Christmas time

Well, it’s here again. The time of year when lists are made, cheeks are rosy, and the ringing of bells can be heard throughout. This is, of course, the time of year when Melissa makes a list of all the things we (and by ‘we’, I mean ‘she’) needs to get done, her cheeks get all flustered rosy (mostly because by ‘we’, she means ‘we’), and she goes ringing doorbells dropping off gifts to our neighbors. This year was especially good because we included in some of our neighbor-niceties balloon rockets that make a sound very similar to flatulence. It doesn’t get more appropriate than that.

This is also the time of year when everyone on my outdated list of contacts receives via email or actual mail the yearly Pierce update. If you haven’t received yours yet, it means we don’t love you anymore because they were mailed out in the end of November. November of last year. Also, that was last year’s version. This year’s version may end up being a post-Christmas newsletter mailed out sometime in January. Okay, who am I kidding? It definitely will be a post-Christmas newsletter mailed out sometime in January. Probably January of 2010.

This is actually a good thing. We haven’t mailed a newsletter because I’m awesome at my job. At least that’s what I tell myself. It’s a lot easier than, “I didn’t pretend to be too busy with something else and got stuck on a proposal which took way too much unpaid overtime.” You can see how “I’m awesome at my job” is a lot easier to say. It’s at least 18 words shorter. So for all of you out there who are expecting a newsletter, stop waiting by the door for the mailman (at least until mid-January).

As for Christmas: what a wonderful time of the year, even if Bruce doesn’t think so…
Also, does anyone have any ideas for Melissa? I still have 1.14 days, right?

yay snow

It's finally here. And now it can be Christmas.

man post (part deux)

It is finally here. And now that it’s finally here, you’ll probably be highly disappointed that the promised ‘man post’ isn’t all that great. Kind of like what Melissa thinks now that she’s married to me. Brittany was kind enough to provide me with the pictures necessary to let the whole world know what I did for my Thanksgiving break exactly 3.86 seconds after I posted about her not providing me with said pictures. It was humbling. If I were able to be humbled.

As it were, this is what we did:

Melissa didn’t shoot the shotguns, but she’s pretty wicked good with the .22.

Brittany didn’t take any pictures of herself, which is probably good because that would have been scary. It’s usually a good idea to use both hands when shooting.

My political affiliations should also be crystal clear.

absolved

You probably didn’t notice, but just in case you did: the much (once) touted and long awaited (5 days) for ‘man post’ has not yet arrived. This is mostly not my fault. Just because I may or may not have said that I would be diligent in retrieving the pictures from my sister’s camera, it’s her fault that I haven’t posted ‘the man post’ because she was supposed to send me the pictures I didn’t pull off her camera before she left.

So instead I’ll put up pictures of our house with Christmas lights. I didn’t even almost fall off the roof when I was putting these up.

And this is our most awesome tree that doesn’t have any big empty spots without branches if you look at it in the dark.

man post

As I was perusing the links associated with my younger sister’s blog and realizing that she had more friends than me, I also realized that blogging is not a very manly thing to do. In fact none of the people I know who were directly or indirectly linked to her site are men. Most, if not all, are in fact women. This is good and bad for me. Much like being a male cheerleader is both good and bad. However, also much like being a male cheerleader, this is mostly bad.

Good because I am an anomaly which creates a fair amount of interest, much like having a third arm or two noses. This is because people are enthralled by abnormalities.

Bad because I don’t look nearly as ruggedly handsome in a dress. Handsome, absolutely; rugged, an emphatic ‘no’. This is because people are appalled by abnormalities.

That said I have decided to post a ‘Man Post’ defined as anything dealing with boom, vroom, or doom. This will probably be the next post, but here’s a sneak peek:

It’s important to start the militia training early in the formative years. That way, it’s a lot harder to brainwash them into reality later on.

congratulations

Congratulations are in order to my sister, Charity. Her site has directed more traffic to this blog than any other means except, of course, direct linking to the site. So I guess a congratulations is really in order to all the people who visit her site, then click on my site (probably because they don't know any better).

Also, you may want to pray for their poor, poor lost souls.

beauty sleep

Did you know gophers hibernate? I didn’t either. Apparently they do, and (depending on who you ask) Gill is no exception. By ‘who you ask’ I really mean: Melissa or me. If you ask me, Gill is sleeping peacefully in his cozy little hole somewhere in the now deceased flower garden. If you ask Melissa, Gill has begun construction on weapons of mass destruction, ran a bus full of pregnant ladies off a cliff, and makes obscene gestures at nuns.

This is a problem because I am the one who is being sent to take care of the problem. By ‘take care of the problem’ I really mean: follow Melissa's directions to dig holes randomly until you happen to find the one in which Gill has decided to fall asleep. This is not a good solution. This is ‘less effective’. This creates lots more work because all of those holes have to be refilled and made to look pretty again. By me. This is not high on my list of priorities.

My plan is to open diplomatic negotiations with Gill. Then shoot him in the face.

//kill gill

int main() {

int x, y, gophers, dead;

cout << “How many gophers are in your yard?”; cin >> gophers;

dead = 0;

while (dead <= gophers) {

for (x = 0; x <= 10; x++) {

for (y = 0; y <= 10; y++) {
dig_hole (x, y);
check_gopher (aha);

if (aha= true){
shoot_gopher_in_face_with_pellet_gun (dead);
dead++; }
}
}
}

cout << “gill is gone.”;

return(0);
}

spooky

Halloween is here and with it comes one of Melissa’s absolute favorite holiday traditions. This is probably the most important tradition that could ever be had, up to and including the tradition of blowing stuff up on the Fourth of July. Every year around Halloween, we make Monster Tacos. These are tacos made out of actual monsters captured from under our bed. If we’re really lucky, we might get a closet monster, which is much tenderer and doesn’t taste so much like old gym clothes.

Making Monster Tacos is an art and not an undertaking to be attempted by the faint of heart. One must be at least able to hold a spoon before even thinking of making a Monster Taco. After catching the monster and appropriately grinding the monster meat into a hamburger-like substance (coincidentally, hamburger can be used if monsters are not available), you do a bunch of other stuff the same as you would a taco but different. This isn’t a recipe blog. I’m not going to give recipes.

Another great part about Halloween is the chance for Melissa to make Halloween costumes. Lily went as Little Red Riding Hood. She looked great. Lily wasn’t bad either.




This part was definitely not my idea. Please pray for Bruce's terribly scarred soul.

great panic

“JUSTIN, COME HERE RIGHT NOW! COME HERE RIGHT NOW! I NEED YOU HERE NOW!”

These are the sounds of a desperate woman in serious trouble; a woman whose home is being invaded by mutant, blood-sucking aliens, or who just cut her hand off in a blender and is picking her fingers off the floor one at a time, or who has been out of toilet paper for 46 minutes while I was trying to figure out what the horrible screeching sound interrupting my Mario Kart Wii game was. As it just so happens, they are also the sounds of a woman who sees a gopher.

We got a new pet. His name is Gill and he’s a gopher. He’s not a pet that we want and is apparently waterproof (after shoving a hose down his hole for approximately infinity minutes, he’s still alive). Gill has actually been around for awhile. The plants in our front garden started mysteriously disappearing over a month ago. Really, the whole thing was sort of creepy. It was as though we were living in some sort of time warp: one day a pretty little flower would be blooming in the sunshine, the next it would be gone without a trace. Like cookies or celery when Ian and Christen are around.

We thought it was the neighbor’s dog. Melissa even wanted me to set up the camera to time-lapse videotape so we could catch it in the act. Good thing I put that off for as long as I did. Finding out it was really a gopher saved me a lot of work. Actually, it just saved me the work of setting up the camera. I still have to get rid of the gopher. Maybe this means I’ll post again before December just to keep you posted on Gill’s status. Maybe.

boring

I will readily admit that this is probably the most boring blog ever. With almost monthly updates, there is no way it could not be boring. Now for those of you wishing for an update on my life, here it is:

The most exciting thing to happen recently was the finding of this article in my company health newsletter (the important parts are highlighted):


I think this is probably the best advice I’ve read in a very long time.

Other than that, Ma and Pa Pierce came down for a visit last month. It was great. One of our SD cards won’t let us pull the pictures off it so we can’t see any of them. Most of them are airplanes flying around in a big circle really fast and really low. It was awesome.

We also went camping which was a lot of fun. Our tents look like a Coleman advertisement. Unfortunately, there were no vicious animals stalking us unrelentingly this time which was pretty disappointing.

Anyway. Now you’re pretty much caught up. Melissa has agreed to give me ‘undisturbed visiting’ time, I haven’t had to see a doctor yet, and Ma and Pa had a great time on their visit.

mortality

As most of you probably already don’t know, I spent a lot of time in my pre- and early-teen years pondering my mortality. Not that I was at all suicidal, but I did think about the possibility of instantaneous death quite frequently and probably not for the reasons you may be able to come up with.

Sundays at my house were a special day. We wore special clothes, ate special meals, had special toys, and even read special books (it wasn’t until later that I realized the term ‘special’ was usually reserved for buses). It was one of these ‘special’ books that was the impetus for my somewhat morbid thoughts and, despite what you may be thinking, it wasn’t a spiritual book at all. It was a book about our universe, aptly named ‘Our Universe’.

Describing in great detail the scientific world’s theory of the big bang and progressing through the planets within our own solar system, the book illustrates such marvels as black holes, asteroid fields, and Jupiter. It also describes the life-cycle of stars, which is really fascinating until you realize our Sun is one of said stars.

This book could have just as easily been named Why a Huge Ball of Burning Gas Will Eventually Go Supernova, Engulf the Earth, and Vaporize You.

You can see how an 11-year old would be very worried about this. Especially considering that I skimmed a lot and don’t remember reading anything about a time frame for the Sun’s inevitable explosion-implosion. Also, the book was published in 1980 (before science existed) so it may very well have ended with 'and we’ll never know when... but it could be tomorrow'.

When faced with an inescapable stellar explosion, it’s fairly easy to accept your mortality. That may be why I work for a company actively designing systems to flee the surly bonds of Earth.

Does it feel warm in here?

also

Also, Melissa made a cake.

science fairs

After receiving comments from all three people that read this blog, I have decided to change my name and move. Mostly because that would be easier than an update. Thank you for your time.

Okay, Melissa tells me that won’t work because I would have to clean up the house so we can sell it. I guess my aversion to housework means I have to write something here despite having surpassed my promised 8-day writing span. Technically, anything else I write is of additional scope not originally outlined in my contract.

It actually has been quite the eventful month as of late. Scout camp occupied most of two weeks of my time (including the week prior to the actual camp which was spent rushing around completing last minute chores). After large amounts great fun and only slight complaining about the food/sleeping arrangements/merit badges/dirt/squirrels/fresh mountain air my troop was able to walk away with just about every award they could give us. In fact, the only awards they didn’t give us were the ones for second place. We won everything else. Yay scouts.

After the very eventful week of August 11-16, Melissa and I, with a few friends, put our lives in peril on the infamous Subway Hike down in Zion National Park. This particular hike is a kaleidoscope of beautiful red rock traverses, glacial water swims, and terrifying leaps across what Melissa refers to as the “Chasms of Death.” It’s a lot of fun.

The beautiful redrock

The glacial swims

This one's fuzzy, but it's the Chasm of Death

Imagine I have a newspaper. Then try as hard as you can to forget that image.

Finally, the most recent adventure we have had the opportunity to enjoy was a very local middle school science fair. The kind of science fair where moldy bread is considered A-quality work and poster board is used to describe exactly how many times your brother licked the bread on paper plate #2 vs. paper plate #1. Except ‘very local’ means ‘in our basement’ and ‘moldy bread’ means ‘our basement’ and ‘how many times your brother licked the bread on paper plate #2’ means ‘how long the sprinkler water has been seeping into the wall through the main water line’. This was probably the best science fair I’ve ever been able to attend. In fact, this project (which was most likely the culmination of four months of toil) won first prize over entries such as ‘Clean the Living Room,’ ‘Put Away My High School Stuff,’ and ‘Go to Scouts.’

As of now, we think the project has come to an end with the introduction of two garbage cans, lots of bleach, and a fair amount of silicone. It is yet to be determined if lots of digging is in my near future and until we can be sure that next year’s entry will not be from this particular water source, we have yet to hang, mud, and paint new sheetrock.

On the plus side, besides winning first place, my snot factory nose has drastically reduced output.

Of course, Mom and Dad are coming into town and we don’t have any ginormous trees or a 46-ton shed…

cramps

A couple of days ago Melissa woke me up tossing and turning and screaming about ‘not wanting to go in there.’ I could only imagine that it had something to do with Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Factory. I wouldn’t want to go in there either. That’s probably the scariest place ever.

But that doesn’t really have anything at all to do with what I was going to write about except that Melissa was sleeping. Twice in the last month I have been very rudely awakened by an excruciating throbbing in my lower right leg as every muscle in my calf suddenly decides it wants to tighten into a teeny little ball of granite. After I get past the “my appendage feels like a shot-put landed on it after being hit by a car”* it’s really quite nice.

For one thing, at that exact instance of occurrence I am completely awake with no desire whatsoever to go back to sleep. If I could plan these torturous spasms to happen at the exact moment my alarm went off instead of 01:42, it would be perfect. Or I could start waking up at 01:42. I’m still working that out.

These paroxysms of agonizing pain (really a minor inconvenience, as it were) also give me the very rare opportunity to do a speed sit-up. In fact, I believe you would be hard pressed to find anyone that could do an unexpected sit-up from a completely prone position and without anyone holding their legs faster than I can. And it would be nigh impossible to find someone with my fantastic physic who possesses such talent. This is a great skill that I can only imagine will become very useful later in life.

Finally, I highly doubt that there exists anyone who is as adept as I am at letting out blood-curdling screams completely under their breath. This is also a skill that I believe will be very useful in life. For example, imagine you are walking down a dark trail in the middle of the woods and didn’t have a “freaking 12-gauge”** with you. Now imagine you happen to step on a sleeping wolverine that immediately starts to viciously tear apart your leg and then imagine you look around and see that there is a sleeping Tyrannosaurus Rex lying right next to the wolverine. At this point you would want to let out a blood-curdling scream completely under your breath so as to not wake the T-Rex; if the T-Rex were to awaken, you would end up like the goat in Jurassic Park.

This situation is more easily imagined if you have ever had one of these leg cramps and been camping recently with Melissa.

*ode to Charity
**ode to Napoleon Dynamite

rabid raccoons

After a tragically short life of just under 15 months, Bruce is no longer with us. He was fatally bitten by a ravenous creature on a camping trip to Clover Springs West of Rush Valley. Remember the scene from Jurassic Park where the goat rises out of the ground chained to a concrete pad while chewing on some grass in the rain and suddenly there’s a flash of lightning and all you see left is the chain swinging back and forth? It was kind of like that. Actually, it was exactly like that. Bruce was eaten by a Tyrannosaurus Rex.

Or he could have been. I guess it depends on who you ask.

That was the biggest concern facing us (and by 'us' I mean 'somebody-else-but-not-me') during our adventure into the mountains of Utah last weekend. The fearless raccoon that kept frequenting our camp didn’t help alleviate fears of Bruce being viciously devoured by heartless beasts of the wild. To help illustrate the severity of the trepidation that was felt, I think we need to have a comparative chart.

Unfortunately, we can't. Imagine a comparative chart here.

And there you have it. 110 pound, sharp toothed Bruce would clearly have no chance against the malevolence of the 8 pound, injured raccoon who we'll call The Spawn of Evil or Xanthar for short.

I have to give Xanthar credit for allowing us (and by 'us' I, unfortunately, mean 'us') the opportunity to share what we used to think was a fairly good sized tent with what we know is a fairly large sized Bruce. A four man tent is actually only a 1.5 man + 1 Bruce tent.

At home he’s perfectly content to sit in his kennel while we do whatever we want. In the tent, there was no kennel. Just camp chairs and a table sort of laid out like a very low fence in the corner. The most surprising part is that it worked! Except when Bruce didn’t want it to work anymore. Then it didn’t. Well, it kind of still worked. He would go back behind his 4 inch barrier and wag his tail which would brush against all 5,285 sides of the tent making a loud ‘whish, whish’ sound that was very effective in keeping us awake.

But at least he didn’t get eaten by the Tyrannosaurus Rex.

yay patience

(ding, ding, ding)

Excuse me, excuse me…everyone…we would like to get started now. First off, I’d like to thank all of you for coming today and for your participation in The Great Shed Move of 2008. Special thanks to Brittany, Chloe, Jamila, Kanani, and Mateo for making yummy cookies and to Ian for showering, we’re all VERY appreciative.

We’re gathered here today on this wonderful technological medium that Vannie doesn’t know about called a ‘blog’ to pay homage to one among us who has risen above the rest…Nick, please get off your chair…ok…thank you…anyway…ok. We’re gathered here today to recognize Mrs. Patience for her contributions to the grandiose undertaking today. We present her with this Engineering Award, specially customized for her by choosing the color scheme that matched most closely alphabetically with her name, Parrot.

Although none of us remembers specifically what her ideas may have been, or even if they were even really that great, we’re sure she must have had at least one. And if there were more than one, we can pretty much assume there were probably less than 2,076,284, which is a good thing because, really, who has that kind of time?

So please join me in raising your mouse high and giving a rousing version of The Watermelon Cheer to Patience.

Thank you.

(thunderous applause)

living in denial

Have you ever known someone who refuses to accept their currently bad situation even if it’s painfully obvious that the situation is really terrible? For some reason I woke up this morning thinking about that and the thought occurred to me: probably the ultimate example of this phenomenon would be an airline steward who gets up to answer the ‘ding’ of a bell in 17B, is sucked out the back of the airplane and yet continues on as though nothing happened. I can picture him (for some reason it’s a him) thinking (and talking) as he accelerates towards his 125 mph terminal velocity:

“Here we go again. Another drink for Mr. I’m-going-to-have-to-get-up-before-the-pilot-turns-off-the-fasten-seatbelt-sign-or-I’ll-wet-myself. I wonder what he wants this time…there’s only so much Ginger Ale on this flight, you know. Oh great, hang on…

Excuse me sir, yes you, 32F. You’re going to need to turn off your electronic devices…Yes, all of them…Even that one, sir…Sir, why do you even have a toaster?

...Maybe he didn’t know. No, he knew. They always know.

I’m not really sure why those thoughts were occupying my mind so heavily during my morning shower. Especially because at some point the hero of our story has no choice but decide to splat. Maybe I’m also living in denial since that didn’t really occur to me until just now…

toenail clippings

Well, well, well…here goes nothing. Time to clip my toenails on the kitchen table.

I figure that’s a better way to start than the standard, “Everybody is blogging so now I am too because, for whatever reason, I think that everything I say is important enough that the whole world should know what I think.” I’m pretty sure that really is the premise behind a blog and now Melissa and I have fallen into the same trap. Don’t worry, it’ll probably be something we do for 8.435 days and then give up. That will also save all of you a lot of time because you won’t have get to read this anymore.

I don’t think it’s fair to start blogging retroactively – if we wanted to write about stuff that already happened we should have done so already. Obviously, we didn’t care enough to do that which means we have to start with the here and now. That means we have to start with activities tonight. I’m the Scoutmaster over about 9, 12-13 yr old boys. I say about because sometimes there are more than others and most of the time at least one doesn’t really count as a whole kid. Melissa volunteers with the 12-13 yr old young women. The Scouts do way cooler stuff.

Tonight we’re going to the pool to pass off some requirements for the swimming merit badge and to show everyone how many Twinkies I’ve eaten in the past 7 years. I’m really looking forward to it. Melissa is doing a poster for their bulletin board. That sounds like even more fun.

Anyway. I think that’s a pretty good start.

Also, clipping your toenails on the kitchen table is disgusting. According to Melissa.