Regular Life

(Note: If you are looking for the meaning of “GITRDUN,” then please see the bottom of this post)

A level of personal expression is about to be taken away from citizens of Kansas, and from it I get a funny topic to share on the last day of 2009.

I have to admit I understand the cops’ point on this one.

I wondered when I lived in Kansas (the summer between my freshman and sophomore years in college) how so many people in that small town got such cool vanity plate phrases.

Turns out that, until recently, the state of Kansas allowed duplicate vanity plates as long as they were in different counties. This became quite a headache, according to authorities, and they finally put a stop to it.

More newsworthy to me were the following plates and the number of duplicates of each:

Top 10 personalized plates in Kansas

Plate ….. Number
HUSKERS ….. 53
JAYHAWK ….. 43
GITRDUN ….. 38
CHIEFS ….. 37
2FAST4U ….. 36
SPOILED ….. 35
SOONERS ….. 34
BLESSED ….. 34
MYTOY ….. 33
REDNECK ….. 32

I found out about this when Yahoo! News popped up a story about a man whose plate was being taken away after 30 years of using it to honor his father. It’s sad, but in this case I think “the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few… or the one,” as Spock said.

Source:
http://www.kansas.com/news/story/1116664.html

For those who have found this site while searching for “GITRDUN,” here is the answer. It is a mash-up of the phrase “git ‘er done,” which means, “get her done,” which means, “get it done.” It was made popular in recent years by Larry the Cable Guy, in his stand-up act. He typically yells it out after saying something he thinks is funny or is a particularly good point.

I always thought building gingerbread houses was for an evil old lady trying to lure innocent youngsters to her lair. On Christmas Eve morning, after driving a friend to the airport, my wife and our son opened up a kit to make our own. Gingerbread house, not lair.

Maybe a lair would have been easier.

As Shannon pulled the two roof pieces from the package, they broke in the same place along a diagonal line. She was ready to call it quits.

“Maybe we can make our own gingerbread to replace those,” I said.

“We can’t do that. Sometimes you say things without thinking first,” she said.

“Just brainstorming, dear.” Admittedly, it wasn’t a very brainy suggestion.

I tried repairing the broken pieces with tape, but it wouldn’t stick. Then Shannon came out with the hot glue gun and did a beautiful job.

If only the icing had worked nearly as well during construction, we might have had an “after” photo. I was working from home, so I couldn’t dedicate a large chunk of time to the effort, and Shannon’s patience by that time was gone.

Benjamin, who by that time had decorated and gobbled down the gingerbread man, was content decorating the remaining pieces without making a house of them.

Then the snow piled up to cover the grass and turned everything brilliant white, promising a Texas Christmas just as white as the wall Benjamin decorated for Shannon.

Okay, it’s Christmas Eve, so below is the link to the songs that I first posted in 2006. They’re sung by a madrigal group my wife was in back in college. If you like the samples, then download the full versions and put them on your favorite music player, or burn them to CD.

http://blog.markwill.com/pages/free-christmas-song-each-day

Merry Christmas to those who celebrate it. Happy Holidays to those who do not.

A photographic round-up of the Silver Dollar City Christmas train ride. (as usual, click a pic to enlarge it)
 
My mom tries to finish off a piece of fudge while the rest of our crew poses. My brother was sober, I assure you.
 

   

 
I cropped the following pictures. Hey, I get to cheat a little while I’m stuck in a train seat, right? I also turned the old storyteller black and white, because the light shining on him made him look like a Smurf.

   

The next morning, our first day in what some call “Las Vegas without the casinos,” Shannon said there was no way she could walk anywhere, much less on hilly terrain. “Maybe I’ll just stay here while you guys go,” she said.

“No, we’ll figure out something,” I said.

I called Silver Dollar City and found out that they have wheelchairs available, but no guarantee we would get one. I got on the phone to medical supply places and found one to rent, delivered to our front door.

About a half hour before we were to leave, I took Benjamin and his cousin to the local playground. Quickly bored with the equipment, they wrestled, pushing each other against the surrounding iron fence. Less than a minute after they moved a few feet away from it, Benjamin fell backward and his head clanged against the fence.

Crying ensued, as did our departure from the playground. Just inside the condo’s front door, Shannon’s chariot — the rented wheelchair — welcomed us.

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I waited to post this because the photos would have given away something Shannon preferred to keep a secret.

How many times does something recur before it is considered tradition? For the third year in a row, my folks planned a winter trip to Branson, Missouri, for fun at Silver Dollar City and other area attractions. We weren’t able to attend the first year, but, as I wrote in my ill-named “Things to Do in Branson When You’re Alive” series, in 2008 we had great fun.

Instead of using the weekend our family celebrates Christmas, this year we used the Thanksgiving break. Unlike last year, this time around we had to keep moving or tuck ourselves into rarely available corners to keep from getting trampled.

Thanksgiving morning at my parents’ house, Shannon awoke with pain in her left ankle, but after undergoing physical therapy for illiotibial band tendinitis, she was determined not to fall farther behind in training for December’s Dallas White Rock Marathon relay. She didn’t want to let down her team, she said.

She decided to walk instead of running, and while hanging out with my family I occasionally caught a glimpse of her bundled form striding valiantly past the driveway on the rural blacktop. At the appointed time, I called her mobile phone to let her know it was time for her to come in. I got no answer. A moment later she again came into view and I called again. She didn’t react.

At least she was getting good use from the second generation iPod Shuffle I bought her from Apple’s refurb department.

“Guess I’ll have to run out there and get her,” I said.

I asked her how her ankle felt. “It hurts a lot,” she said.

Visions of Shannon hobbling around steeply-graded Silver Dollar City danced in my head. Although I had never tried one, I was sure sugar plums would have been better.

We had a great time with visiting family and copious food, and then loaded up in three vehicles for the three-hour drive to Branson. Before anyone asks, we all would be going significantly divergent ways after that, so carpooling didn’t make sense.

“If your ankle hurts that much, then maybe we should go back for Mom and Dad’s wheelchair,” I said about 10 minutes into the drive. “They said we could bring it.”

“No, I don’t want to do that,” Shannon said. She was trying not to focus any more attention on her plight, and hoped that by morning her ankle would feel better.

Instead, it got much worse.

(to be continued)

The Internet is making more people feel like Charlie Brown than ever before. Or maybe it’s just me.

Remember when Charlie would go to his mailbox hoping to find a letter, only to be disappointed by an empty box?

It happens to me when I check my Gmail, then my Yahoo! Mail, and then my FaceBook, and then my Twitter. I’m setting myself up just like that world-renowned blockhead.

At least I don’t have to go all the way outside to check. And, because they aren’t limited to delivery once a day, I can be disappointed several times a day, or, heck, several times an hour!

Do I check only after I have written something that requires or suggests a reply? No. Does that change my hope that I might see a number in parentheses beside my Inbox indicating there is something new? No.

Notification of comments on my blog posts go to Gmail. Alerts to activity on FaceBook go to Yahoo!, what I like to call my “online forms” account. Apparently I felt I could trust my blog (run by me) more than I could FB.

Since switching from our minitower PC to a used laptop I bought from Alvis, I rarely use my home e-mail account. That’s mostly because I don’t remember the password for AT&T’s outgoing mail server. At least I’m sparing myself a little disappointment there.

In fact, I just now checked it, and all but about four of the 140 new e-mails are from me. I use that account to forward myself links that I receive but can’t view at work. Only an old friend from high school and a few folks who are mistaking me for a realtor use that one.

I tell myself that it is not a letdown if I receive nothing new, but I’m sure on some level the fruitless checking is pecking away at me.

If Charlie Brown had this many mailboxes, message boards, and social networking sites, and could check them as many times a day as he wanted, would he go insane? How often do you check?

I’m not sure I believed that a group of moms could go from not running at all in July to running a half marathon in December, and in a few cases the whole enchilada.

A few years ago my wife, Shannon, helped start a local moms’ group when some sought more personal connections than they found in a fast-growing group with 250-plus members. A number of them exercised on a regular basis, but few considered themselves runners.

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At a recent Cub Scouts den meeting, one of the boys brought his mother to help explain and showcase the violin. It is one of my favorite instruments, so despite my usual reservations about taking Benjamin to a meeting that ends a half hour past his bedtime (on a school night), I looked forward to the evening.

I took along my digital recorder to capture some of the live music. What I got was not what I expected.

In this clip, the young lady explains the bow, and Benjamin’s input bewilders one of his fellow Scouts who happens to be just as vocal. If not more.

A transcript follows after the more link below, for those who either have no way to listen or cannot make it out.

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I moved to the Dallas metro area a little more than four years ago. Driving past the behemoth high school football stadiums and listening to horror stories of seven-year-olds suffering broken bones during practice reminds me just how important football is to sports fans in this state. With the undefeated TCU Horned Frogs hailing from just down the road in Forth Worth, and the currently maligned Dallas Cowboys located even closer, it’s difficult to go a day without hearing the sport mentioned.

It should come as no surprise, then, when I hear that Republican Representative Joe Barton, of Texas, is sponsoring a bill to change how the college football champion is crowned. The bill’s co-sponsor is Illinois Democrat Bobby Rush, and part of their argument is that teams like the aforementioned TCU do not get a fair shot at the title.

Really? We’re going to ask our elected officials to spend time on this?

Although the bill passed a House subcommittee on Wednesday with bipartisan support, it “still faces steep odds,” according to the Associated Press report.

That’s a relief.

But, still, it’s sad that it took meddling in college football’s business to bring the political parties together. Rep. John Barrow, D-Georgia, said it best in that same AP article, “With all due respect, I really think we have more important things to spend our time on.”

Here’s hoping that the House subcommittee is the last group to pass this bill.

(set to auto-publish at 8 a.m. CT)