Gymnast Jack

One of Jack's favorite parks has some fairly low hanging bars he likes to play on - when his arms get tired he drops only about a foot.



A future Olympian perhaps?

Two One A Days A Day

I picked up some gummy one-a-day vitamins because the regular multivitamins you swallow give me a belly ache. These vitamins taste like crappy gummy bears which is acceptable considering what they are, but Erin was first to notice something very strange about them. The regular daily dose to get all your vitamins is two gummies, but they are called "ONE A DAY". Talk about straying from your core concept!

Short fiction at twitter length

John grew up poor, but took up crime and rose rapidly. He gained wealth and power, but evil has its price. He died face down in the gutter.

Full Moon

New Milky Way, 3 Musketeers

The new Milky Way does away with the nougat, so it's just caramel covered with chocolate. It's an amazingly dense bar because of this. It's a winner if you're a caramel fan, but you can't eat too many of these if you want to keep that new year's resolution.

The second new bar here is the 3 Musketeers Truffle Crisp. It comes with two sticks, much like a Twix bar. I didn't expect much from this, but Erin and I both thought this one was great. It's got a great crispness and a tasty flavor, plus two people can easily split it for a lower calorie chocolate snack.

Haiti Earthquake Triggers Musical Outpouring

The recent and tragic earthquake in Haiti has trigger on outpouring of quality music. I'd recommend the following:

available on iTunes for $7.99 is the Hope for Haiti Now album containing some pretty great stuff...



20 songs including Sting, Springsteen, Timberlake among plenty of others.

Also available is

Download to Donate which costs whatever you'd like to contribute... I'd recommend $5 based on the iTunes compilation. It has Linkin Park, Dave Matthews and Peter Gabriel among others.



Snap up some good music for a good cause.

Bubble wrap popping app?

I've been looking to get an iPhone, but never quite saw the definitive 'killer app'. Now there are rumors of a bubble wrap popping simulation. This would likely move me into iPhone land. Can any of our thousands of readers clear this up for me? Thanks.

Kangaroo

Jack, as many of you are aware, likes to babble in his crib before he falls asleep. We've heard him count to 10 in Spanish, count to 20 in English among other strange musings. I few days ago we heard the following.

The Old Civic Lives On

In 1994, Kichoon Yang bought a new Honda Civic. He didn't drive it that much, and in 1996, I bought it from him. I drove the thing until about 1999. Then, I sold it to Mullins. Mullins drove (rather abusively) the car for an unknown number of years on the streets of Kansas City. At some point, Mullins sold the car to his sister Laura who continued the abuse. A few years ago, she traded the now battered Civic to some dude for an old Toyota Tercel. That dude still rides around KC in the Civic, and Mullins recently captured this photo of it. Viva la Civic!

St. Louis Style Pizza

This weekend in Kansas City, Erin and I had our first experience with St. Louis style pizza. I hadn't heard of such a pizza style until recently. What I learned is that the St. Louis style pie hallmark is an ultra thin crispy crust.

We went to Imo's Pizza which claims to be the original St. Louis style pizza. A friend of mine who is actually from St. Louis says Imo's is good, but that there is better St. Louis style pie to be found in St. Louis.

The pizza arrived, and it did indeed appear to be very thin. In fact, it may be the thinnest pizza crust I have ever seen.


The Imo's pie tasted great too. I'll seek it out again upon future trips into Missouri. Let's hope the St. Louis style pizza concept catches on and spreads outside the Show Me State.

The Fog Also Rises

Continuing the string of "backyard" photographs, we have and early winter December morning in Folsom. The fog lifted very quickly.

Ford Announces New 2010 Car

Moral Theory...Inside the Book

As I was combing through some books I've got stored in the garage I ran across a copy of Moral Theory by G.C. Field. As an aside this is one of the books Google has scanned so if you interested have a read!

Inside the book, and of slightly more interest, was a post card mailed to Grandpa Comstock likely, in early 1951, advertising Montgomery Ward's new Spring and Summer Catalogs.



Grandpa's address was interesting. Much simpler back in the day. Note the cost to send a post-card was only 1 cent!


Finally, there was also a newspaper article cut out higlighting the fact that James Roosevelt, Franklin D. Roosevelt's oldest son had signed on for a serious of weekly radio broadcasts.

Snow in Sacramento: Round Two

Dad got a firetruck for Jack at Christmas. The truck was shipped in a box filled with styrofoam which proved to be just as much fun for all of us.

Here are a few videos from Christmas Day after he opened the gift.



Things evolved and got even crazier!

Red Bull Cola

Over the holidays I picked up a can of Red Bull Cola on sale for $1.39. Kind of spendy for twelve ounces but I thought of it as a Christmas present to myself and laid out 2 golden dollars!

I enjoyed the drink as it was kind of tart and lemony. It has a fair amount of natural type ingredients in it including:

•Coca leaf
•Kola nut
•Lemon/lime
•Clove
•Cinnamon
•Cardamom
•Pine
•Corn mint
•Galangal
•Vanilla
•Ginger
•Mace
•Cocoa
•Liquorice
•Orange
•Mustard seeds



I'll give it a 4/5 and if you see it for $1 a can would recommend treating your self to a few.

Found Money

Sometimes I find money. In 2007, I found $7.06 (left). In 2008, I found $8.77 (center). In 2009, it was $11.24.

"Wrapping Up" the Holiday Season

Here are a few straggler photos that merit sharing.



The table and tree set before Christmas dinner. Steph had things looking spiffy!

A better view of our tree...



Jack is happy to find the hot toy of the season under the tree. A Zsu Zsu Hamster. He named it, creatively... Zsu Zsu.



We made another batch of Christmas cookies on Christmas Eve...more details next year. As we were mixing the butter Jack took to eating the flour straight up...certainly makes the cookie batter taste special.



Here are Jack and Mom cutting out the cookies.

Andy Roddick

Erin and I have been following tennis player Andy Roddick on Twitter. A couple of days ago, his flight arrived in Australia, but his bags did not. Lacoste sent over some clothes for him to practice in, but they seemed to have underestimated his size. He tweeted this picture of himself in one of the practice shirts he received.

Unpleasant Facts About Hamburger Meat

Here are some good reasons to make a new year's resolution to eat less meat. The information below is taken from an article that ran yesterday in the New York Times.

Eight years ago, federal officials were struggling to remove potentially deadly E. coli from hamburgers when an entrepreneurial company from South Dakota came up with a novel idea: injecting beef with ammonia.

The company, Beef Products Inc., had been looking to expand into the hamburger business with a product made from beef that included fatty trimmings the industry once relegated to pet food and cooking oil. This made Beef Products Inc. hamburger much less expensive than burger from traditional meat processors.

With the U.S.D.A.’s stamp of approval, the company’s processed beef has become a mainstay in America’s hamburgers. McDonald’s, Burger King and other fast-food giants use it as a component in ground beef, as do grocery chains.

Beef Products Inc.'s ammonia injection process made the meat smell funny, but it seemed to kill E. coli so the U.S.D.A. exempted meat from Beef Products Inc. from the testing required of other meat producers. Beef Products lobbied successfully for U.S.D.A permission to not list the ammonia as an ingredient.

School lunch programs using Beef Products Inc. did their own independent testing of the meat, and found numerous E. coli and salmonella problems.

The U.S.D.A is moving to require testing of Beef Products Inc. meat.

The founder and owner of Beef Products, Eldon N. Roth, declined requests for interviews or access to the company’s production facilities.

Some have described the ammonia scrapple paste, which is found in almost all American hamburger meat, as "pink slime" that is a far cry from what people believe is actually contained in hamburger meat.

Moral of the story: Eat high quality meat or none at all!