Gabby Douglas, You Rock

Gabby, you rock. You're awesome. Whether you get gold or not.

However you want to do your hair is perfect. Whatever you choose to wear is great (and you have totally rocked those outfits). Anyone who thinks the Olympics is about the color of an outfit is loco.

Ignore the people who criticize such things. Their words say a lot about them... and nothing about you.

I have heard a lot of people, both with my own ears and via social media, talk about you. Everyone loves you, respects you, is awed by your accomplishments, and thinks you are doing a great job both as yourself, and representing the USA.

As far as I'm concerned, you could wear a Chinese outfit, You'd still rock, and I'd still be both grateful and proud you are representing me.

Thanks to you, and to everyone competing on behalf of the USA.

Poo on No Poo?

Over the course of a few months, three bloggers I follow all discussed using baking soda instead of shampoo and vinegar instead of conditioner. As I read the sources they referred me to I found confusing-- even confused-- advice.

For starters, nobody really seems to agree on the ratio of water to vinegar. I saw everything from 6:1 to 1 cup:1 tbsp (16:1) to no vinegar at all (divide by zero error).

Next, there was disagreement on how to use them, including some impossible instructions.

1. Use baking soda only on the scalp, and vinegar only on the tips of the hair. I don't see how this is going to work if you have more than three hairs per square inch of scalp, at which point I would just shave my head. I guess if your hair is long enough, you can effectively reach this goal...
2. Use baking soda on the scalp and hair, but vinegar only on the hair ends.
3. Use baking soda only on the scalp and vinegar on the hair.

So... which is it, and why?

But my absolute favorite advice was to never get both on your hair at the same time. "This would be really bad." OK... why is that? Because you once saw a fake volcano made with these ingredients? Are they afraid of the carbonic acid created? Vinegar is already acidic, and in any event, the carbonic acid immediately breaks down into carbon dioxide and sodium acetate (which is safe for human consumption).

Meanwhile, I'm in that inbetween place some people hit while their hair adapts to a new regimen. Since I have longish (2" to 6" depending on where on the head) hair and can't really get away with Snape hair, I use a small amount of shampoo (just on the hair!) every 2-3 days.

So... can anyone point me to something definitive on this stuff? If I can't get away from shampoo as a cheater step soon, I'll probably give up and go back to using post-industrial waste on my hair. Someone help me!

Angry Foods

I woke up in the middle of the night, and this artichoke was standing on my lips with a tiny six shooter pointed up my left nostril... I started to ask what was going on but he (He? She? How do you sex an artichoke???) cocked the trigger and said, "Don't even think about moving those lips, bud."

Thankfully s/he couldn't hear my thoughts, but my lips froze despite what I was thinking. Those beady eyes (I thought only potatoes had eyes) just stared at me a moment. Finally, the artichoke moved up onto that bit of skin between the lips and nose. "OK, talk."

Now that I was allowed to, I had no idea what to say. I hadn't done drugs since college, thirty five years ago. I don't drink. So why was there an artichoke on my face? With a gun? I decided to start there.

"Why are you standing on my face with a pistol in my nostril?"

"I'm impressed. You didn't just go, 'Oh, my! A talking artichoke!'

"I'm here because you listened to your parents and ate all your vegetables. I'm here because you sometimes order vegetarian meals. I'm here because when you were in Europe, you decided you enjoyed eating artichokes, and now eat them every chance you get."

By now s/he was squinting like Clint Eastwood.

"I'm here because you ate my family-- my wife, the one after her, the one after her, and the one after her. And my parents, my grandparents, my great grandparents, my siblings, my aunts and uncles, my cousins, my kids, my grandkids, and my great grandkids.

"So, in the words of a boy named Sue, 'Now you're gonna die!'"

As you can imagine, I was sweating up a storm. Sue (I thought of the artichoke as a him with a her name at this point) was scary. There was no anger. No rage. No fury. Just a matter of fact intensity.

"What kind of gun is that?"

If Sue had eyebrows, he'd have raised one. "Really? I'm about to shoot you and all you want to ask about is the caliber of my weapon?"

"Look, please... I had no idea!"

"Ignorance is no excuse."

"I have a family!"

"I had a family. You ate them."

"Come on, please! Have a heart!"

"Sorry. You ate that, too."

There was a bright flash and a loud noise...

I had a slight nosebleed.

"Maybe," I said, "you should have worried about the caliber."

I almost broke a tooth on that stupid pistol.

The heart's the best part, but the rest is still tasty.

Dedicated to Mary Tabata; this one's more or less her fault.

Bare Trees

From 2012-01-08

I fell in love with Fleetwood Mac listening to Christine McVie (formerly Christine Perfect) singing "Spare me a Little of Your Love" at a concert on Halloween, 1974. Discussing the album that song is from-- Bare Trees-- and the title song on the roof of the Georgia Tech physics building, looking out over the campus on a winter day, I realized how much I loved bare trees. Or perhaps just admitted it to myself.

Either way, my love for the band and this song indelibly intensified in that moment.

Gazing out at the Party Tree (https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10150441664891674.357408.636186673&type=3) this morning, this song naturally came to mind. All of creation is beautiful. It is only our foolishness or pain that keeps us from seeing that beauty.

Impersonalizing Suicide

A blogger I follow recently discussed visiting a psychiatrist and having to fill out a (poorly thought out and worded, at that) suicide questionnaire. You know, like when you visit a new doctor, and they want to know whether you have ever had polio or Chron's or amnesia, and when your last booster shot for political insanity was.

I'm not a professional counselor, psychiatrist, or even a professional psycho (I'm strictly amateur) but I have dealt with a number of suicidal and depressed people, and the mere fact that a doctor relegates the initial discussion of suicide to a written questionnaire is very disturbing. What's next, an online Survey Monkey survey on suicide so they can decide whether to grant you an appointment?

Maybe they should use an automated telephone survey.

"Press one if you have never contemplated suicide (in which case we know you're lying).

"Press two if you are just sort of contemplating suicide.

"Press three if you contemplate suicide a lot.

"Press four if you have a suicide plan.

"Press five if this plan involves shooting up a school or flying a plane into a government building; then hold while we dispatch a SWAT team.

"Press six if you have a gun in your mouth right now.

"If you have already committed suicide, please hang up and call nine one one. To hear these options again, press star."

I realize that depression and suicide are not joking matters. If you are feeling suicidal, contact me. If you're in the Austin area, we'll hug you and love you through it. If you aren't, we'll find someone where you are who will.

This method is not approved by any licensing body, as far as I know, but it has a high rate of success.

Sometimes we may need professional help... but I've seen love work miracles. Even if you need professional help, love and hugs are still good.

The Need To Do's

There are things I need to do that I'm not doing, or at least not doing as fast as I should.

But a lot of the things I "need to do"... I really don't. They are often simply the expectations of other people. I'm not accountable to your expectations, nor are you to mine (though I try not to have any).

Other "need to do's" are expectations I put on myself... for no good reason.

Realizing this is really freeing!

Want an example? Sure! For years I functioned as an assistant youth pastor at the church we attended. Eventually I became the youth pastor. And that was fine. But there came a time it no longer felt right. But...

Others had expectations. "You're good at this, and you're called to this. You can't walk away from it."

I had expectations. "It will look like I'm abandoning these teens. Nobody will trust a youth pastor without a church!"

But I knew I no longer belonged in that spot, so I resigned. I still work with teens and college age people. The groups is just more diverse and spread out geographically. I was always better at mentoring, and one on one stuff-- which is what I concentrate on now.

There are lots more, some big, some trivial. As Yoda said, "Size matters not!" If it's not truly something you need to do, let it go.

What are some of you "need to do's"? Are they really?

Thanks, Lana K. Moore, for the inspiration!

(Ironically, I started this just over a year ago, but it got lost on my "to do" list.)

Novel #1, First Draft Done!

First draft: DONE!
Chapters: 30
Words: ~75,000
Happy dance: DONE!

Sharon had a great idea. I printed out a copy for my Dad (and signed it with thanks for raising us with a love of reading, and for encouraging our imaginations). She'll give it to him this weekend. BUT DON'T TELL HIM! It's a surprise.

Caveat: That's real words, not words as publishing companies count (a multiple of page count). Using their method it's 90,000 to 100,000 words, depending on page size.

Depending on how you figure it, that's somewhere in the neighborhood of the first three Harry Potter books, and right in there with The Hunger Games.

I'm sure this will change a little before it's over; it needs at least two chapters inserted somewhere near the beginning to cover some things I glossed over. I need to add a few things here and there, but I also need to tighten the writing up. And... things may change as I revise it.

Still... 75,000 words in two months (including research and rough editing of each chapter), with a full time job and lots of real life still happening. I'm pretty stoked.

Thanks to all of you who've been encouraging me, with my awesome wife of course leading the race.

I'm thinking of letting a very small group of people read it at this stage. I'd want serious feedback (what you liked and didn't, in terms of characters, flow, style, dialogue, plot, culture, etc), what you didn't understand, how easy or difficult it was to read, and a few other things. They would all be spelled out, but I want to make it clear up front that to even be considered, I'd expect this. I would hope for at least a couple of pages of response.

Otherwise, you'll just have to wait til it's done. Sorry, but I don't want a substandard, unfinished product loose in the wild. I mean, look what happened with those velociraptors!

If you are interested, and have the time, and commit to the feedback, let me know.