We had Lexi’s birthday party on Saturday. There’s nothing like a bunch of three-year-olds running around the house. The highlight for me had to be Lexi’s ‘W’ birthday cake.
‘W’ has always been Lexi’s favorite letter. It’s one of the first letters she recognized. When we asked her what kind of cake she wanted, she wanted a ‘W’ cake. So there it is, in all it’s alphabetical glory.
As a bonus, a w-shaped cake has an excellent cake to frosting ratio.
I don’t like talking about abortion. Today’s the 36th anniversary of the Roe v. Wade decision, and it’s hard to avoid those discussions today. I don’t like those discussions because it’s such divisive issue and I see both sides of it. I can’t stand the bitterness and anger and hatred that inevitably floods the conversation.
I’d rather focus on something we can all agree is good, like lowering the number of abortions. One way to make that happen is to encourage and support pregnant women as they choose adoption.
With that in mind I love this comment from Ruth Graham, daughter of Billy Graham, who helped her daughter navigate two unplanned pregnancies:
“No life is a mistake. God has plans for each life. And there are no illegitimate children—there are only illegitimate acts. And I believe that birth mothers are very courageous. They are living in a society that tells them they don’t have to carry to life. It’s legal in this country to have abortion, but they choose life. They lay down their lives; literally, their reputations, their figures, their school careers, sometimes their families kick them out. And the Lord said that there’s no greater love but that a man lay down his life for his friends, and these young women lay down their lives for their children. And I applaud them.”
The brave women who place their children for adoption instead of choosing abortion need to be celebrated.
Thanks to the flubbed oath on inauguration day, President Barack Obama retook the oath of office yesterday out of “an abundance of caution.”
That’s an awesome phrase. I’m not the only one who thinks so.
So we should have a T-shirt: I have an Abundance of Caution.
Once upon a time I thought i’d be cool to make a T-shirt of the month. I never quite got there because I’m not much of a designer and I’m no Threadless. But I can dream, can’t I?
Earlier this week I read an article by Cory Doctorow (of Boing Boing fame) about how he’s able to be a productive writer in an age of distraction. It’s definitely a worthy question. In some ways I’ve answered that question with National Novel Writing Month, but that’s not a very sustainable solution (nor is it all that more productive; I’ve yet to truly polish any of the three novels I’ve written during NaNoWriMo).
One of Doctorow’s suggestions is to have a short, consistent schedule where you do nothing but write. Even if it’s just 20 minutes, as long as you do it every day you’ll accomplish a lot. I’m beginning to realize how true that is, for more things than just writing.
Think of all the enormous tasks in this world is accomplished not with some Herculean effort, but with the small, slow drip of consistency. Winning an election, overturning a social ill, writing a blog, landing a job, landing on the moon, earning a degree, making a friend.
It’s hard to do. Even as I’ve had this idea in my mind all week I haven’t found those 20 minutes for my writing. But I have found 20 minutes for other projects, and it’s proving beneficial.
It’s the old tortoise and the hare: Slow and steady wins the race.
I watched bits and pieces of the Inauguration today and caught much of Obama’s speech on NPR. But I really enjoyed much of the festivities through Twitter and the various reactions, comments and snippets. Apparently I wasn’t the only one enjoying Twitter: Traffic was up five fold.
The breadth of opinions was hilarious. One person would be euphoric about an Obama presidency and the next person would be taking potshots at hope and change. One person loved the inaugural poem and the very next tweet called it a flaming failure.
It was also great to see people’s personal reactions, what lines of speeches/prayers/poems stuck with them, what made them laugh, what made them cry (quite literally).
Last week I talked a bit about Martin Luther King Jr. being a radical. Today it seems appropriate to look at some of his radical words.
On love vs. hate:
“I have decided to stick with love. Hate is too great a burden to bear.”
On nonviolence:
“Nonviolence is the answer to the crucial political and moral questions of our time: the need for man to overcome oppression and violence without resorting to oppression and violence. Man must evolve for all human conflict a method which rejects revenge, aggression and retaliation. The foundation of such a method is love.” (Nobel Prize acceptance speech, 1964)
Continue reading The Radical Words of Martin Luther King Jr.
The first single from U2’s new album, No Line on the Horizon, is now available. The song, “Get On Your Boots” is being streamed from U2’s web site and is available for purchase on iTunes. No Line on the Horizon comes out March 3, 2009.
You can buy just the single for 99 cents, or pre-order the album for $9.99 and you can download “Get On Your Boots” today. The pre-order version of No Line on the Horizon includes two bonus tracks (one is an iTunes exclusive, the other is a pre-order only, but no details on what either one is).
You can also pre-order the deluxe version of the album for $17.99 from iTunes, which includes the two bonus tracks, a film from Anton Corbijn and a digital collector’s magazine.
Continue reading Get On Your U2: New Single & Pre-Order No Line on the Horizon
We planned to take Lexi to Sesame Street Live on Saturday night for her birthday, but a week of illness meant my wife couldn’t go. So Saturday comes along and I find myself taking Lexi and one of her friends to Sesame Street Live by myself. Either I’m super dad or an idiot. Maybe both.
In the end I survived. But I was ready for bed at 9:00 p.m.
The girls were good, for the most part. We had a minor run-in with the spring-loaded chairs and then I think Lexi was getting restless near the end. Both the girls enjoyed it, but I don’t think they were quite old enough to really enjoy it. Then again it was just Sesame Street dancers singing songs for an hour and a half. I think they’ve perfected the art of maximizing profit with as minimal production as possible.
Their favorite part of the evening was probably running down the long, empty corridor between the parking lot and the Target Center, which confirms my suspicion that a fun afternoon would be wandering the skyways.
I’ve always heard stories about it being so cold you could throw water into the air and it would vaporize instantly. Since it was 20 degrees below zero in Minnesota today, I thought I’d give it a try:
Vaporizing Water in Minnesota from kevinhendricks on Vimeo.
Most of the water vaporized but some of it crystallized, turning to ice droplets (from the sound of it, I’d guess some of it still hit the ground as liquid). So some of it turned into a cloud that drifted off and some turned to ice that fell in a slow arc to the ground.
To really pull it off, it helps to boil the water and keep it as hot as possible. And, for the record, it didn’t feel that cold outside (granted I wasn’t out for very long). Here’s a better video of this experiment.
I strolled through Barnes & Noble tonight on my own. No kid, no distractions, no time table. I haven’t done that in a long time. We used to hang out at Barnes & Noble quite a lot. We had a book addiction, fueled by the used section at the B&N in Roseville (one of only a handful across the country).
Unfortunately I couldn’t get into it. The latest Buffy comic was tempting but fleeting, and even the gift card burning a hole in my pocket didn’t help. Maybe next time.
But just like every time I wander the books, I was reminded of the enormity of the publishing industry. The massive number of books that are published every year is staggering (something like 175,000). It’s hard for good stories to stand out.