Bring on the Monsoon!

It's a meteorologist's wet dream: the monsoon. The rainy season finally hit Tucson with a fury last week, and as a result, we've been cutting in to your favorite TV programming to bring you "Breaking Severe Weather Updates" and covering up the bottom quarter of your TV screen with that annoying weather crawl telling you to stay indoors. Duh. Sorry about that. The truth of the matter is that during the monsoon, we can pretty much expect that severe weather is on its way, every day. Go drive in it at your own risk.

I have to laugh at the whole thing. I grew up in the Midwest, which, when I think about it, had the most eclectic mix of weather. In the summertime, we could have a calm shower followed by a raging thunderstorm accompanied by tornadoes. I spent many summer evenings in my basement as a kid, listening to the weather radio and praying to God for the expiration of the current tornado warning. Ah, those were GOOD times. Then winter could bring a gentle snowfall, or it could blind you with near blizzard conditions, sleet, and freezing rain (which IS different than sleet). In the Midwest, you never quite knew what you were going to get when the clouds began to build, therefore making it prudent to pay attention to the various weather cut-ins and crawls displayed on the TV or broadcast on the radio.

Here in the desert Southwest, everything is extreme and my motto since taking up residence here has become "Everything can kill you". From the piercing desert sun to that spiky plant to that seemingly cute and fluffy animal, everything can rip your face right off. Wildlife and vegetation struggle to adapt in the severe desert conditions from the brutality of the desert sun to the brutality of desert storms, and I'm not talking about the liberation of Kuwait. There is no such thing as a "gentle summer rain" here in the desert. Showers are nearly always accompanied by high winds, awesome lightning displays and knee-buckling crashes of thunder. So I laugh when the meteorologists at the station get all hopped up about severe weather because weather here is ALWAYS severe. If you look up in the sky and see cloud formations heading your way, seek shelter because you're in for a storm!

And what cracks me up is that whenever it starts to rain, everyone (me included) runs to the windows or doors to watch. We're so used to sunshine that it's a novelty to see it rain. And blow. And storm. I love the monsoon. It's new, different, exciting, and a little dangerous. So please excuse all the programming interruptions. Our meteorologists are just a little excited to get to report on something different than sunshine and intense heat, and rightfully so. In another month we'll return you to your regularly scheduled programming...without interruption.

An Old Pueblo Night on the Town

"So how was it?" Kyra popped, coming out a dead sleep and scaring me nearly half to death. I had just settled into bed next to her to wake her up for school when she startled me. She apparently doesn't need as much coaxing to wake up as Kailey.

"How was what?"

"Your DA-ATE!"

Diane and I finally went out the other night to celebrate our anniversary and Kyra wanted the details. So I braced myself for the early morning inquisition.

"It was good. We had fun."

"Did you see a movie?"

"Mmm-hmm."

"Which one?"

"It's called Knocked Up."

"What's knocked up mean?"

"It's another way to say that someone is pregnant. The movie was about a lady who was having a baby."

"Oh. Was it a funny movie?"

"Yes. I laughed. A lot."

"What was your favorite part."

"I can't tell you because most of the movie was not at all appropriate for children. It was a movie for adu-, er, grown ups."

"Awwww."

"But there was one part where this guy walked in on the woman while she was having her baby, and she screamed 'GET OUT', and he saw the baby coming out and almost tossed his cookies. That was pretty funny."

"Hee hee hee hee hee...that is funny. Did you go out for dinner?"

"Yes we did."

"Where?"

"Terra Cotta."

"What did you eat?"

"Steak and asparagus and garlic mashed potatoes."

"What did Mommy eat?"

"She got the Mixed Grill which had a little bit of steak, a little bit of salmon, and a little bit of chicken tortilla casserole."

"Was it good?"

"It was delicious."

"Daddy?"

"Yes, Sweetie."

giggle, giggle, giggle "Did you kiss Mommy?"

"Yes I did."

"Where?"

"Time to get ready for school!"

Sweet Sixteen

On this day sixteen years ago, I stood before my beautiful bride and vowed before God, friends, and family to be a loving and faithful husband;

in plenty and in want,

in joy and in sorrow,

in sickness and in health,

as long as we both shall live.


I promised to love my beautiful bride,

to honor her,

to cherish her,

to obey her,

and to protect her.


And today, sixteen years later, though I know I've fallen woefully short on my promises at times, possibly in the, ahem, obedience department, I don't regret them a bit. Happy Sixteenth, hon. I can think of nothing better than sharing this life with you.

Just My Luck

Last week I came across an opportunity to win concert tickets to a Guster/Toad the Wet Sprocket concert in Costa Mesa, CA. Where Costa Mesa was, I had no idea. I figured it was probably located within the mass of humanity surrounding Los Angeles, roughly an eight hour drive from Tucson. The concert is next Wednesday night, July 25th. I have to work that day. And Thursday. The likelihood of me being able to attend the concert was close to nil. Since I've never won a single thing in my life, I figured what the hey, and threw my name into the proverbial "hat".

I like Guster, but I'm a big Toad fan. It's weird, I enjoyed their radio hits in mid/late 90's, but it's only been in the last couple of years that I discovered their full repertoire. And since that time, I always find myself coming back to Toad. I have a million songs on my Zune, and I'm constantly downloading new artists and listening to new music, expanding my musical horizons, but Toad has become a sort of "comfort food" for me. I don't know why. There's nothing flashy about them. They are just a solid pop/rock band. Last summer they began touring as a band again, and I kept a tight watch on their tour schedule to see if they would be making any stops in Arizona. They didn't. The closest they came was California. So I guess I went a little out of my mind when they were offering a contest for free tickets. Though the cards were stacked against my being able to go to the concert, I entered anyway.

I won.

SCORE!!

Awwwww CRAP!!

Yesterday I received an e-mail confirming that I was the contest winner. So now I'm trying to figure out if I can finagle my way to Costa Mesa for a couple of days next week to see one of my favorite bands in concert. Stay tuned.

Should've Known Better

If I would operate under the premise that my wife knows what the hell she's doing, my life would be a lot easier and less of frustration at times. But I don't, so I blog.

Yesterday afternoon, I turned off the TV. The girls were home from school and had spent about an hour unwinding in front of the boob tube when I decided to be proactive and initiate a little daddy-daughters time. I went to the "game closet", which is actually a free-for-all junk closet where we happen to keep all of our board games, to see what we could play together. As I scanned the stacks of games, my eyes fell on a small tin box that I've never seen, or noticed, before. It was a Cranium card game called Matching Madness. I browsed the directions and it looked like it could be fun, so I took it out to the girls to see what they thought. Their faces brightened as I asked them if they had played the game before. "Yeah, we played it with Mommy. It's REALLY FUN."

Cool! Looks like we have a winner, I thought as we settled in on the floor for a game. Kyra gave me the rundown of the rules of the game as I shuffled the deck of cards, only her version of the rules were COMPLETELY different than the rules I recently read. Being the law and rule-abiding citizen I am, I reinstructed the girls on the rules of the game. Matching Madness was designed to be a fast-paced card game where the first person to play their card is the winner. The way the girls played the game with their Mommy took the fast pace, the very competition, out of the game. Mommy is not an idiot. Daddy is. Mommy understands that the girls don't compete well with one another. Daddy also understands this, but chooses to ignore that little tidbit of information.

So the game begins. Kyra, being the youngest and slowest on the draw, is getting slaughtered and is NOT having fun. I kept trying to encourage her not to give up and reminded her this was a GAME and that we were trying to have FUN. I then threw a bunch of hands so that Kyra could win. She won a couple of hands but was still in full pout mode when we came to a hand where Kailey had run out of a color that was in play. "I don't have any yellow!" she cried and then fled from the room, bawling her head off.

FOR THE LOVE OF MIKE WE'RE DOING THIS TO HAVE FRICKITY-FRICK-FRACK DADDY-DAUGHTERS TIME SO GET YOUR WHINEY BUTTS BACK IN HERE STOP YOUR POUTING AND CRYING AND LET'S PLAY THIS STUPID STINKING GAME AND HAVE SOME ZIPPIDY-DO-DA FUN!!

Thankfully, I was able to contain that little outburst to confines of my head (a slightly altered version to what was actually going on there), and I coaxed Kailey back into the room and promised them that we would scrap our current game, the way the game SHOULD be played, and play it Mommy's way. But the damage been done, and Matching Madness was a goner, going up in flames. So to make it up to them I agreed to play my favorite game in the whole wide world, Hide-n-Seek.

Incidentally, Cranium no longer makes Matching Madness. It's not listed on their website, it's not available in any online toy stores that I could find, and the only link I could find for it was on eBay (did you notice?)...for $3. Shocker. Stupid, piece of crap game. I'd much rather place the blame on the game and not on the fact that I overlooked the temperament of my girls and the ferocity of their sibling rivalry. Truth is, we need to place Cranium's Matching Madness back on the shelf of the "game closet" and let it gather dust there until the girls are emotionally mature enough to handle losing to one another. Because I just can't bring myself to play it Mommy's way.