My daughter Hallie has always been special, having first announced her arrival in her grandmother’s dream and then developing at a lightning pace in spite of arriving eleven weeks early. She has leapt to the top of the growth charts, is taller than kids twice her age, and has a speaking vocabulary of 400+ words.

Now she’s showing other signs of being special. Two days in a row, she has shown signs of being able to read minds. Continue reading →

One of the hazards of being a parent is being exposed to all the songs that get stuck in your head. Just about every toy makes music, and invariably you’ll hear its particular song hundreds of times.

The latest song stuck in my head is “Jellyman Kelly,” by James and Sally Taylor. Its part of the Sesame Street Music CD boxed set. Now Sesame Street mastered the art of song-sticking, so every song on this CD is catchy. But this one has risen to the top.

—

Jellyman Kelly
James Taylor (music) Sally Taylor (lyrics)

Here’s a song about jellyman kelly,
He loves jelly the most.
Ah, but most of all,
Jellyman kelly loves jelly on toast.

And here’s the part about jenny mulhenny,
She’s a fireman’s daughter.
Yeah, but most of all,
Jenny mulhenny loves to boil hot water

Jenny put the kettle on, jellyman kelly,
Can he come home, jenny, can he come?
Jenny put the kettle on, jellyman kelly,
Can he come home, jenny, can he come?

Chorus:
Oh, can he come home, jenny,
Can he come home, jenny can he come?
Oh, can he come home, jenny
Can he come home, jenny, can he come?

Yada yada yada voo doo papa
Yodely doo
Da voody doo doo doo
Yaka yaka yaka yaka hum hon no
(repeat chorus)
That’s the story about jellyman kelly-he still loves jelly!
And yes and maybe someday you and me, friend,
We can have tea with him!
(repeat chorus)

Jam

I got back from eating at a buffet restaurant today. It got me thinking of a world where all restaurants were buffets. Of course, it’ll never happen, but imagine if it did.

One of the (many) things that bugged me when I was working at a restaurant was the wasted food. We’d throw out huge amounts of food every day because people would order something and not eat it. With all the starvation in the world (and communities), throwing out food seems like such a crime.

Buffet restaurants, however, have less of a problem with wasted food. Patrons can have as much food as they need. Sometimes that means more, sometimes it means less. But in either case, the restaurant isn’t telling the patron how much to eat: the patron decides.

At the end of the day, a buffet restaurant can safely donate leftover food because it never touched the patrons’ plates. Homeless shelters and “meals-on-wheels” programs could benefit.

This would also battle the problem of Americans gaining too much weight. With so many meals offered “super-sized,” people feel compelled to finish them, even when its too much food.

Oh well, some thoughts on a rainy day.

I was listening to Adam Sandler’s Ode To My Car this afternoon and thinking how it applied to me. The “Old Nole” is feeling a little dated, now that its reached the ripe age of 14.

It didn’t help that I came back to a car still covered with snowy, icy grime. Or that I drove a peppy rental car on my trip. I wan’t particularly fond of the Oldsmobile Alero (Alero, by the way, is an Indian word meaning “don’t leave the lights on all night”), but it did have some power. When it would start.

Getting a new car is on my list of As Yet Unpublished new year’s resolutions. I hated the car buying process before, and I’m even less fond of it after reading this (long!) article on Edmunds.com about life as a car salesman. I’m going to be incredibly prepared once I get serious about buying.

I’ve updated the mt.net poll with new car suggestions. You can help me decide. If I missed something, let me know that, too.

Man, Faith No More ruled. I saw them on the “Monsters Of Rock” tour in ’92 and thought they rocked the other bands right off the stage.

I just realized that this song explains my beef with the media’s focus on fear. Also, it just rocks.

—
Faith No More – We Care A Lot

We care a lot!
About disasters, fires, floods and killer bees
About the NASA shuttle falling in the sea
We care a lot!
About starvation and the food that Live Aid bought
We care a lot!
About disease, baby Rock, Hudson, rock, yeah!
It’s a dirty job but someone’s gotta do it

We care a lot!
About the gamblers and the pushers and the geeks
We care a lot!
About the crack and smack and whack that hits the street
We care a lot!
About the welfare of all the boys and girls
We care a lot!
About you people cause we’re out to save the world

It’s a dirty job but someone’s gotta do it

We care a lot!
About the army navy air force and marines
We care a lot!
About the NY, SF and LA PD
We care a lot!
About you people
We care a lot!
About your guns
We care a lot!
About the wars we’re fighting gee that looks like fun

We care a lot!
About the Garbage Pail Kids, they never lie
We care a lot!
About Transformers because there’s more than meets the eye

We care a lot!
About the little things, the bigger things we top
We care a lot!
About you people yeah you bet we care a lot

Well, its a dirty job but someone’s gotta do it
It’s a dirty song but someone’s gotta sing it

I finally got out of the Stone Age and installed a news aggregator on my laptop. It will help me navigate the growing list of blogs I read every day.

Thanks to Wade and Steve for pointing me in the direction of Liferea.

I posted a story at Mindblogging.com about some video a friend sent me of a strange-looking aircraft he saw at Four Oaks, NC last month. It could be a blimp, or it could be something else. I’m not sure.

Surf over to Mindblogging.com and decide for yourself. If you know what this is, please send me the info.
“I’m the boss….need the info…”

I added an RSS feed for my other weblog, Mindblogging.com. Since I’m updating that one more and more, it made sense to share it.