always say that the pattern is full?
• Which one of the foreign presidents/national leaders is the most fun to trade humorous email forwards with?
• Think they'll let me take Bill Clinton's picture down and replace it with a big orange Clemson Tiger Paw?

and --- drum roll, please.........................

• Hey, all these flashy screens and buttons in the Situation Room are really cool and make it look like something out of a sci-fi movie - don't you ever want to stroll in dressed as Darth Vader?

Election Day Part 4: So, So, So Disappointed

Damn.

That's pretty much all I have to say.

I wish us all good luck. We're going to need it.

This is not the change I was hoping for.

Don't get me wrong, I think it's wonderful that we've come to the point as a nation of Americans, brothers and sisters, to elect a minority president. I just wish it would have been someone else.

We're in for ... well, we're in for four years of socialist liberal policies that could potentially bankrupt our country, especially if we start spreading the wealth around too much.

We're in for tax increases. We're in for more entitlement programs. We're in for more government involvement in people's lives.

We're in for a signficant weakening of funding and support for the people who need that government involvement the most: our men and women in uniform. Iraq and Afghanistan will be in for a rough ride in turn. We could be in for more terrorist activity on our soil. Let's hope and pray that doesn't happen.

This is a dark, dark day for America.

We needed someone who would put us back on the map as a strong world power with a vibrant economy. That won't happen under Obama's watch, I can guarantee you that.

I guess we just ride out the storm the best we can and hope that someone better will come along in 2012 with the ability to fix the changes that Obama will screw us all up with.

Election Day Part 3: Problems and Solutions

What do you get when you are not told when you walk in the door which line to get into? (And you realize 30 minutes into your wait you should have been in the other line because of the first letter of your last name)

A lot of confusion and long-ass lines.

What do you get when you mix slow people, who have to flip through pages of books with the registration rolls on them, and record voter turnout?

Even longer lines.

What do you get when you mix people who don't know how to use technology along with long-ass lines?

Much longer lines.

How do we solve this?

Well, I have a couple of thoughts about that.

Solution I (please note this involves still going to the polls):
Our drivers licenses in South Carolina have bar codes on them. Supposedly, voter registration is tied into our driver's licenses.

I buy a box of Claritin a month. When I do this, they scan my license bar code. If they can scan my license in order to authorize me to purchase pseudophedrine, then I don't know why the same thing can't be done to verify people's voter registration.

When you go to a concert or sporting event nowadays, they will scan your ticket's bar code before you are let into the event. If this kind of technology exists, let's use it in other ways.

So we implement this how?

A person with a hand-scanner stationed at each door. You can't get into the building until your license is scanned. The scanner is linked wirelessly to a nearby computer which is linked with the central voter registration database. It verifies that you are registered. The person with the scanner verifies that you are the person pictured on the license. And you're good to go.

Then they tell you which of the (and let's not do two lines, let's do three or four) lines to split off to.

Things would go much faster.

Solution II:
I get that the integrity of the process needs to be maintained and that making sure the person voting is who they say they are is part of maintaining that integrity. So really, this solution might not be as practical as of yet given the limitations of technology from multiple standpoints... but, here goes.

When someone registers to vote, they file either a fingerprint or retinal scan (or both). And preferably this be done when they get their driver's license and all of that data linked between the DMV and Voter Services' offices.

When it comes time to vote, you go to your computer. You go to your state's election office's website. It prompts you for some login credentials - including your name, birthday, registration number, and a Personal Indentification Number that you create upon your initial registration to vote.

Then you use the web-cam in your computer for your retinal scan and/or the fingerprint reader for further security and to complete your login.

Then you come to a page or pages that has all your ballot. You cast your vote. You hit submit - and then the system submits your ballot and locks you out from further use until the next election.

And in conclusion...

OK, the realistic application of either method may not yet be practical. But one could only hope.

Here's another thing to consider... but this idea has it's own issues also.

There is no reason why in this day and age that as votes are cast on these electronic machines that the votes cannot be submitted in real-time, electronically, into any database in which they need to be registered so that a running count of the votes is available throughout the day, nationwide.

And here is the issue with that - if people know who is leading, it will end up not being about voting but more of a contest. The fairness of the election and of the voting could be questioned.

Regardless, there's a lot of things that our election officials could do to make the process easier and quicker. But we've got a process, and that's the most important point of all. We all have an equal opportunity to have our say about who sits in the Oval Office or who represents us on city council.

Election Day Part 2: The Return

All day long I had been hearing about long lines at the polling places. My boss didn't make it in until after 9 am this morning because of lines at his polling place. Another coworker of mine did the same thing I did this morning - went to vote, left, and planned to return later in the day.

I asked my boss today if he would mind if I leave by about half an hour early to give me some extra time if needed to stand in line to vote. He said as long as I was going to vote for McCain, no problem.

"Yeah, well, I would rather vote for Fred Thompson, but he didn't stick it out, so yes, McCain," I said, hopped in the car, and left.

As I neared the school where our precinct votes, I expected to see the infamous long lines of voters' cars I had been hearing about all day.

But the parking lot was almost vacant. When I got inside, there was nobody waiting to check in. And each of the dozen or so voting boxes had one person casting their vote.

I joked around with the ladies at the desk a little bit about the lines -- apparently it was non-stop until around 2 o'clock. Then it was steady for a while and slowed to a trickle a little bit before I arrived.

I asked if I could take a picture of the non-existent lines so I could post in on my blog, because I told them that some people may not believe me when I would tell them that at 5 pm there was no line whatsoever.

First off they didn't quite get what a blog is. Secondly, they didn't quite get why I wanted to take a picture to go along with it. And, third, they said no. They said cell phones are not allowed to be used inside a polling place.

I would have argued with them a little bit about the point that technically I wasn't going to use the phone to make a call -- but I didn't quite feel like arguing with a bunch of retirees. I did that at church once recently and it didn't turn out real well.

Anyway... my vote it cast. Not that it will really count much. But I know I voted - I would have felt guilty if I hadn't.

Now when people start bitching about how bad things under Obama will be and then how they have gotten, those that had been brainwashed into voting for him will have no room to talk because they're the fools that will have put him in office. And I will happily say, well, you should have voted for the other guy like I did.

Oh, and to top it all off, they were out of the "I Voted" stickers. Not that I really care, but I did ask about those -- and then told them that I'll just go out and purchase a "Hi, my name is" tag and write on it "I Voted" and wear that around for the rest of the day.

Election Day

I went to go vote this morning. I knew that there would be a high turnout today. But was both pleasantly and annoyingly surprised when I stepped inside the high school that is our polling place and the line was already at the door -- and mind you this is in a hall that's probably 100 or so feet long before you get to where the voting booths are stationed.

Ok... time to make a decision.

Decision made, I stepped into the line. Within 5 minutes, the line was already snaking around the corner of the building outside. Within another 10 minutes, the line in front of me had not moved.

I did some quick calculations. At this rate, I will make it to work at noon.

Sorry Johnny, I'll come vote for you this afternoon. I stepped out of line and headed to the car.

I guess I'll try to leave work a little early and go vote then. I'm sure the lines will be even longer, but then I won't have to worry about never making it to work.

On my way back to the car my thought was "Well, if they're all voting McCain that's a good thing." Then I noticed an Obama bumper sticker on a car pulling up to a spot near mine.

Well, OK - so maybe he'll only get 1 vote out of my precinct. I could only wish that out of all the voters nationwide today that one person would be the only one voting for Obama. Unfortunately, no such luck.