This is excellent, yet disappointing at the same time- both the Pope and now The Church of England have come forward and said “mah bad, Darwin was right, sorry about oppressing science… again…” The depressing part is while all of the old-world christian religions are coming to terms with evolution, those in the US are still desperately fighting reality. I’m wondering what it’s gonna take for people to accept it. It’s like there’s just enough unverified data and blatant mistruths out there to convince people who’ll deny the enormous mountain of data that disagrees.

ok, this has been gnawing at me for the last few weeks. As I get older I become a lot less patient with people who waste my time on stupid things. I try not to get involved with religious or political debates mainly because they always seem to lead to hurt feelings and me putting someone on a life-long banlist. However. I’m getting *really* pissed at the anti-science bullshit that’s going on.

Ingredients kid hose sprinkler yard wife who doesn’t want to get wet step 1 take the kid outside to play in the sprinkler step 2 immediately get wet with the water that’s still in the hose and warmed from the sun step 3 get the kid soaked step 4 take the sprinkler off of hose step 5 show kid how to drink out of hose, hand him hose. Make sure to hold onto a length for crimping

My internet connection. SO here’s the scoop 5 days until cutover: I call AT&T, tell them I’m moving and need to transfer my Static IP DSL service on the 30th(Monday). Tech says no problem it’s all set. I am pleasantly surprised at how little of a hassle it was and that it was way smoother than any other interaction I’ve had with them. Saturday, 2 days until cutover: We’re planning on doing the actual moving Sunday morning and plan to spend Saturday packing and planning.

So jackie and I put in an offer on a house march 19th. The sellers agreed on… lets say the 25th of march. So we should have a house, right? Not so fast. Our offer was less than what was owed on the mortgage, so they had to get THEIR bank to approve the short sale. One delay after another. Every 1-7 days they give us another excuse. I’m getting really pissed at this point and needed to vent.

I see this one come up quite often, so I thought I’d share it. The purpose of a fish trap is to catch fish, and when the fish are caught, the trap is forgotten. The purpose of a rabbit snare is to catch rabbits. When the rabbits are caught, the snare is forgotten. The purpose of words is to convey ideas. When the ideas are grasped, the words are forgotten. Where can I find a man who has forgotten words?

When I moved into Secchia Hall back in the fall of 2001, my mom took me to Sams to buy my first real piece of furniture- a Desk chair. The dorm room was unfurnished, so I ended up getting a futon and a desk as well. The desk was cheaply made and only survived one move. The futon was horribly uncomfortable, and given to Jackie’s dad shortly thereafter. The only thing that followed me was the chair.

Here’s a story from Christmas that I almost forgot to share. Every year we get together- my parents, brothers, aunt and uncle, cousins and grandparents. We go through dinner, do the present thing, then the grandparents leave. That’s when things usually degenerate below the average level of stupidity. The incident started when my brother Jamie (24) and cousin Walker (29) were talking about getting high from nutmeg. I don’t think Jamie believed it, so Walker offered to eat a tablespoon of nutmeg for $10.

So it’s the end of November, and the final count is 53,708 words. I’ve submitted it to the nano site and got a nifty little image to display: It’s sorta funny because I finished early- I had a week left when I stopped writing, and I probably could have hit 60k if I had more plot. Maybe when the revision process starts I’ll get some ideas for back stories and such that I can weasel in there.

At 11:50pm on the 21st of November, I completed the NaNoWriMo challenge, writing 50,300 words for my book, Sinblade. I’m not done yet- I still have another 5-10k words to go before I’ll consider the rough draft complete. Here’s my ideal lifecycle for the book: Rough Draft: First complete version of the story. First Draft: First revised version I send out for people to read. Continuity and plot are checked. Second Draft: All first draft changes are merged.

November is National Novel Writing Month, also known as NaNoWriMo. Basically there’s a month-long open contest to try and write a novel that’s 50,000+ words. My friend VP has written two books like that, Shining Star and Pulling Strings (both are good, go buy them). This year I thought I’d give it a try- I have a couple of stories kicking around in the back of my head that I’d like to write some day, and I figured this would be the perfect chance to stop putting it off.

We just took her to the Humane Society. I am a sad monkey 🙁 Bye bye Chaos, I’m sorry it had to go down like this. 2004-2007

There’s nothing worse than seeing a pet go away; be it death or being forced to give it away. This weekend Jackie and I agreed that we’re going to take Chaos to the shelter this week. For those unfamiliar with Chaos, here’s the story. Jackie and I had been married for less than a year, and living together with her cat Toby who was 9 years old at the time. Toby had always been around other cats, but when Jackie brought Toby up from her father’s house, Toby became lonely, and would cry in the middle of the night, often waking me up and pissing me off.

So Jackie’s been sitting at home with Ian for 4 months now and is incredibly bored. All she every does is read. I suggested a hobby, but she doesn’t really have any (except scrapbooking, which is expensive)- So what I want to do is get some ideas from all the people who read my site. Here are the base rules: cheap- no more than $25 start up cost and that must last 3 weeks.

So some time in the middle of the night, I’m awoken by this strange, high pitch squeaking sound- almost a whistle. I could hear movement in the other room, so I figured it was the cats playing with a toy.In Truth, the cats have ADD and usually stop after about 10 seconds or so, but this kept going… 20.. 30 seconds. I finally got up and walked into the other room to see chaos playing with a live mouse.

So I’m going to attempt a new routine- waking up at 6:30 and hitting the gym for 25 minutes every morning. It’s a 5 minute walk over to the gym, so I can get that done, hit the shower, and have plenty of time to get ready in the morning. The goal is to do this every morning, and after a month or so maybe scale back on weekends. I started on a saturday so I can get in the swing of it before the work week starts.

FINALLY, after 4 years, I’ve got a grill again. The last time I had a grill, it was charcoal and at Brook Meadow. This time we’re going with basically a potbelly gas grill- small enough to be portable, big enough to grill 2 steaks. Somewhere around here I have my old bbq grill utensils. Gotta find those then I’ll be having steak and pork for dinner.

Yes, I said Leverage- I sound like a big fancy CIO, don’t I?:) I have been a Michigan resident for 26 of my 27 years. I left Michigan for 18 months to take some contract work in DC- My wife and I weren’t happy with the area and moved back first chance we could. Unfortunately for us, the company that hired me started to flounder and laid me off after 5 months.

So Ian was born at 5:02am on monday (Fed 26, 2007). 7lbs, 15oz, 20.5 inches long. He is already carrying on the fine Morgan tradition of being an asshole.

Whoops. This happened after work on Tuesday. Jackie was at home. I was on a small service drive that T’d into a 4.5 lane road that was fairly busy. looked left, saw a car with it’s right turn signal on in the right lane. looked right, say a red light. looked left, saw the car with the blinker slowing down as if to turn down the road I was on. looked right, saw the red light turn green, meaning I had about 10 seconds to react.

Jackie and I finally agreed on a name a week or three ago- “Ian Hawthorn Morgan”. We also bought the domain IanHawthorn.com for him- figured it was something he could take over when he’s old enough- it’s also gonna serve as a news center for family and friends. Jackie’s already set up a wordpress theme and started posting emails we’ve received and other such details. I’ve revised my categories on this site and added one for ian when I mention him.

a couple of weeks ago the lotto hit $200 million, and I bought my annual lotto ticket. The lotto has a strange effect on people. It gives hope where there is none. Even I sat at a redlight imagining all of the wonderful things I could do with that amount of money. Of course erasing family debt, replacing vehicles, real honeymoon with jackie, etc was at the top of the list, but what would *I* do after that was said and done?