Some days it's not worth chewing through the leather straps

I am honored to answer 5 questions from the esteemed Mr. Yen. I responded directly to him before I realized I am supposed to post these, I really am such a dork! But, that gave me an opportunity to save you from a rambling Navy answer, it has been edited for brevity so good for you... 1. One of the things you and I share is being the parents of intelligent and spirited children. Do you have a particular story about your son that you’d like to share? I saved this question for last, because I wanted to put a lot of thought into it. There are a couple of stories that come to mind, that tell a lot about who Skyler is. First of all, everyone needs to know a little more about Skyler. The reason he has Cerebral Palsy is that he was born 3 months premature, and only weighed 1 pound 15 ounces. Sometime either in utero or during birth, he had a brain hemorrhage that affected his motor control area of his brain. He thinks a bit different than the rest of us, but is pretty much a typical kid. But...

I can't believe they got away with this one!

From the fine folks here at Some days it's not worth chewing through the leather straps... Helpful hints for making it through your work day, Volume I

Received this today from one of the fine folks on our-kids, it is a beautiful video. click here Autism Speaks created a music video of the Five for Fighting song "World" which features images of children with autism children and their families. It is a truly moving video and was the work of their Creative Director and our sponsor, Bill Shea. The band is generously donating $0.49 to Autism Speaks for each time the video is viewed and the winning charity will receive a special prize (there are several others on the site). When you have a moment, please visit the link below to watch the video and pass it along to your friends and family.

Check your local listings for a PBS show tonight called Buying the War, by Bill Moyers. It is a documentary that indicts the mainstream media for failing to question the government's official line justifying its invasion of Iraq. Early reviews have been excellent.

Dick and I both share a love for Get Fuzzy. It really is a great comic, usually one of my favorites to read. Recently, there was a sequence of his comics from 2004 that ran on one of my many desk calendars. I think it was well done, getting serious without pounding you over the head with a message like some other comic strips can. Enjoy:

Today was my last early morning workout. This has been coming for awhile now, since Skyler has been growing so much. He is getting a bit too big for my wife to get up and about in the morning, so I will be switching my workout to a later time. It is a bit weird, there is a core group of us that have been meeting at Ballys for a long time and working out together. Then we would meet for coffee and go our separate ways. I will miss our morning get-togethers, and the peer pressure of getting up at 4:30 to make it to the 5:00 opening. But I will enjoy a bit of sleep in the morning! Most of all I will miss my friends at coffee...

From The Colbert Report, an update on bovine growth hormones (rBGH). "As natural as milk and cookies"! This is some funny shit. ..

Here Comes Johnny Yen Again...: Earth Day, 1972 Johnny Yen had another great blog about earth day and mentioned the photo taken from Apollo 8 that came to be " the " photo used for the occasion. I am a serious space program geek, and there is nothing I really like talking about more. I collect books and info about the whole space program, and as soon as it became available picked up the fantastic series that Tom Hanks and Spielberg put together called From the Earth to the Moon. What a lot of people don't know was that the first trip to leave earth orbit, circle the moon and come back wasn't supposed to be Apollo 8. That was scheduled to come later, but there were numerous problems with the LEM (lander) component. So NASA came to the Apollo 8 crew (Commander Frank Borman, Lovell, and Anders) and asked if they felt they could move the mission up a couple of months. The attitude around NASA at that point in time was one of go, go, go and of course they said yes. But...

I never thought much one way or the other about Lee Iacocca until my friend Tim sent me this ...

WAYNESBURG, Ky. - Miss America 1944 has a talent that likely has never appeared on a beauty pageant stage: She fired a handgun to shoot out a vehicle's tires and stop an intruder. Venus Ramey, 82, confronted a man on her farm in south-central Kentucky last week after she saw her dog run into a storage building where thieves had previously made off with old farm equipment. Ramey said the man told her he would leave. "I said, 'Oh, no you won't,' and I shot their tires so they couldn't leave," Ramey said. She had to balance on her walker as she pulled out a snub-nosed .38-caliber handgun. You go Venus!!

"I usually start the day by importing a few CDs as I answer the morning e-mail and down my first cup of coffee. As I'm working on a story, I keep on importing - somethings transferring two discs at once simultaneously on the G5 and the iMac. I'm forever tinkering with the library, several hours a day, often when I'm on the phone, sometimes even when I'm watching TV (on the extremely rare nights when I'm not out covering live music)." Will Friedwald , jazz fan, New York Sun writer and possessor of what may be the largest iTunes music collection in the world (his main library has 172,150 tracks from 11,561 album by 2,935 artists).

I am now completely green in the shredding department here at Skylers Dad Enterprises.

Dick beat me to todays Get Fuzzy, so I thought I would share a two parter from an old desk calendar series: Someday I hope to be able to use the expression "Mail your ass back to you in a Pringles can". We can all dream, can't we?

From AP via Comcast News: Angry Soccer Mom Accused of Neglect By Associated Press Tue Apr 17, 9:08 PM LINCOLN, Neb. - An angry soccer mom who left her teenage daughter alongside an interstate was ticketed for neglect, Lincoln police said Tuesday. Police spokeswoman Katherine Finnell confirmed this account from police reports: The 42-year-old Lincoln mom was miffed about her daughter's poor play on Saturday. On their drive home the girl flubbed the lines her mom had drilled into her on how to improve her game, so the mother slapped her daughter. The girl told her mom to pull over. The mom did, near the downtown Lincoln exit off Interstate 80. The mom yelled at the girl to get out. When she did, her mom drove off. A teammate's parent spotted the girl alongside the interstate, stopped to pick her up, then took her to their home and called police.

Johnny Yen got me thinking about music and my choice for a perfect karaoke song would be Bohemian Rhapsody (would take a lot to pull it off but it would be leg-en-dar-y). So I found this, so just imagine it's me! Bohemian Acid - Funny bloopers are a click away

Repeat after me; my job doesn't suck, my job doesn't suck... Next Time You Think Your Job Sucks - Click Here for more great videos and pictures!

There aren't that many people who have even climbed all of Colorado's 14,000 foot peaks (our own GKL is in hot pursuit). Here is a story about a local guy who knocked them all off in a single year, AND, skied down each one when he was done climbing! Some of the peaks are quite easy to ski down, most are really tough, and some I have no fucking clue how he pulled it off...

More of Larson's brilliance!

I'm pretty sure this is who they had in mind...

A different approach to Kurt Vonnegut passing, a column from a sports writer that I enjoy reading. Since I am not well-read enough to give Vonnegut his due, I thought I would share Woody's column in the Denver Post today. Enjoy - My muse, more or less By Woody Paige Denver Post Staff Columnist Article Launched: 04/13/2007 01:00:00 AM MDT Kurt Vonnegut is dead. So he went. At this point in the story, Kilgore Trout asks this rhetorical question, an aside with a paragraph all to itself: "What the heck?" Too bad, you say. What does Vonnegut have to do with sports, you remark. More than you think, I answer, somewhat indignantly. * * * Vonnegut was hired in 1954 by a new magazine, to be called "Sports Illustrated." He was told to write an article to accompany a photograph of a thoroughbred horse that had jumped the rail during a race and run wild in the infield. Vonnegut stared at the picture for hours, finally typed something and left without a word. What he had wri...

I got word a couple of days ago about one of my friend’s son passing away. This is a couple I have never met, but have known online for about 10 years or so. These parents belong to the Our-Kids group that I have belonged to since about 1994, and they have a son who is so much like Skyler that it is scary. Both of our sons were born about the same time, both very premature (Skyler was 3 months early and 1 pound 15 ounces) and both have Cerebral Palsy to about the same extent. We have compared our sons through the years a lot, compared surgeries, medications, seizures, school systems, and life in general. There are conversations that I wouldn’t begin to bring up with my friends who don’t have special needs kids, like how to get a kid to crap when they spend their life in a chair… Stuff that just doesn’t come up in “normal” conversations. I have experienced the death of way too many children since I started down this road with Skyler, from my online family to the families that I have ...

Couple of items I saw today, both on the same car... Science: It works bitches! The alternative to thinking in evolutionary terms is to not think at all.

If it's not one damn thing, it's 5 others...

Glory how he blew ya...

Lot's of great intros mentioned in my other post, now along the same lines... What was the best final episode of a TV show that you remember? Was it MASH, that I believe still holds the record for the most watched show ever? I don't think so, Hawkeye going nuts was a little too much for me. I have two different favorites, the first one is the final of the Bob Newhart show (second of his series) where he was the Inn Keeper. He arranged, without the knowledge of anybody else on the show, to have an exact replica of the bedroom from his first series made. Suzanne Pleshette (his wife from the first series) was in bed with him, and he woke up and turned on the light to tell her that he had a strange dream, that he was an Inn Keeper. And he had a great looking blonde wife... then he just shut up at that point when she gave him a dirty look. It was great! My second favorite was the ending of St Elsewhere. Donald Westphall and Daniel Auschlander were the two heads of the hospital...

Letter from MIT to John, and his wonderful response... Mr. John T. Mongan 123 Main Street Smalltown, California 94123-4567 Dear John: You've got the grades. You've certainly got the PSAT scores. And now you've got a letter from MIT. Maybe you're surprised. Most students would be. But you're not most students. And that's exactly why I urge you to consider carefully one of the most selective universities in America. The level of potential reflected in your performance is a powerful indicator that you might well be an excellent candidate for MIT. It certainly got my attention! Engineering's not for you? No problem. It may surprise you to learn we offer more than 40 major fields of study, from architecture to brain and cognitive sciences, from economics (perhaps the best program in the country) to writing. What? Of course, you don't want to be bored. Who does? Life here *is* tough *and* demanding, but it's also *fun*. MIT students are imaginative and cre...

Someday, when I have hit the big time and have a prestegious job, I will remember all you little people out there.

GetKristiLove and Cheer34's posts about sports inspired me to tell my own tale about the different things I have done growing up and what I have morphed into. I tried to find pictures to go along with all of this but that was a bit futile, as I was involved in athletics long before photography seemed to exist... Our story begins as a young lad growing up in the mountain town of Idaho Springs, Colorado. When you grow up in the mountains, the natural thing to get involved in is skiing. I started in the 4th grade with a school program, loading up the bus with all of our skis and poles on a big rack on the roof, and motoring up to Loveland ski area. I remember it costing 6 dollars a day for the bus trip and the lift ticket/lesson. Pretty amazing, huh? I loved skiing and my buddies and I all were thrill seekers, in search of more speed, better jumps, and generally trying to kill ourselves in the process. We had a program called "Snow Dodgers" (lame, huh?) that was ou...

That's the attitude, damn young whippersnappers...

Slightly tweaked, just like me!

And...This ones for you Big Orange!