Just like her Daddy

I think she looks just like Tyler but he says her smile is from my family. I'm leaving you to your own conclusions.

Prez Dispenser T-shirt

Yeah, I've seen plenty of funny campaign t-shirts in the last several months, Urban Outfitters seems to always have the best, but I saw this linked on the site www.iliketotallyloveit.com and had to post it.

Playing Dressup

As a kid, my sister and I used to like to play dress-up. This was always a little more fun at our friend Shelby's house because her dress-up clothes seemed more princess-like. But we had a small collection too and wore them out sufficiently I'm sure. I believe even the most tomboy of girls likes to dress up nice occasionally. I also believe that the less you do it the more fun it is, though now I wish I had more opportunities.

Saturday was my cousin's wedding at the Gallivan Center downtown. I knew it would be absolutely beautiful because I love the Gallivan Center. I've rode my bike through the fountains at night numerous times and watched movies from the grass there. I've enjoyed many outdoor concerts there during the summer and one very snowy concert there in the winter. One beautiful night I saw Arlo Guthrie perform and I sat on the edge of the little pool that is an ice rink in the winter, dangling my feet in and enjoying the performance.

So I knew it would be a great night for dressing up. Problematically, I'm not quite fitting into many of my old clothes so I had way more fun dressing Bailey up. At first I'd thought I'd be dressing her up all the time, changing hair bows, painting her face for the games, etc., but onesies and nighties quickly became the norm out of convenience. And of course, to me, she is irresistible as she is. Still, seeing her with her little bow and shiny bracelet make me want to do it more often. She is such a cutie!

Trailhead Tailgating

Not exactly the sport of the season, but I couldn't resist sharing this short list from Outside magazine, courtesy of my mother-in-law.

Here is the text:

Outside Etiquette
On Tailgating at the Trailhead
1. The time spent riding or hiking must be greater than that spent hanging out at the car.
2. If there's beer in the cold stream and you didn't put it there, leave it.
3. Car stereos are acceptable, unless you have a subwoofer or a blown speaker.
4. Joining a Hacky Sack circle is fine; owning a Hacky Sack is not.

Football Attempts a Coup

It would be easy to let Bailey totally hijack my blog, she is pretty much my entire life right now, but football is making its best attempt at a takeover.

Every Thursday afternoon we go to the East High sophomore games where Tyler coaches. Last year we also went to the varsity games on Friday nights because he helps out there too and those games are more exciting. Caiden particularly likes the varsity games because the concession stand is open at them. As you can imagine, for most kids, buying food or candy at the concession stand is more fun than actually watching the game.

Here are some recent conversations with Caiden at the games:

Caiden: "Do you like watching the sophomore games even though there's no food?"
Me: "Yes, I like watching the games. I come for the game, not the food. What about you?"
Caiden: "I like watching the games too, but sometimes I'm starving."
Me: "Even though we bring snacks or eat snacks before hand?"
Caiden: "We brought snacks?"
Me: "No, but today we had snacks after school before driving over here."
Caiden: "Oh."


Caiden: "What are cheerleaders even for?"
Me: "To get the crowd excited."
Caiden: "Well they're not making me excited."

Bailey doesn't care about the concessions, but she likes being outside and that's fun enough. She's also trying to quickly gain a few so she can start wearing her game outfit. She actually likes going to Caiden's games a bit more though because we don't have to sit on the bleachers and she can lay on a blanket on the grass. Admittedly though, she is the center of my attention at the games even though I love watching them and being there.

Testing the Big Bang

My favorite book read for a college course was probably "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions" by Thomas Kuhn, a Physics and Philosophy professor at UC Berkeley, Princeton, and finally, MIT. My class was Symbolic Anthropology at BYU. I littered the margins of that book with copious comments and notes, and I would love to take another look at it, but it too was damaged in our basement flood.

Generally I'm not a fan of hard sciences. I'm not even much of a fan of science fiction unless it somehow addresses the conflicting overlap between free agency and destiny which fascinates me. And of course, I'm crazy about the show LOST which does science fiction very well.

But I loved the book because it seemed to be more about how people think and make decisions than about scientific paradigms. He talked about how shifting paradigms is a decision made based on the new paradigm answering questions better than the last, but the decision is largely aesthetic, it is usually initially made within about 3 seconds.

Somehow reading this article about trying to re-create the Big Bang brought that book back to my mind. Apparently there is some concern that the experiment could cause some very negative effects, or even bring about the end of the world, but I don't see how the experiment could not be done once conceived. I am too much like Eve, or for a more modern example, like Clive Own in "Closer"--if we could know or understand, why wouldn't we want to? Regardless, it's being done tomorrow and I'm anxious about what we'll discover, even if it takes years for anything to come.