Some Blog Site

AT&T Yellow Pages has been advertising on the radio quite frequently.  The ads mainly say how effective their book is for your ads.

My question is this: if ads in the Yellow Pages are so effective, why doesn’t AT&T just use itself for advertising its own services?

Why must they take to the airwaves instead?  Why are they paying other people money to advertise?

The first answer that comes to mind is that AT&T must be getting desperate for more customers.  The next answer that came to mind is that maybe radio ads are more effective. There are probably other answers too.

“for a wide door for effective service has opened to me, and there are many adversaries.”
– 1 Corinthians 16:9

My wife had some raw diced onions on the dinner table one night.  I forget what we were having, probably tacos.  The 5-year-old thought they looked yummy and asked for some (the onions, not the tacos).  We said he shouldn’t have any because he wouldn’t like them.  He insisted that he liked them, so we gave him some.  He put them in his mouth and promptly said “I like onions!”

Then he started chewing.

It took about 2 seconds, but he very quickly changed his countenance and spit everything out.  His face looked like the face of someone eating raw onions.

Fast forward a couple of weeks…

The 5-year-old is eating salmon and liking it.  The 3-year-old is curious, so he asks if it is chicken.  We tell him it is fish, and he should try some.  He takes a bite and promptly says “I like it!”

Then he starts chewing.

It takes about 2 seconds, but he very quickly changes his countenance and spits everything out.

My wife and I can’t help chuckling at that.  That must annoy him, because he tells us that “it’s not funny.”

“We remember the fish which we used to eat free in Egypt, the cucumbers and the melons and the leeks and the onions and the garlic,”
– Numbers 11:5

One of my favorite magazines is WORLD magazine. They have a mailbag department where they print letters to the editor and they also print one picture in that section. The picture always has someone reading a WORLD magazine, and they usually show people in far-away lands.

I decided to take a picture of someone reading a WORLD magazine, but it was in my own front yard, not in some distant country. So I don’t know if it will even be in the running. In case it doesn’t get printed, here it is.

As you can see, I am going for the humor angle, rather than the normal location angle.

For those interested in the details of the most recent addition to our family:

• 11:00 am – I get a call from my wife. She is calling as she is leaving her doctor appointment for a regular, weekly check-up in the month before her due date. She tells me that we have to go to the hospital. The doctor said to be there in an hour because we’re going to have the baby today, even though my wife isn’t feeling any contractions.
• 11:45 – I get home from work, change my clothes, and help see the kids off to school with their grandparents
• 12:15 – We leave for the hospital
• 12:30 – We check into the hospital (sweet – they have wireless!) and get sent to a triage room to figure out if she really is in labor.
• 1:30 – They finally hook up monitors to see how contractions are going. There are some contractions – they’re just slight enough that my wife had been dismissing them or not noticing them.
• 2:00 – contractions are about every 4 minutes but not very strong
• 2:30 – contractions are more inconsistent, about every 7 minutes but stronger when they do happen
• 4:00 – contractions every 2-3 minutes, much stronger now, slightly painful as opposed to just uncomfortable. I enjoy watching the real-time graph that shows the baby’s heartbeat and the intensity of each contraction. Without that, all I have to go on is how hard she squeezes my hand during the contraction. But now I have some numbers to go along with it!
• 5:00 – It looks like the contractions are good enough, so they now decide that we are going to stay and have the baby. Up until this point, we didn’t know whether they were going to admit us into the hospital or send us back home until we came back with some real contractions. We get moved out of triage and into a normal room.
• 6:30 – contractions are painful, and my wife thinks she is ready to get the epidural.
• 7:00 – contractions are extremely painful now. We wonder where the epidural is, and we are told that they had two emergency C-sections come in and they have priority for the anesthesiologist. He can do the epidural when those are done, which should be soon.
• 7:15 – We are told that the lady next door also needs an epidural, and since she is farther along in labor (a couple of centimeters more dilated), she is getting her epidural first. We hear later that she delivered her baby about 10 minutes after she got the epidural. So if my wife had gotten hers first, then this other lady would not have gotten one at all.
• 7:30 – The anesthesiologist started the epidural. Due to my being voted Most Likely To Faint During An Epidural, I am relegated to the lounge for the next 15 minutes.
• 7:45 – The epidural is done, and I am allowed back in the room. It is more peaceful and less stressful than when I left.
• 8:00 – The doctor broke the water, and everything is ready to go. We know it’s close because the doctor starts setting up the table with all her surgical instruments and towels and stuff and she doesn’t leave.
• 8:25 – The fun begins – it is time to start pushing. Or – in my case – holding, watching, and talking. My wife does not think it’s fun, as this epidural isn’t as strong as the others, or perhaps it hasn’t had enough time to fully kick in.
• 8:31 – Baby is born. He is silent for the first few seconds, but then he starts crying like one would expect. It’s always amazing how the baby can go from not breathing air one second to breathing air the next second.

For those keeping track:

• Baby #1 – at least 90 minutes of pushing.
• Baby #2 – 20-30 minutes of pushing.
• Baby #3 – 6 minutes of pushing.

We can’t have any more kids, as the next one might be in the negative minutes of pushing, and I don’t want to find out what that means.

“As the pregnant woman approaches {the time} to give birth, She writhes {and} cries out in her labor pains, Thus were we before You, O LORD.”
– Isaiah 26:17

Now that it is March and not snowy outside, it is time to update Some Blog Site’s background photo.

This is of a cat stepping through the tall grass, and was taken in the spring a couple years ago.

The boys and I were playing on the couch two Sunday afternoons ago. Playing in close quarters, with boys who like to talk/yell, means that you can tell what they’ve been eating by the scent of their breath. The older one’s breath smelled sweetly fruit-like.

Knowing what they had for dessert, I said “Someone’s breath smells like Skittles. Who had Skittles for dessert?”

To which the 5-year-old replied: “I did!”

Next I smelled the 3-year-old’s breath, but his didn’t smell like anything. He had a Tootsie Roll for dessert, and apparently Tootsie Rolls don’t affect one’s breath much.

Then the older one wanted to smell my breath, so I breathed on him. His response was “Your breath smells like skunk spray!”

And the 3-year-old chimed in: “Did you eat skunk spray for dessert?”

I think they were being dramatic, as my wife hadn’t said anything about my breath. Or maybe she was just being polite.

For the record: All I had for dessert was some toffee brittle.

Here is a tip that I’ve found useful over the years:

When trimming one’s mustache with a beard trimmer or hair clippers, one must breathe out through one’s nose.

One must take a deep breath before starting to trim, then exhale slowly through one’s nose while the little clips of hair are being flung hither and yon.

One can trim the rest of the beard without checking one’s breathing. But if the mustache remains get inhaled into one’s nose, they can be quite irritating.