Family Trips

Last week I was able to post a blog even though I was at the Association of Missouri Cooperatives Member Services/Communications Conference. It was at the Lake of the Ozarks and one afternoon I got out of sessions early enough for Jill, Cannon and I to drive down to Ha Ha Tonka State Park. It was a mini-vacation for us as we haven’t really been able to travel as a family. I look forward to the time when we can take a full week and drive all night and all day to get three states away from wherever we are living to see something slightly different from our own back yard.

I remember trips with my own family very fondly now, although in the back of my mind I think I have blocked out a sufficient amount of bickering and complaining. I also remember very fondly one of the best trips of my life with Brandon, and partially Brain. But that will have to wait for another blog.

In lieu of doing a better job writing I am going to post some pictures from our trip. For those of you who haven’t been there, the ruins in the picture are of a castle-like mansion that was built on what is now the park. It burned in the 40’s and all that remains is these stately walls, which make good photo ops. I think that would be testament enough to the futility of wealth in this life, but on one of the signs we discovered that the man who bought the land and started the building died before he saw it finished. His son carried on but stopped well short of the grand plans his father had in mind. And then it all burned within a generation. Still many of us don’t even leave ruins. You can see more pictures at:http://picasaweb.google.com/aaronmash/HaHaTonka

Fall

It is almost fall. In fact, I was looking back at pictures, and this time last year most of the leaves had already changed color. Multi-colored leaves are something I like about fall. Fall used to be my least favorite season, but since I cannot get out to the Colorado mountains to ski anymore (and see Brandon), winter has won that honor. Here are some things I do not like about Fall.

• It's too cold. Mid to high 80's is the perfect weather, and 90 is better than 70.


• Baseball season ends.


• I still have to mow even though my yard looks gross.


• The garage has to be cleaned out so we can get the van back inside.


• Leaves add to yard work.


• Jill starts wearing more clothes.


• School starts. It seems like I've always had a reason to dislike this. I wonder if it will ever stop?


• No more swimming. I didn't go swimming once this summer, but it's the principal of the the thing.


• No more being outside without my shirt. Again it's the principal.


• Hayrides are not as fun as cookouts.


• Everybody seems busier with less enjoyable activities.

My father many years ago pointed out one of my flaws. (In case you are wondering; no, this is not a completely uncommon occurrence.) What made this incident stand out, is that it blindsided me (unlike when he mentioned I have "chicken legs"). I had failed to see this flaw in myself, but he was right. Dad said that I won't try things that I can't be the best at.

Many of you are laughing saying; "Aaron, if that were true you wouldn't do anything." Well there is a small change that needs to be made there. I won't try something unless I think I can be at least as good as the majority of the people around me.

In case you are wondering why I am sharing this; it has just come up lately, and I'm trying to do better.

http://d.yimg.com/us.yimg.com/p/umedia/20071005/cp.065c38ec7244315ec12961dc29661cf8

I don't know how long the above image will still be posted. I have read this one several times in the last week and I still laugh at it. The late eighties to early nineties was probably the golden age of comics (Calvin and Hobbes, Far Side, Bloom County) but right now we have new Get Fuzzy, Pearls Before Swine, and if you've ever worked in an office, Dilbert. I also regularly find Over the Hedge funny both in its drawing and odd take on suburbia.

A Little Me

Cannon is 15 months old. I have had nieces and a nephew, but he is the first kid I have been around enough to really influence. I know that this has been written about in thousands of books before, but it is still such a scary experience to see this kid do the things I do. For instance everything that has a handle and can be picked up is a light saber complete with sound effects. Thankfully he has his mother to be the positive influence. She’s the reason he will hand you his juice glass when he is done instead of just throwing it on the floor.

I finally finished reading Herman Melville’s The Confidence Man, and started a book that so far I highly recommend. It’s called Three Men in a Boat (to Say Nothing of the Dog). This is probably another case of me being the last to read a book that everyone I know already loves (I first read Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy when I was 25). But if you haven’t read it and you have some form of electronic device that can display text you can get it for free here, or you can have it read to you here.

An update from last week I finished the Protrade challenge 27^th. I made it to as high as second with 4 days left in the challenge, but fell steadily from there.

I found www.songmeanings.net this week which has the potential to be a site with endless hours of amusement possibilities. Unfortunately, it is mostly used by people to state their opinion that a band is cool. Still if you can suffer through several pages of that kind of thing you can get some interesting insight into song lyrics. I thought I would enjoy looking up the more vague songs that always make you ask, “I wonder what the meant by that;” however, the most amusing ones are for songs that are the most straight forward. I still remember a group of us in high school explaining to Tiffany that yes that is what the song meant.

Discipline

I have been pondering the idea of discipline lately. I remember in high school trying all sorts of things to become disciplined. I would never miss evening devotions, and I would make all sorts of lists and charts of things to do each day, or once a week or month. Eventually these all went by the wayside.

Today I am disciplined in nothing. I really mean nothing. I don’t think you could even say I was habitual in anything (except maybe scratching my feet, but that is new). (Oh and if Chris is reading this, I don’t even regularly rub my eyes anymore.) I look at my life: I have never been fired from a job; I have a decent house, a fantastic wife, and an almost perfect kid. Do I need to be disciplined?

Well, I think I do. I think that I have missed opportunities because I was not prepared for them. These are too numerous and varied for me to list tonight, but if you are reading this you can probably imagine some things that could have gone differently if you’d undergone a certain amount of preparation. I wouldn’t even be worried about these things, if it wasn’t for that aforementioned almost perfect kid. He is already picking up too much stuff from me. I don’t want him to have the same haphazard (which I would have sworn was spelled half-hazard) approach to life.

So as a step in the right direction I am going to begin some acts of discipline. One of them is regularly updating this blog. Every Thursday night. So when you check back in two months and see two entries after this one, you can smile, shake your head, and say a little prayer for my son.

PS - Since I haven't posted for awhile I will add a couple of things I am way to into right now. The first is www.protrade.com which is a fantasy sports meets stock market thing that is totally geeky, but very fun. And I want to show you this screen shot which shows me in 5th place on one of the challenges:

Granted There are 6 days 2 hours left in this 7 day challenge, but this is the highest I've ever been. If you decide to check out Protrade tell them aaronmash referred you. More bucks for me.

Also, anything to do with the Microsoft Zune, which I am getting. In November. I won it okay, and they won't ship it until then, and yes I'm getting a little bit antsy. If you're bored and have like 79 hours on your hands you can get one too at club.live.com