International incident........

Mrs. Lime asked (requested) that we head out for ice cream. I didn't have my license or keys, so Mrs. Lime drove and I rode in back with the baby.

About 5 minutes down the road, we were on an interstate highway. I noticesd that a bird was flying across the median and then turned up the road as he neared the truck. He ended up moving over slightly, putting himself right in front of the windshield. Mrs. Lime turned around just in time to see the bird smack the windshield and go flying off to the side.

I knew as soon as I saw the bird fly in front of the windshield that were were about to have an international incident. When the bird hit the windshield, Mrs. Lime screamed and immediately began to sob. Mrs. Lime does not deal with animal death very well at all.

Mrs. Lime: (crying) I just killed a birdie!

Me: It's OK, honey. It's alright.

Mrs. Lime: NO! I just killed a birdie!


Mrs. Lime was pretty upset about the whole thing. After a couple of minutes......


Mrs. Lime: I can't believe that the birdie just flew into the windshield.

Me: He didn't. He was flying in front of the windshield and you ran into him.

Mrs. Lime: I rear-ended the birdie! I wish you wouldn't have told me that! The poor thing never saw it coming!

Me: It's not like you could have missed him.

Mrs. Lime: Well, I could have moved over and avoided him or something!

Me: You were going to pass the bird on the right?????

Mrs. Lime: YES!

Me: I say it was the bird's fault. He should have never been flying that slow in the fast lane.

Mrs. Lime: STOP IT! The birdie is dead!

Me: No. I think he's just going to have a slight limp.

Mrs. Lime: I probably broke his neck!

Me: How can you break his neck by rear-ending him?


We made it to the ice cream place without any further incident. However, the incident was still the topic of discussion......


Me: How's the ice cream cone?

Mrs. Lime: OK, but it wasn't worth a birdie's life.

Me: (laughing) I knew that this was going to be an international incident as soon as I saw that bird hovering in front of the windshield!

Mrs. Lime: If you knew this was going to be an international incident, why didn't you save the bird's life and tell me to pass him?????

Me: I think it's natural selection. Any bird that decides it would be a good idea to pull in front of a truck likely was meant to die.


We headed back home after we finished up our ice cream. We were passed by 3 cops moving at a pretty high rate of speed.


Mrs. Lime: I wonder where they're all headed?

Me: I bet they're headed to treat that birdie.

Mrs. Lime: That birdie is dead!

Me: I saw him in the median back there. Just a limp, nothing more.

Mrs. Lime: Whatever.


Prayers go out to the birdie and his family. He was a brave, if somewhat stupid birdie.

Kali 0.5 picture blowout.........

Ah, yes. Another picture blowout for the hungry masses yearning to see the cutest baby north of the Missouri River.

Playing in the Exersaucer......









Hanging with her favorite playmate.......











Ready for bed........



Playtime while watching her favorite Baby Einstein video........

Better look at Nova's nemesis.......

The buck that Nova ran into in a previously posted video showed up again in the backyard. He's a young buck, but he's grown out his antlers some since the last time I saw him.

Hanging with people over the age of 5 1/2 months.......

We had some 'adult' time over the weekend. One of Mrs. Lime's friends got married. Plenty of funny stuff happened during the wedding to keep them laughing during their marriage.

-Groom escorted his mom up the aisle and then proceeded to walk up to the alter and stand there......all alone. He suddenly realized that he was supposed to go back behind the scenes and enter with the priest. Turned bright red and walked out as the friends and family laughed out loud.

-One of the ringbearers walked down the aisle acting as though he didn't have a whole lot of interest in the situation. He was latter called the 'Unwilling Ringbearer' at the reception.

-Both the bride and groom were a bundle of nerves. It seemed like the priest was just taking them through the paces, actually physically turning them towards each other or the congregation at certain times because they didn't respond to verbal movement suggestions.

-8 bridesmaids and 8 groomsmen were in the wedding party. Both the bride and groom are extremely nice people. I'm guessing they just couldn't find the heart to cut anyone.

-One of the friends of the couple wrote a song for them for the wedding. It was a nice gesture, though the title of the song ('Across the Threshold') had little to do with the actual subject matter of the rest of the song. I doubt most people listened to the lyrics as much as I did, so it likely didn't matter much anyway. He was a good singer, so it sounded nice.

-They showed a really nice slideshow with lots of photos from the bride and groom's life. As usual, there was no shortage of embarrassing and funny photos.

This was our first wedding in awhile, as most of our friends are already married. We'll probably have a 10-12 year lull and then our friends' kids will start getting married. Frightening stuff.

More bottle updates.......

The boob-to-bottle situation continues to progress very well. Kali is fussing a lot less lately. She even managed to sleep through the night one time earlier this week after tanking up on several ounces of formula. Kali 0.5 went to the pool yesterday with Mrs. Lime to play with another baby. Sounds like it went well. Kali even took a nap at the pool (swimming is tiring evidently!).

I'm hoping to find time to do a few things around the house this weekend. I've got a game table that needs to get set up, some cleaning to do, and some paintings to hang. I've got 5 arms, so that shouldn't be a problem........

Meetings gone bad........

There's really nothing I hate worse that a meeting at work that is set up weeks in advance, only to get to the meeting and find out that the meeting facilitator didn't use that advanced notice to prepare for the meeting in any way.

First of all, they called the meeting a few weeks in advance to 'prepare for a surprise audit'. OK, if it's a surprise audit, how in the world do you know it's coming 4 weeks in advance of the actual audit? I'm thinking that a break-down of the surprise portion of the audit has occurred at some level.

Second, if you've had 4 weeks to prepare for the meeting, I expect you to do more than hand out two pages of bullet points, only to read the entire thing word-for-word to the group. Granted, the person running the meeting is not the brightest of administrative assistants, but that was just brutal. Reading things directly off your hand-out and wasting one hour of my time when I could have read it all to myself in 5 minutes just doesn't cut it. When that happened on occasion in college, I'd just leave the class. I could go back to my room, read the handout on my own, and still have 30 minutes left over to do something more productive.

One nice thing was that there was a refrigerator in the meeting room stocked with drinks. So I could at least down a couple of diet pops to keep my caffeine levels up to avoid any snoring mishaps. The funny part was that many of my co-workers were looking around at each other during the meeting. They were flashing looks and smiles at each other that seemed to say, "Is she really going to read this WHOLE THING????". It was painful.

I hope this post saves one person from a 'meeting reading' sometime in the future. If so, I've done my job.

Chocolate mishap........

Kali did well again on the bottle last night. Took several ounces of formula at bedtime and then took more around 2:30 AM or so. Good to see her taking to the bottle. She's a bit restless as far as waking up a bit more often, but I think it's just the transition and the lack of comfort right now since the change. It's frustrating, but it should help a lot after a week or two of getting her into the flow of eating from a bottle.

With the breast feeding now behind Mrs. Lime, we headed out to get some chocolate for Mrs. Lime. Chocolate's not a good idea for breast feeding moms, as it gives the baby some pretty bad issues in regards to gas and digestion. So Mrs. Lime has stayed off the chocolate for awhile now.

We went to Maggie Moo's Ice Cream. Mrs. Lime ordered a brownie Sunday with chocolate mint ice cream. Overkill at its best. We got into the car and started to head home. After a few minutes.......

Mrs. Lime: That wench forgot to put brownies in my sundae!!!!

Me: You want me to head back to get you a brownie????

Mrs. Lime: No, the chocolate ice cream is still good. But I can't believe that WENCH forgot my brownie!


Who knew that a derogatory term from the medieval period could apply to a high school girl forgetting to put a brownie in a sundae???????

Bottle update........

Crisis averted for the time being. Mrs. Lime just gave me a call and Kali 0.5 drank from the bottle this morning like it was the only way she'd ever drank milk. Mrs. Lime had been concerned over the past 1 1/2 days that the baby would get dehydrated amongst other results. Turns out that I've got a smart daughter on my hands.

I've just received the translation from an implant in my daughter's mind, allowing a rare glimpse of how a baby thinks...........

Sunday, 3:00 PM: "Daddy keeps pointing that bottle into my mouth. MOM!!!!!!!"

Sunday, 7:00 PM: "Thank God. Here comes Mom! Now I'll get some breast milk!"

Sunday, 7:02 PM: "Mom! Why are you keeping your shirt on?"

Sunday, 9:15 PM: "I'm tired of trying to tell these people I'm thirsty! Oh well. I'll just sleep on it."

Monday, 7:00 AM: "Man, I'm THIRSTY! Gimmie that bottle!"

Bottles and giggles.......

Yes, it has arrived. The day when a baby's breast-fed mother weeps. Today is the first day of bottle feeding for Kali 0.5. She took a few drinks off the bottle each time last night before throwing a fit. Mrs. Lime got done working around 7:00 last night. Kali then pulled her usual sucking on Mrs. Lime's neck to indicate that she wanted some milk, which upset Mrs. Lime to no end. Kali fussed some, but she honestly handled the whole thing pretty well overall. Mrs. Lime concentrated on the breast-feeding part, but Kali was really happy to be with Mrs. Lime when she was through working.

Kali and I had some good Baby Einstein-watching time yesterday. We watch the 'Baby Mozart' video twice. She's really starting to interact more socially. We got to one part of the movie that she always likes where there's a giraffe puppet that walks onto the screen and makes faces. She lurched backwards in my lap while giggling. She then looked back at me while giggling and took a peek at me to see if I was laughing too. I laughed as well, though I was laughing more at her reaction that the giraffe puppet. But she got a big kick out of the fact that I was laughing with her. Great stuff.

Smiley and Spacey.......

I headed off to Target last night with Kali 0.5 to go pick up a few things: formula, baby veggies/fruit, and some food for the adults in the house. It took awhile to wander around and get everything, but we took care of business as best as we could.

We paid for the stuff, got it all sacked up and headed outside. Kali was a bit fussy and ready to get home. I quickly turned on her Baby Einstein DVD that shows farm animals and she was happy again. She loves her Baby Einstein DVD's.

We got home and pulled into the garage. I went around to open the door and take the shopping bags inside. Only one problem........there were no shopping bags in the car. In my rush to take care of a fussy Kali by getting her in the car and getting her video going, I had totally forgotten to actually take my stuff out of the shopping cart and put it in the car. Ummmmm......oops!

Back into the driver seat and we're heading back to Target to pick up our stuff that we bought 10 minutes ago. I pulled up into the parking lot and my shopping cart with the baby food and other assorted things was nowhere to be found. I headed inside to see if anyone had found it and brought it inside. As we were walking into the store, I wasn't paying much attention, but I barely noticed a man saying, "What a cute smile!".

I didn't think much of it, but a few seconds later, I heard the same man talking to his friend across the parking lot. He asked his friend, "Did you see the smile on that girl?"

Not to my surprise, I looked down in the car seat I was carrying to find Kali grinning from ear to ear. Little Miss Sunshine had struck again, wooing yet another person with a simple flash of a smile.

I went to the service desk and saw that our bags were on the counter. I was quite happy and noted to Kali that she wasn't going to starve since they had found her food. She giggled, knowing that peaches were soon to come. The girl at the customer service desk had other thoughts on the situation. When I said that was my stuff, her first comment was, "I'm just glad I didn't have to throw away those perfectly good frozen pizzas!"

We headed back out to the parking lot and I loaded the baby AND the bags into the car this time. As I was doing so, I heard someone trying to get my attention behind me.

Lady: Psssst! Psssst!

Me: Hello.

Lady: Did you forget some bags in a shopping cart?

Me: Yes, I did.

Lady: I thought that you might have been distracted by a baby. I noticed the baby food and that was my first thought.

Me: Yes, my daughter has a way of distracting me. Thanks for finding the bags and taking them inside.

Lady: No problem. Glad you found them.

So, through all my spaced-out behavior, I still managed to get everything I needed. Additionally, if I would have remembered those bags in the first place, Kali would have never had the opportunity to charm the pants off that guy and we would have never met the nice lady that saved the peaches and formula for Kali. So I'm glad I forgot it in the first place.

Stupid computers.......

Well, the laptop suddenly slowed to a crawl and began misbehaving yesterday. Then the CD drive suddenly stopped working. Easy diagnosis: virus.

Thankfully, the computer connected just fine to the internet and still worked, if a bit slow at times. So I took the opportunity to download the entire Kali 0.5 picture archive to an online server as a backup. So those wonderful blackmail pictures will now be preserved for all eternity, ready for when they are eventually moved into the Kali Presidental Library after she becomes our nation's first female president.

I'll have to reinstall the computer tonight, something I'm not really looking forward to doing. Also, the San Diego posts will be delayed by a few days until I can get the pictures downloaded to my computer. I'll get them up as soon as I can. I have a lot of really great pictures from the trip, so I'm excited to get them posted.

Still growing.......

Kali 0.5 had her latest check-up yesterday at the doctor. She managed to improve her growth numbers even further over previous visits. She is now at the 90% in height and remains around the 75% mark in weight (just over 16 pounds).

In related news, I got letters from the volleyball and basketball coaches at Mizzou. They said my daughter looks to be a great prospect. Who knew they recruited at this age?????

Media effect on kids/parents........

Recently, a couple of situations caught my attention. One was the recent arrest of one of Mizzou's basketball players for taking a shotgun butt and smacking a guy in the side of the head with it in an altercation over a girl. Another was where a OSU basketball player was arrested for a DUI.

First, let me make one thing perfectly clear. These kinds of incidents aren't anything new in regards to college kids. They're prone to doing stupid things and have been for ages. Part of college is learning to behave yourself without any supervision. Some kids succeed while others fail miserably.

The only reason we notice these things more now is that there's an increased media presence to cover these situations and bring them to light. In the past, entities would often cover up these situations to avoid any problems. Now, if college kids in major sports make a misstep, you can be sure that it will show up in all the regional and national news coverage.

I bring this up because I noted recent research that showed a drastic improvement recently in both smoking rates and unprotected sex. Kids aren't smoking much anymore and, if they do have underage sex, are much more likely to use protection to avoid diseases or pregnancy. I don't think it's any stretch to assume that anti-smoking and safe sex campaigns that were started in the 80s likely helped these situations.

With that said, could the ever-increasing number of reported screw-ups by college kids have a side benefit to society as a whole? By allowing kids and families to see the repercussions of these indiscretions by college kids, will the kids think twice about what actions they take when they're out on their own? Will the parents take advantage of the opportunity presented by these news stories to further show their kids what can happen if rules aren't followed? I suppose at some level the assumption would have to be made that parents are doing a good job in the first place.

It's an interesting topic. Who knows what effect, if any, these situations will have on future college students.

Back from San Diego.......

Got back in from our quick weekend trip to San Diego around 12:30 AM today. Got home for a 4 1/2 hour sleep and then headed back out the door to work. Hopefully I'll have time later tonight to download some of the pictures from the trip and put up a post or two over the coming weeks. The weather out there was really nice, but man is that place crowded. Too many people for my taste with some housing prices that would make you nauseated. Also, judging from the line of cars on the interstate, it's probably never a good idea to go to Sea World on the weekend.

Handful of thoughts.......

Saw the same pair of deer in my backyard again last night. There must be some awfully juicy plants on the edge of my backyard. They evidently see my backyard as a giant buffet. More power to them. I'll even pay them to keep my grass at a low level if they want me to do so.

Great day today in Kansas City. 77 degrees and sunny. It doesn't get much better than that considering we're in the middle of summer.

The Royals start the second half of the season with a record of 38-50. It's not great, but it's a vast improvement over last year. They'd have to go 24-50 to lose 100 games. They likely won't do that. They've been playing much better over the past 1 1/2 months with lots of young players. The future is bright if we can just pick up a couple of good players in the off-season.

I continue to build my arm muscles steadily through the Kali 0.5 plan. That's the exercise system where you have a baby and then she steadily gets heavier and heavier as you go along, resulting in better arm strength. I haven't considered steroids at this point, but if she keeps growing at this pace, I'm going to have Hulk Hogan-like biceps in roughly a year's time.

Kali 0.5 takes down a new personal best.......

She sat down and managed to put down not one, but TWO containers of Gerber green beans in 20 minutes. Previously, her personal best was only 1 1/2 containers. Congrats Kali on your big achievement!!!!!!

The guilt-ridden handicapped guy.........

My workplace is a large building, housing a couple thousand government workers. At the front of the parking lot, there are roughly 100 handicapped parking spots.

When I drove up at 6:00 AM this morning, the first workers were beginning to arrive. I noticed one car park in a handicapped spot. Most of the handicapped spots were open, but he parked in the handicapped spot FURTHEST from the entry to the building. Odd, I thought.

As he got out, I quickly understood why he parked in such a distant spot. He was roughly in his 40s, walked without any issues, and was a smoker to boot. So basically, this guy had a handicapped parking pass, but didn't really need one. As a way to somehow avoid feeling guilty about parking in a handicapped parking spot without a real need to do so, he parked in the spot furthest from the building. By doing that, he.......

1) Avoided taking a spot closest to the building so he wouldn't feel guilty when a less fortunate person ended up having to walk a further distance.

2) Avoided parking next to a handicapped person who was getting out of their car who would have likely shot this perfectly mobile 'handicapped' guy a guilt-filled stare.

I would have shot him a guilt-filled stare as well, but I wasn't able to catch up with him before he entered the building. He was walking too fast.

Spreading goodwill throughout the restaurant......

Been really busy with family gatherings the past week. I've been a bit lax in my posting. I'll have to pick it up over the coming days.

Went to McCormick and Schmitt's last night for dinner. Food was great as always. Mrs. Lime and I practiced the baby swap technique over the course of the meal. Kali 0.4 was sleeping when we first arrived. After several minutes, she finally woke up and took center stage at the table. The discussion immediately turned from what we were talking about to total focus by the family on Kali. She was up to the task and flashed the smile for all to see.

Eventually, she started to fuss a bit. Mrs. Lime headed off to walk around with her while I ate my soup, then we switched out and I took my turn. It's always funny how a baby can light up a place. We walked around the restaurant, through the bar and past the kitchen. No matter whether it was servers, patrons, bartenders, etc., everyone was smiling at her as we walked by.

When dinner came, I offered to take the fussy girl on a walk. We walked out to the patio and I noticed a Banana Republic nearby. We wandered into the store and one of the employees asked who my date was. I told him that we were keeping busy until her mom could finish dinner. Kali made sure to flash another smile to charm the employee to no end. We ended up walking around and finding a few shirts that Kali likes. I walked back into the restaurant with 4 new shirts and handed off Kali so I could finish dinner.

We came home and Kali was out. She was tired, so we put her in her PJ's and put her to sleep. I guess it's tiring being a 4 month old. I wouldn't know.

Mmmmmm, food........

Just in case you didn't have enough food yesterday, I thought I'd pass along some further information about some of the eating records held by some of the combatants in yesterday's hot-dog eating contest.

----Eric "Badlands" Booker (weighing in at over 400 lbs, which is rare for competitive eaters) holds the record for the most Twinkies - 25 of them in 5 minutes. He also holds the record for burritos (15 pounds in 8 minutes), candy bars (2 pounds in 6 minutes), corned beef hash (4 pounds in 2 minutes), glazed doughnuts (49 in 8 minutes), matzo balls (21 baseball-sized balls in 5.5 minutes), peas (9.5 pounds in 12 minutes), and pumpkin pies (4 3/8 pies in 12 minutes).

----Yesterday's hot dog eating champion (Eric Chestnut) holds the record for the most asparagus eaten (8.6 pounds of deep-fried asparagus in 10 minutes). He also holds the record of eating 47 grilled cheese sandwiches in 10 minutes.

----The former hot-dog champ (Takeru Kobayashi) has slurped down 57 cow brains in 10 minutes. That's 18 pounds of cow brains eaten by a guy who weighs 110 pounds.

----Sonya Thomas is the queen of competitive eating, despite weighing only 110 pounds soaking wet. She holds records for oysters (552 in 10 minutes), lobster meat (11.3 pounds in 12 minutes), Vienna sausage (8.31 pounds in 10 minutes), chicken nuggets (80 in 5 minutes), cheesecake (11 pounds in 9 minutes), cheese fries (8 pounds in 10 minutes), crab cakes (46 in 10 minutes), deep-fried okra (9.75 pounds in 10 minutes), hard-boiled eggs (65 in 6 minutes, 40 seconds), fruitcake (5 pounds in 10 minutes), jambalaya (9 pounds in 10 minutes), meatballs (10 pounds, 3 oz. in 12 minutes), mince pies (46 in 10 minutes), pulled pork sandwiches (23 sandwiches in 10 minutes), quesadillas (31.5 cheese quesadillas in 5 minutes), sweet potato casserole (8.62 pounds in 11 minutes), tacos (48 soft tacos in 11 minutes), toasted ravioli (4 pounds in 12 minutes), turducken (7.75 pounds in 12 minutes), and pork & beans (8.4 pounds in just under 3 minutes).

----Cookie Jarvis holds records for chicken-fried steak (66 ounces in 12 minutes), cannoli (26 large ones in 6 minutes), french fries (4.46 pounds in 6 minutes), grapes (9 pounds in 10 minutes), and ice cream (1 gallon, 9 ounces in 12 minutes).

----Richard LeFevre holds the record for the always-appetizing SPAM. He ate 6 pounds of it in 12 minutes. He holds records in chili (1 1/2 gallons in 10 minutes), birthday cake (5 pounds in 11 1/2 minutes), jalapeno peppers (247 short peppers in 8 minutes), corn dogs (12 dogs in 10 minutes), and 24" pizzas (7.5 24" pizzas in 15 minutes).

----Donald Lerman decided it would be fun to eat 7 sticks of salted butter in 5 minutes for his record. He's also eaten 6 pounds of baked beans in 108 seconds and 2.76 pounds of bologna in 6 minutes.

----Dustin Phillips 'drank' 14 ounces of ketchup in 33 seconds.

----Chris Hendrix ate 331 crawfish in 12 minutes.

----Jim Reeves ate 13.22 pounds of watermelon in 15 minutes.

----Charles Hardy ate 6.6 pounds of cabbage in 9 minutes.

----Oleg Zhornitskiy ate an amazing 128 ounces of mayonnaise in 8 minutes. Ick.

----A guy named Manohoran chowed down 200 live earthworms in 30 seconds.

----Ken Edwards holds the record for eating live Madagascar hissing cockroaches. He ate 36 in 60 seconds.

I hope this makes you feel like less of a pig the next time you go to a holiday meal.

Hot dogs and spelling bees.......

Well, the latest hot dog eating contest was just completed at Coney Island. The Japanese champion finally fell to the American up-and-comer in a thrilling finish where the Japanese champ tossed his cookies right at the end of the time limit. He tried to catch the hot dogs and try to re-eat them, but was unable to do so. The American set a new world record of 66 hot dogs in roughly 12 minutes time. Thrilling drama.

Immediately after the hot dog eating contest, the spelling bee came on. Kali 0.4 was watching the spelling bee. The spelling bee is known for having a lot of home schooled introverts do well in it because basically all they think and breathe is spelling.

Me: Kali, are you going to be a spelling bee champion? I think you have to be home-schooled to participate.

Kali: (smile)

Mrs. Lime: Really?

Me: (laughing) No, not really.

Kali: (laughing)

Even Kali got a laugh out of that.

Nova nearly bites off more than he can chew.......

We live in a relatively wooded area with a lot of wildlife. Rabbits, squirrels, beavers, skunks and deer regularly walk through our backyard. Here's a video of a couple of recent visitors. You can actually here them snort during the video, alerting each other that Nova and I are around.........

Backyard visit

This video has more footage of the visitors. The male actually has antlers about a foot long. Normally, Nova 7.3 chases after them. However, in this video, you'll note that I tell Nova to stay. I quickly realize as Nova starts to move toward the male that the deer has every intention of going after Nova if Nova comes his way. So you'll note that the video abruptly stops right when the male turns toward the camera as I scramble to get Nova before he gets in a scuffle where he may end up eating an antler in the process.....

Stay! Stay! Stay!

Kali 0.4 in living color......

Mrs. Lime said this video isn't as good as the screaming bear video. I prefer this one. Happy baby, but much quieter.

Kali 0.4 grins for her adoring fans

Numeric admission.....

I grew up in a house that had 13 steps from the basement to the main floor. Something obviously didn't work out there. In order to counter that issue, I took precautions to make sure I never used all 13 steps.

When walking up the stairs, I always skipped the first step. So I only took 12 stairs going up.

On the way down the stairs, I always jumped over the last step. So I only took 12 steps going down.

I have 18 stairs in my new home. No bad luck there, so no need to skip stairs. Mrs. Lime doesn't have any issues with the number 13 as she lived on the 13th floor of an apartment building for several years. I guess she's braver than I am. I can't handle any flirtations with the number 13.