A New Reader

In the interest of increasing the readership of my blog, we are having another child. This one, like his/her brother, is scheduled for July. So by say Nov. 2011, she/he should be able to read At Gnat (I'm not exactly writing on a graduate level here). At that point he/she should have 10-15 blogs to catch up on.

This raises the interesting question: Would I want my children reading my blog? Since most of you readers are also bloggers, I would ask you the same question. I haven’t really decided on an answer to that question for myself. As of now Cannon wouldn’t understand any slightly inappropriate reference. But I do not really want to hasten his understanding either. On a related note, can we come together to get the word “erection” banned from commercials during football games. I mean Cannon loves football, but I don’t want him to start asking, “Daddy, what’s an erection?” Now that I think about it, I believe Michelle banned her reading age child from my blog.

Halloween

My son is incredibly cute (so much so that I sometimes ask myself if he is mine, until I see him do something like watch TV or try to catch a ball). There is nothing quite like Halloween to bring out the cuteness in an already cute kid. Jill and I volunteered to help with the harvest hoedown our church put on this year. It is fun event where there are different booths setup around the gym for kids to play games and get candy. The TNT group volunteered to help with the cup stacking race, and Jill and I were a little afraid we would be stuck there all evening. We needn't have worried several of the faithful showed up and we really had to do nothing. A special thanks here to Ashley who stayed from start to finish.
Back to my kid. Jill has been excited about this Halloween since the last one ended. I think she bought his costume on January 3rd, once Christmas was safely out of the way. Cannon was Yoda from Star Wars (which we had to explain to an unreasonable number of people). As you can see putting fluffy green ears and a robe on a kid only lets the cuteness shine. Sadly, I think some other people got better pictures of him than we did.

FATHERHOOD

Being a father is still a strange experience for me. Tonight we had an event a Jill's school, and Cannon really did not want to be there. I found myself telling him that in life we sometimes have to do things we do not like. I am not completely sure why, but saying it I felt like a hypocrite. I took him shopping and then home.

A LITTLE ABOUT MY JOB

Today I was helping get the budget ready for next year. We started by inputing last years actual expenses into a spreadsheet (here I might mention that a business or accounting degree is worthless, go get an Associates in Excel if you want to work in the real world). I discovered a discrepancy in the totals of two forms.

I brought this to the attention of our accountant who frantically started running numbers and talking me through what was happening. In short 15 minutes working, 1 1/2 hours watching someone else work.

Katy Trail

Last Saturday (10/27/07) I went on a bike ride. Not your normal ¾ mile cruise around town with the family. I went with Chris Sumpter, Ken Lanning, and my father on a 44.7 mile Katy Trail ride. We had been “planning” this trip for several weeks. It started when Ken, Dad, and I took our families on a five mile ride one evening in early October. We thought it would be great to get some guys together and do an overnight trip on the trail which goes from Clinton, MO to St. Louis.

Our original goal didn’t pan out as none of my friends could be convinced that they were in any kind of shape to make this trip fun. I would give them a harder time but for what follows.

Ken did get Chris on board, and we shortened it to a one day trip where we would ride out from and come back to Clinton. We left about 9:00 in the morning and started out strong and fast. Dad set the pace at about 9.5 miles/hour. I don’t know how that compares to what you all bike at, but it is much faster than I was accustomed to. At about 40 minutes in, I started to feel overdressed on the cool morning. So we stopped and Ken and I took off our sweatshirts and we all took in some water. At that point I realized I was in trouble. I just didn’t feel quite right. We started again, and I fell behind. I told them not to wait for me. I was just going to get another drink. As soon as they were out of sight, I lost the egg Mcmuffin I had consumed that morning as well as half a liter of water. Five minutes later my stomach decided there was nothing more in there and it calmed down. Dad called my cell phone asking what was going on and I told him. At this point I had decided I was going home. I had already tried to call Jill to pick me up from whatever little town was up ahead, but she was out of the house. Dad came riding back and gave me the keys to his truck. I said that I felt better and would probably ride to the next town before turning back. I meant it, too; I was done.

We rode on and found Chris and Ken had waited for me. I will admit I wasn’t happy to see them. I knew that I couldn’t turn back as long as they were stopping for me. And they stopped every time.

I will say here that neither of them seemed real upset about the new pace we kept for the rest of the day. I should say, though, that neither of them gave me a hard time about throwing up, either, so I should be grateful.

We made it out to the highest point on the Katy Trail, which gave us the psychological lift of thinking it was downhill all the way back. Moral of the story: McDonalds and physical activity do not mix (also, as Chris pointed out, “Maybe we didn’t properly prepare for the trip by riding 0 miles Monday, 0 Tuesday, 0 Wednesday, 0 Thursday, 0 Friday, and 45 miles Saturday.”)

It is now Sunday afternoon. Cannon is down for a nap, I am sitting at the computer, and where is Jill? She is outside standing over a ditch with a leftover sausage, trying to trap a neighbor’s kitten that wandered onto our property. If she tells you that she did it because she wants Cannon to see it; remember, Cannon is down for a nap.

Zune is here

I received my Zune this week. For those of you who missed my previous post, I won Microsoft Zune playing games at club.live.com. Anyway, I did not get a choice on color, but the white looks great. Jill thought I needed a case so she ordered me one. It should get here next week. I needed it tonight when I dropped it from a height of about five feet onto our hardwood floors. It bounced about three times, doesn't appear to be a scratch and still working. Jill knows me well.