new twist on an old favorite

i recently grew out a nasty mustache in honor of an ugly sweater party. due to it's unpopularity (primarily with my wife and myself) i promptly shaved it after the party. but i couldn't resist playing around with my mustache options before saying farewell completely to my furry upper lip companion.
so enjoy...
with mustache and dog. we were more like cousins than ever!
moments after arriving at home... the reverse hitler is created.
now for proper greetings. reverse hilter... everyone. everyone... reverse hitler.
that style of mustache looks even crazier and more of a sociopath than hitler. time to pull a valkyrie on this puppy.
ahhhhhh... relief. i do apologize if this slide show frightened any children or caused grown men to weep.

Christmas cheer

Christmas has come and gone for good old 2008 and i must say it was a great year. much like thanksgiving, this was an especially cool Christmas since this time last year i was dinking around in iraq wishing i was with my family and friends back in oregon.

andrea and i spent our our holiday time trying to blend family traditions while also looking for ways to create new ones for our family. it only seems right to start with the tree. some of my favorite memories of Christmas growing up involve driving out into the countryside, picking out a nice tree, cutting it down ourselves and hauling it home. none of that fake plastic tree stuff around here. however, i must say... i like the idea of a potted tree that you bring into the house in December to avoid cutting so many trees down and hearing them scream the whole way home. this year though, we went out toward stayton/sublimity and got our tree from a friend (ruthless) who works on a tree farm out that way. it was very fun, and stella even "helped" pick out the tree.

the whites threw an "ugly sweater" party, which was both fun and hilarious. photos of that are here.

then it was time to decorate and switch out our music. i made a deal with andrea that we couldn't play Christmas songs until december 1st. all those years of working in theaters or walmart has me still a bit burned out on holiday tunes. so we decorated the whole house with tidings of joy and to top it off... i was able to bring one of my traditions of putting kermit on the tree.

after everything was decorated it was time to get some presents under the tree. while andrea already had most of my presents done... i was on crunch time to find her gifts. i'm a procrastinator through and through.

to make even harder to get out and pick up those last minute gifts... our "arctic blast" (the storm over sensationalized by all the local media) hit and we had to become homebodies for a few days. it definitely was an inconvenience, but i still thought it was fun. i like "roughing" it every once in a while. i know some people hated it for various reasons (cabin fever being number 1) but it is what it is and Christmas isn't about getting out and doing things anyway so arctic blast be damned, Christmas will prevail. sometimes it seems like it should be called presentmas or complain-about-my-life-even-though-it's-better-than-most-other-people's-around-the-world-mas. just go to the cia world factbook site and look at countries like laos. it's hard to be troubled by power-outages when you see there are people living every day without electricity.

to top off the holidays, we took a trip to eugene to see andrea's family. we spent Christmas day and the following day hanging out with the comptons and glaziers down there. many a card game was played as well as a bit of wii. we followed it up with seeing my folks on saturday for another holiday bash. good times all around.

merry Christmas everyone.

Christmas stache

for a Christmas party i decided to grow out my nasty mustache. i started about a week and a half ago, quickly realized i could grow it in 3 days but have powered through and am still going strong. just 4 days left of this puppy!

in this experiment i've found that mustache people are a minority and are treated with inequality on a daily basis. here's what i've experienced so far

-going into tualatin high school with the prize winning molestache... do i get an award, no. i get a brief chase down by the security lady.

-those constant checkouts by women *and* men at my devilishly good looks are replaced with obnoxious staring, finger pointing and some screams (no longer of joy).

-children are ushered away and their parents take up defensive posturing.

-sweaters no longer look cool, they now look creepy.

-year two of marriage falls drastically behind in meeting the kiss quota.

the only pluses... when it snows, my upper lip is just a fraction of a degree warmer than it would normally be. and i can brush my bottom teeth whenever i feel like it.

dave, am i a pirate?

darran:

Priacy is not theft!
via Damien

This is missing the whole point. Piracy is not a theft of the item, but of the money that the pirate would have otherwise had to spend to aquire the item. If you can legitimately say that you would not have bought the item otherwise, then technically the artist looses nothing, but how can you legislate that? An On-Your-Honor system of allowing piracy?

cool guys

we've all met them... we've probably all been one in some capacity at some point in our lives... and i think we can all agree we don't like them or ourselves when thinking back to our "cool guy" times. they're the people who smoke to look "cool" or only listen to "cool" music or they use fancy words to show off their intelligence - basically they're people who aren't themselves because they're too focused on being "cool."
in high school, erick's brother dave referred to these people as "cool guys" (sarcastically of course). and that term has stuck with me ever since.
i was reminded of this last night at the festival of lights parade in downtown salem. i'm not usually a parade kind of guy... mostly because i had to march so many of them... but i thought it might be fun to watch the bands (especially south salem), visit with my dad (who was judging the bands) and it's always fun to hang out in butt frozen weather with andrea. anyway, at one point we were in the mall and i saw this guy with his son... and he was trying way too hard to be a "cool" dad. picking his kid up with one hand and swinging him around all the while looking around to see if he's being noticed for his "cool" talents. he'd kick his son in a playful manner that wouldn't necessarily hurt the boy but did knock him to the ground and then pull him up and yank down on his son's hood. he was acting more like an older brother than a dad.
i've noticed a lot of this with parents of my generation. they seem more concerned with being "cool" and being their kid's friend than being a parent. kids want and need parents and sometimes this means not being mister popular or looking "cool" but instead doing what's right.
being a dad has nothing to do with being "cool" by societal views. it has everything to do with selflessly putting your family first no matter what. in doing this you will undoubtedly find yourself doing some very humbling and dare i say un"cool" things. but in the end, if you've done your job right you will be an actual cool dad with non-troubled kids and one day productive citizens and good parents themselves.

finding my stride

i've been trying to get back on the horse... or in this case, the treadmill. this time last year i was running about 5 miles every other day and 2-3 miles on the other days. not a lot but probably much more than your average person. at one point i'd gotten to what i called the 5 in 35. i was running 5 miles in less than 35 minutes (that's sub 7 minute miles for the non-math folks such as myself). this had me pumped because while a 7 minute mile isn't incredible by any means... it still felt great to be able to hold that pace for 5 miles and know that when i had to run just 2 miles i'd hopefully be able to do so with ease.

at some point after Christmas is stopped. this was probably due to an increase in "out of the wire" missions and it was more difficult to keep a routine. i'm very routine based so chaos destroys most hopes i have for working out.

so here i am, almost a year later working on week two of running but i'm discovering several hurdles (not real ones, think figurative) that consistently get in the way of meeting my running goals.

1-pride. this is number one because it's my biggest flaw with running. knowing that i once could run like a gazelle makes me want to push my now out-of-running-shape body to a pace that is unrealistic for my current running ability. this causes me to burn out too quick and therefore not meet my mileage goal for the day.
2-time. no further details are needed here. i'm sure everyone has this issue.
3-location. i hate running on treadmills. i did it in iraq because it was either 130 degrees outside or when it wasn't there was still sand storms and God only knows what fumes from generators and tank/humvee exhaust waiting to be inhaled. but now that i'm home, i want to run outside. but i live in the worst part of town for just heading out for a run. this last summer i'd go to bush park but then i'm cutting into that whole time thing again. i basically miss eugene's spoon-fed running trails.
4- fear of disappearing. what i mean is that i've already lost 15 pounds since i've been home from iraq. something i attribute to my weight lifting routine no longer being a routine at all.
5-forrest gump envy. okay maybe not but what kind of list only has 4 points on it?



ultimately running serves several purposes for me... i'm able to stay in shape, pass my physical training for the army, and it relieves any stress i have in my day. that last piece is vital for my sanity.

any tips on motivation are much appreciated.

the best thing ever!

there are many reasons that i love this time of year. from the gambit of holidays to the great hang time with family and friends. but one of the biggest reasons is the great food that unfortunately only seems to be sold during those precious weeks between Thanksgiving and Christmas. my favorite... the delicious little cuties.

my reasons are as follows:
1-they taste freak'n awesome. mostly sweet with the touch of sour.
2-they're actually healthier than larger oranges.
3-they're seedless!
4-since their peels practically fall off... i'm fairly certain God designed them to be eaten by the laziest of of the lazy.
5-they're perfectly sized for juggling and won't cut you if you drop one.