Camcorder Fun!!!

Michelle and I just bought a new camcorder last night. This is our second 'baby' purchase. The first was the car (we needed something safe and economical to drive when the baby comes and my old beat-up explorer was not) and now the camcorder. We wound up going to Best Buy and were helped by exactly the kind of employee you would want to be helping you at Best Buy. He was knowledgable, he was not trying to up-sale us, and he was honest. And his name was Aaron. So if Aaron from Best Buy in the Tustin Marketplace happens to read this....Thanks for your help last night! I think that I am going to be one of those fathers who always videos his kids. If in another year or two I get really annoying with it, please let me know. Thanks!

Here's the one that we got:

Tustin City Council Parking Ban

The Tustin City Council is voting on a parking ban on all public streets. The Tustin City Council wants to ban parking on all public streets between the hours of 2:00AM and 6:00AM. I have heard that the reason that they want to do this is because one of the members of the council lives across the street from an apartment complex and the apartment residents park in front of his house because there is not enough parking inside the apartment complex. For those of us who live in apartment complexes, this seems unfair. Tustin has many apartment complexes that were built 3,4 or 5 decades ago when it was perfectly acceptable to have only 1 parking place per unit. This is no longer acceptable as most families have at least 2 cars. This is going to especially effect places like Mitchell Ave where there are several apartment complexes, none of which have adequate parking and parking (even on the street) is always an issue. This also applies to home-owners. If you are a homeowner in Tustin and you have more cars than can fit in your driveway or if you have an overnight guest whose car cannot fit in your driveway, then you cannot park on the street; you will have to find another place to park your car. If this measure is passed, there will be no more parking on any public streets and the city will be spending $1,046,250.00 on parking ban signs, a Code Enforcement Officer, one new city Police Officer, and 2 Parking Enforcement Officers all paid for by our taxes. If you dislike this idea as much as I do, then you can find more info here or you can contact the City Council Members:

Jerry Amante - Mayor jamante@tustinca.org
Doug Davert - Mayor Pro Tem ddavert@tustinca.org
Lou Bone - Councilmember lbone@tustinca.org
Tony Kawashima - Councilmember tkawashima@tustinca.org
Jim Palmer - Councilmember jpalmer@tustinca.org
City Council Main Line: (714) 573-3010

The City Council should not be telling us that we cannot park in front of our homes.

Pretzel Day!!!

Today was pretty much the best day at work for the whole year. My work had an ice cream social as a "morale builder" for my division. I felt like Stanley from The Office when he got really excited for pretzel day and ran downstairs and stood in line for hours to get a free pretzel. I stood in line for about 15 minutes for some ice cream. There were 3 kinds of ice cream and a whole spread of toppings at my work today. It was really exciting! I think I need a new job.

Paper Toilet Gaskets

Have you ever noticed on the boxes (the cardboard boxes, not the metal boxes) of the paper gaskets in public restrooms it always says "Provided by the Management for Your Protection"? I wonder why it says that? Why does management get all the credit? I know management at my work doesn't order those things. Maintenance does. Why doesn't it say "Provided by the Janitor"? And what is management trying to protect us from anyways?

Stupid Ultrasound!

Update on my last post:
The cold-as-ice ultrasound technician could not find the sex of the baby. It would normally not be that big of a deal, but we planned this whole huge party for both Michelle's and my family for father's day for the big reveal. Baby McMurtry, though, decided to be stubborn and kept his legs crossed the whole time with a pile of umbilical cord in his lap. What made it worse was the bedside manner of the ultrasound technician. She was silent, rude, and completely unhelpful for the full hour of this ultrasound. She wouldn't tell us what she was looking at so we would keep asking her what she was looking at and she told us in such a irritated way like we were interrupting her schedule. So, we got a lot of good ultrasound pics and we are going back in a couple weeks or so and if they still can't tell, we are going to take it as a sign and just be surprised at the delivery. Here is a great shot of our baby's profile though.

Boy or Girl?

Michelle and I are going to find out the sex of the baby today! I have always been the kind of guy who can't wait for surprises. As a kid I was the one sitting under the Christmas tree shaking the presents 2 weeks before Christmas. As an adult, I read spoilers for movies and t.v. shows (I knew the ending of this season finale of Lost about a week before the episode aired) So when we had to decide whether or not we were going to find out the sex of the baby, there was no debate.
So, I'm taking guesses. Let me know what you think it will be. There are no prizes except for "I-told-you-so".

Dear Eric and Rebecca Wakeling,

I'm sorry for spilling a half gallon of primer on your garage floor. I tried to clean as much of it as I could, and most people will probably never notice it, but you know its there and I know its there. So, I am sorry. From now on, I will read new paint sprayer instructions in full before I attempt to spay praint anything. I will no longer feel that hand tightening paint sprayer hose connections is sufficient. I will always use a wrench to tighten connections from now on.

Sincerely,
Kevin

Do you believe in the supernatural?

Maybe not the ghosts of deceased family members coming back to offer one final message, but do you believe in a supernatural realm that can interact with our physical plane? I can offer several stories that I have heard from perfectly normal, sane, non-crazy people who are absolutely convinced that they have seen something supernatural. For the sake of brevity, I will only re-tell my own supernatural experience. I was around 17 years old and I was working in the kitchen of a convalescent home. I was the closer which meant that I was the one who had to finish washing the dishes and cleaning the kitchen. I was often there until 10:00PM, and the last of the kitchen employees left around 7:00. So, I was there for about 3 hours by myself...no big deal. This was an especially long night, and it was rounding the 10 o'clock hour and I had just started mopping the floor. There was a large walk-in refrigerator that had a set of glass doors that opened with the bottom of the door about mid-thigh height, so they weren't doors used to walk into the refrigerator. There were very heavy metal shelves about a couple inches on the inside of the glass doors used to place food for easy access so you wouldn't have to walk all the way into the fridge to get certain things. I started mopping around those doors and looked up at them and noticed that they were completely fogged up; so much that I couldn't see far enough into the fridge to see what was on the shelves (only a couple inches into the fridge)! I thought that was weird, I had never seen that before, but I went on with my mopping because I wanted to get home. I suddenly got this chill down my back and the hair on the back of my neck started to stand up and I looked up again and saw two very clear hand prints very slowly start to appear and wipe at the fog on the inside of the glass door. I freaked out and left the mop on the floor. I talked to the night cook and the kitchen manager the next day and told them what happened. They said that a couple years before a resident had passed away in the kitchen (you got used to the passing of residents when working in a convalescent home, but in the kitchen was kind of weird) and ever since then the kitchen had been haunted. Now, I feel that I am a reasonable man and I do not believe that the ghost of this past resident had visited me and wiped the fog off of the glass door that night, but something did happen (and I'm not crazy!) Have you ever had an experience something like that? Anything that if you told anybody they would think you're crazy? (you can put a comment under anonymous if you're too worried what others will think)

Ode to Lost

I love Lost. It is my favorite show. If you were to come up to me and ask me about Lost I could talk to you for hours about the show, about the mysteries, about theories that I have and that other people have about the show. But, Lost is waning. What gave Lost such a larger audience than other sci-fi/nerdy shows was the character development and the number of very strong characters. But there was another thing that kept the fans coming back as well: the mysteries. The mysteries of the island which kept the fans coming back are also what is causing the waning of Lost. Its turning out to be such a catch-22: the fans (myself included) griped when the show was stringing us along and not answering any questions, but now that the show is beginning to wrap up and they are answering a bunch of questions there is nothing left to care about and keep watching. I think that I speak for a lot of fans when I say that after this fast-paced, answer-filled season I am not so excited about the next season. The awesomeness of Lost is what all the fans were complaining about: the constant, unrevealed mysteries that kept us coming back. Sorry Lost, you were great once, and you are still good, but I am no longer that excited to watch you.


<<<<<<<< UPDATE >>>>>>>>>>>>
After the reaction of some, I feel I must clarify the above. Lost is still, by far, the best show on television and may remain the best show of all time. I'm just saying that the end of this season was not like the hatch at the end of season 1. Due to all that has been revealed thus far in the show, we can reasonably assume that the island moved to the Arctic. Penny's guys who were looking for the island were in the arctic, the island had polar bears on it, the middle of the island that Ben went into to turn the wheel and move the island was frozen...I think we can assume that the island was once in the arctic and probably moved back there when Ben moved it. The big reveal in this season finale was different than season 1 and just not as exciting as the season 1 finale that we knew nothing about. I'll say again, it is the best show ever, and it is impossible to keep up the greatness of season 1. I'm just saying...

Haircuts

I'm pretty weird about getting my haircut. I like to establish myself somewhere so the barbers/stylists know me. I like to go in and have the barber already know what I want. And, most importantly, once the tissue paper is around my neck and and the smock buttoned, I do not want to talk. I will talk as much as the barber wants before and after I am in the chair, but once I'm in that chair I do not want to talk. I want to sit there in peaceful silence as the barber cuts my hair. That's why I go to the barber by my work. Even if they don't remember exactly what I want, they keep records of how my hair is cut in their computer. They never ask me because they know I like a 2 on the sides gently faded to an 8 on the top, sideburns to the bottom of the earlobe and thinned out with a squared neckline. And the best part is I can sit back in peace and not talk and know that they know what I want.

Is that weird?

Contacts or Glasses?

I am having trouble deciding if I want to stay with contacts or glasses. I love the freedom of the contacts. My peripheral vision suffers with glasses. I can't do some things with glasses: I did paintball at mancamp and my glasses would not fit inside the masks they provided, so I had to take my glasses off. I couldn't see anything and wound up shooting my own team. With contacts I can look out of the corner of my eye and still see what I want to look at. With glasses I have to turn my whole head to look at something.

However, I have an astigmatism which glasses can correct but contact cannot. So I can see better in glasses than I can in contacts. Also, I have a strong aversion to poking myself in the eye. One would think that after ten years in contacts I would be able to put them in properly, but it is still a major production for me to try to put contacts in my eyes. Every time I see my finger coming straight for my eye, I can't help blinking. This causes me to sleep in my contacts way more than I am willing to admit and I'm afraid that I'm going to do some permanent damage to my eyes. My mom works as an optician and has told me horror stories about people sleeping in their contacts.

So, I'm torn. I just don't know what to do. Maybe I should train myself to be able to properly poke myself in the eye.

MAN CAMP!!!!!!!

Early Friday evening I left for my first ever men's retreat. However, the men's leadership at church emphatically said that men do not retreat! They camp! So they called it ManCamp. They even did some videos to get the men at church excited for it (you can check out the videos here) It was really fun. I got to meet and hang out with a bunch of guys I haven't met before, chug a quart of milk in 45 seconds, almost kill myself trying to run around a very steep slope and shoot other men with paint, and shoot arrows at bales of hay for 2 hours. The food was great, the fellowship even better, and the spiritual renewal (which is why I wanted to go so badly) was exactly what I needed. Barry Cory, the new president of Biola, spoke through Genesis about how we need to build an altar to God in each new place of our lives and how important it is to be aware of what we use to build the altar and what we put on the altar. It was a great weekend and was exactly what I was needing at this point in my life.



<<<<<<<< UPDATE >>>>>>>>>>>
It has been brought to my attention that I neglected to mention above that I abandoned my wife this weekend for the first time in our marriage.