I had a busy busy weekend and am short on sleep. No real blogging tonight, even though there is a lot to write about.

Why?

The Answer.

More details tomorrow.

Posted by: JohnL at 10:10 PM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
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Posted by: Zulma at December 26, 2012 12:16 PM (fZkF6)

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I have just read the last line of The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King to my eldest son, completing the year-and-a-half project of reading the books out loud to him. It's amazing how moving much of Tolkien's dialogue can be when spoken aloud (especially much of the speech of the Rohirrim). Of course that is balanced out by lengthy passages and genealogies rivaling some books of the Old Testament (or Tanakh, depending on your preference) in their difficulty to read aloud. The title of this post is also appropriate for my return to regular blogging, which I tried to do last night before a Blogspot outage shut me down.

I note that Professor Hall is back with regular postings and a great "what I did over my vacation" post. I had a similarly fun break for the last two weeks, although with less traveling.

We spent the weekend before Christmas exploring Dinosaur Valley State Park and Fossil Rim nature preserve in Glen Rose, Texas (about an hour and a half from where we live). We stayed in town for Christmas, but thanks to the babysitting duties of my wonderful parents-in-law, my wife and I got away for a couple of days after Christmas to a fantastic bed and breakfast in the Texas Hill Country. We spent time enjoying good food, walking outdoors, shopping in Fredericksburg, and visiting the National Museum of the Pacific War.

I've lived here almost my entire life, and am still amazed at the treasures Texas offers up.

Posted by: JohnL at 09:17 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Blogging will be light for the next few days as I celebrate Christmas here with my family. I hope you all have a safe, joyous, and peaceful holiday. In addition to the excellent Virginia Postrel piece on Christmas lights that I linked to yesterday, James Lileks had a fun Bleat about a bus tour to see Christmas lights in and around his city. My part of Plano has several festive houses, but my kids tell me these are the "best lights ever" --

Warmest Wishes of the Season to all of you.

Posted by: JohnL at 06:23 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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If you missed it last week, Stephen Green put up a list of things he is thankful for.

I'm willing to bet that most males would concur.

Posted by: JohnL at 11:09 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Time flies when you're having fun.

And we had quite a bit over the Thanksgiving holiday. We stayed in town, enjoying dinner at my parents' house. Played football in the backyard with my sons while my daughter collected colored leaves. Ate too much, but what kind of holiday would it be without the gluttony? My Cowboys lost, but the Longhorns won. Now I find myself in the unsavory position of being an Oklahoma fan for one weekend, in the hopes that UT can secure a bid to a BCS bowl (likely the Fiesta). However, I missed the Longhorn game as I was enjoying a Friday
afternoon showing of Elf. If you haven't seen this movie yet, go see it. Guaranteed to bring a smile to your face. The entire movie is good-hearted and the last 10 minutes or so will rekindle your belief in Santa Claus in much the same way as other Holiday classics such as Miracle on 34th Street (the original) and The Polar Express.

P.S. Good news on the pet front. . . our toad still lives, although the blue neon tetra met his maker a couple of days ago (predicted here).

Posted by: JohnL at 10:45 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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I apologize in advance for this: I am not Lileks, who I am sure could do this subject more justice than I. I don't usually share much of my domestic circumstances here, but tonight is such a "perfect storm" of pet misfortune that I have to type a few words.

Background: my wife has asthma and is very allergic to cats; somewhat to dogs. But we are both animal lovers and want our kids to learn to be as well. Therefore, we keep a few small pets -- a hamster, fish, and a toad. Our main pet is a hamster, Perky, who just passed away after seeming to recover from a brief bout of wet tail.

I wonder now if it was actually wet tail or just old age, as she was approaching the two-year-old maximum lifespan of hamsters. You don't know sorrow until you have three kids under the age of 10 experiencing this kind of loss for the first time. This comes on the heels of my killing of my second son's two about-to-metamorphose tadpoles last week by using dechlorinated city water instead of the bottled "drinking water" we had been using. Add to that the fact that his wild toad hasn't eaten for the last two weeks, and things look pretty glum in the
Lanius household.

Oh yeah, one of my first son's neon tetra fish (which we just got a couple of days ago) is having major equiulibrium problems (swimming nose-down or upside down) and I am concerned that his days are also numbered.

Arrgh.

Posted by: JohnL at 09:58 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Our weekend was wide open, the kids were on Fall break, the calendar was clear of sporting and other commitments. Finding ourselves with nothing to do, we headed up to Eisenhower State Park. Situated on the southern shores of Lake Texoma within 20 minutes of the birthplace of President Eisenhower, the park is only about a one-hour drive from our home in Plano.

We spent most of our time learning how to pitch our new 10-person tent (which means, of course, that only the five members of our family can sleep in it comfortably), building the cooking fires for dinner and breakfast, and cleaning up after dinner and breakfast. Throw in a 90-minute nature walk that included skipping rocks, picking apart crawfish shells, and catching crickets, and that was it. In other words, perfect.

I know that I had much more fun skipping rocks with my kids in the fresh, 70-degree autumn air than I would have had watching my beloved Longhorns surrender for the fourth year in a row to the awful Oklahoma Sooners.

Posted by: JohnL at 09:17 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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