Smiler

Big Boy's first smile caught on camera.
Time to call Gerber.

Lawn care blues

I guess it's safe to say that the whole novelty of moving in has now officially expired. Don't you love how when you first move in, you're so motivated to attack every project in the book (that is, after you unpack everything) from painting to crown molding to landscaping to building elaborate decks? Don't lie--everyone does it.

For example, when we first had our lawn put in, I religiously hand watered it twice a day, walked on the seams to make sure the grass came together (Yeah, passing motorists thought I was a moron), pulled all the little shoots of Johnson grass that would appear, and sifted the bark in the flower bed and around the trees. And all this I did with a smile.

A month later, I can hardly get myself to even go outside and pick up all the stray pop cans, burrito wrappers, and baby diapers that blow from dumpsters and careless immigrant workers. Those semidaily watering habits have now been replaced by semiweekly ones, and as far as I'm concerned the bark can sift itself from now on. Naturally, my wife now wonders what happened to my youthful zeal with the lawn, as she has to literally push me out the door just to turn on the sprinkler (hand watering ...what's hand watering?).

To compound things, one of us (I'm fairly certain it wasn't me) ran over the hose nozzle with the car, flattening it beyond repair and rendering it useless as a sprinkler adapter. Trying to fix it only made me more bitter since I ruined my pliars and my fingers, accidently sat in a fire ant mound, and actually made the hose look worse than it did before. I swear the green gods of lawn care are laughing under their breath as they see me hand water the stupid lawn again.

In short, unless you like flat hoses, ant bites, sore fingers, disappointed wives, and rotten dispositions, don't raise the bar of lawn care performance so ridiculously high.

Either that, or pay somebody ...

Let's get this started.

OK. I've succumbed to the latest craze. First it was Nintendo, then knee-length shorts, then email, then toilet paper (joke), and now finally this blogging stuff. I'm usually pretty quick to jump on these new trends but I guess I've been holding out a little on this one. Perhaps it's because I thought I didn't have enough time to dedicate to it, or that I didn't have anything substantive or even mildly amusing to offer, or that I wasn't computer savvy enough to run my own blog and design a cool enough site so people would actually want to visit it. Or perhaps a combination of all three. The point is, all those excuses are lame, and blogger.com does everything for you so I suppose I can take a couple minutes here and there to engage in random rantings or musings or just let you in on a little of my life. Besides, studying Gross Anatomy and Histology for hours upon end gets pretty boring, and I need a diversion now and then. But I digress ...

So, it seems that lots of people like to begin their blogs with a background or explanation of their title, so I guess I'll follow suit. A good word to describe my life would be transient. I've lived in 2 countries, 8 states, 1 U.S. territory, and who knows how many houses. My job experience bas been the same way. I think I counted once, and I've had over 20 jobs in my working life (I'm talking real jobs, not that weak I-used-to-mow-lawns-and-babysit-and-water-my-neighbors-lawn-for-money stuff). I've done fast food, telemarketing, clerical, educational, reffing, and even bath and kitchen accesories. Bottom line is, I've been around and I've seen a lot.

I chose "blogs for all occasions" because for one of my jobs, Baskin Robbins, I had to wear this hideous deep purple and pink shirt with floating cakes and ice cream cones that said "Cakes for all occasions" on the front (come to think of it, my older brother Ben actually liked it and asked my other Brother, Aaron, who also worked there, for his). Notwithstanding its awful design, this phrase was the shirt's only redeeming quality. So I thought I'd take a slice out of the past and use a variation of it for my blog (besides, it sounded a lot better than "eat mor blog," a reference to another shirt at another job I used to have long ago--if you don't understand, ask me later).

Now that we got that out of the way ...

I'm a first year dental student in San Antonio. At this point in my life it seems like I'll be in school forever. People say that you actually finish one day, and that you can put all this knowledge to good use eventually, but I think those are the same people that say ham hock doesn't give you gas. I'll be in school forever and that's final. Lame sarcasm aside, I do want to be a dentist one day and I was told this was the way to do it, so here I am.

Today was interesting. These first few weeks we've been treated to a lot of free lunches from a number of clubs and organizations who try to convince us to pay them a lot of money to join. I just go for the free pizza. Anyway, every Thursday the Christian Medical and Dental Association (CMDA) provides a free lunch and sermon. Since I hadn't brought a lunch, not having to pay money for food sounded appealing, so I went. That, and the fact that they allow Mormons to attend made the decision very easy.

Today's sermon was provided by a guy whose name was Pastor Icky. He's a Vietnamese guy with a shaved head, a wrist full of LIVESTRONG bands, a baggy shirt, and a small, compact NVT Bible. He just started a church next to the AMC theater called the Connection Church. Apparently they encourage attendance from people of all race and ethnicity and their services are every Sunday at 10:33 a.m. (yeah, I didn't get it either). In Icky's words, "Whatever your flavor, we got it here." In fact he said that he is used to primarily African-American congregations so he encouraged us to be loud and expressive throughout.

He began the sermon with a prayer. I don't remember the entire prayer but I do remember feeling a little like God might send down a lightning bolt through certain parts of it (since I was in the front row about 10 feet away, this concerned me). His prayer started thusly: "God, you are off the hook and we give you all the props." He then proceeded to deliver his prayer in a manner that seemed more fitting for a JayZ video. At the end, he said, "Help us, guide us, and if you have to, whoop us. Amen." By this point, he had my attention. As interesting as that was, his sermon was just as good. He read somewhere in Matthew 28 and talked about our "job description" here on earth. He mentioned the need for a "360 degrees discipleship" with "homies" above us, on our level, and below us in their spiritual progress. He referred to the people who had accepted Christ as part of "Christ's Crib" and gave several shout outs to some of the people from his congregation that were in attendance (and I thought sacrament meeting in downtown Chicago was a trip).

To his credit, the sermon did have a nice underlying message, although I don't remember what it was. I guess I was focusing so much on what he was going to say next that I didn't really internalize the whole thing. His closing prayer was much more tame than the opening, but he did end it by saying, "And all God's people say--." Following an awkward pause, the audience caught on and we let out a barely audible, nonsynchronized "Amen." The service was classic.

As we left, the pastor gave us flyers for his church with the directions to it. The church's catchphrase: "This ain't your mama's church!"

And they say my religion is weird ...