In honor of starting guitar lessons today, here's a song by Bread:

Who draws the crowd and plays so loud,
Baby its the guitar man.
Who's gonna steal the show, you know
Baby its the guitar man,

He can make you love, he can make you cry
He will bring you down, then hell get you high
Somethin' keeps him goin', miles and miles a day
To find another place to play.

Night after night who treats you right,
Baby its the guitar man
Who's on the radio, you go listen
To the guitar man

Then he comes to town, and you see his face,
And you think you might like to take his place
Somethin' keeps him driftin' miles and miles away
Searchin' for the songs to play.

Then you listen to the music and you like to sing along,
You want to get the meaning out of each and evry song
Then you find yourself a message and some words to call your own
And take them home.

He can make you love, he can get you high
He will bring you down, then hell make you cry
Somethin' keeps him movin', but no one seems to know
What it is that makes him go.

Then the lights begin to flicker and the sound is getting dim
The voice begins to falter and the crowds are getting thin
But he never seems to notice hes just got to find
Another place to play,
Anyway got to play, anyway got to play.

I'm excited!  This should be a lot of fun.  And if I don't blog for a little while, I'm either practicing or I'm complaining about sore fingers!

I'm not necessarily a tall person, but I'm not a short person either.  The last time a doctor measured my height, he said, "Six feet tall exactly.  It doesn't get any six-footer than you."  I'd say that being six feet tall works fine for me.

Not that I really put a lot of stock in someone's height.  It's not like anyone by "taking thought can add one cubit unto his stature."  It's a complex combination of genetics and other factors that determines how tall one becomes in life.

The interesting thing is that I noticed the other day that I'm nearly the shortest person on my team.  My boss and four of the five other team members are all taller than me.  The other team member is only about an inch shorter than me.

I'd say that's a tall team, and a situation I'm not used to.  It makes me want to reiterate:

No.  I'm NOT short.

Yesterday it snowed.  Not TONS, but for some reason, the snow that fell was very slick.  On my way to church, I took the first bend out of the neighborhood at around 20 miles per hour, which was about 15 miles per hour too fast for conditions, apparently.  I slid into the curb.

After that, the front tire was wobbly and sounded horrible.

Great.

Fortunately, a neighbor (and good friend) has a mobile brake service business and he looked at it today.  I drove the car 2 blocks to his house, which saved me the towing fee.  I destroyed the bearing and hub on the passenger side front wheel and that wheel was badly damaged as well.  My friend was surprised that the tire held any air any more.  I also dinged the back wheel on the same side enough that it would cause a wobble at higher speeds, so that needed to be fixed as well.  The aluminum wheel and the bearing on the front took the brunt of the collision, so the "A arm" wasn't damaged.

The cost?  $320 for the bearing and hub and the two wheels are going to cost $130 each.  Then I need to have the tires removed from the dead wheels and mounted on the new wheels and have them balanced .  That costs $20/tire.  Finally, I'll need to have an alignment done.

Wow.

That was an expensive slide.  *sigh*

If I knew it was going to cost THAT much to get to church yesterday, I would have hired a limousine service to take us to church and we could have gone in STYLE.

I had a lot of fun with the Wii over the Christmas break.

Most fun for me was Guitar Hero III, and that's saying something because I had so much fun with Wii Sports; Zelda, Twilight Princess; and DDR (Or, WiiDR, as I like to call it).

I spent more time wearing out the fingers on my left hand with Guitar Hero than I think I want to admit. I know a LOT of the songs because a lot of them are old enough for even an old fart like me to remember. I remember a lot of them being played at High School dances, or on my friend's church youth group trips before the leaders reminded them that only Christian music was allowed and they replaced the tape (yes, cassette tape) with music that sounded exactly the same, but had lyrics about loving each other and accepting Jesus, despite the fact that the music made you feel like pounding someone's head in. (That's a record run-on sentence for me. I'll break it later.) My teenager likes the game a lot too, so we'll probably be getting a second guitar for a "cooperative career."

I don't love all of the music in Guitar Hero III, but I like a whole lot of it, and the music that I don't really like is still fun and challenging. I'm not great at it yet, but I beat it on "Easy" and I'm most of the way through a second beating on "Medium." I'm sure if I continue, it'll mess up my guitar lessons that I'm starting next week. I'll have to make sure that I practice the REAL guitar as much as I play Guitar Hero. That'll be the test. Oh, and I'd better practice the REAL guitar first. I don't wanna try to learn new chords with fingers that have spent their strength pushing fret buttons instead of real strings.

We'll see how the real guitar lessons go. I've tried to learn on my own, but it's taken me too long and I see little progress. When I have a weekly lesson, it should motivate me to practice. I don't want to completely suck after having paid a couple hundred bucks. I don't want a teacher to give up on me and declare me hopeless. I'm excited. I think it will be nice to be able to play an instrument that I can take along places... It's hard to drag a piano around, and who wants to sing campfire songs when accompanied by a clarinet?

After a semester of teaching developmental math at Utah Valley State College, I've assembled a few bad math jokes. We're talking real groaners here. So now I've decided to tell them on my blog. When I tell one to my class, I'll post it here on the blog as well.

Last night was my first session with a new class. The poor kids got this one last night:

A contest was devised to determine whether mathematicians or physicists were smarter. A mathematician and a physicist would be given a set of practical problems to solve, each problem a little more difficult than the previous situation, and based on their behavior, they could determine the relative intelligence of the two.

The first situation consisted of a room with a bucket of water on a table and a fire in the corner. The physicist entered the room sized up the situation, picked up the bucket of water and used it to douse the flame. The mathematician entered the room and also picked up the bucket of water and used it to douse the flame.

The second situation consisted of a room with a sink in one corner, an empty bucket on a table, and a fire in another corner. The physicist entered the room, grabbed the bucket from the table, filled it with water at the sink, and used the bucket of water to douse the flame. The mathematician entered the room, grabbed the bucket from the table, filled it with water, replaced it on the table and said, "I have reduced it to the previous case."

What?

It's over?  What happened?  I must have missed something, because there is NO FREAKING WAY that I just spent 12 days away from work.

They were heavenly, wonderful, restful, fun, exciting days!  We looked at Christmas lights.  We made (and ate) lots of Christmas treats.  There were Christmas surprises followed by full-on tackle dad thank-you-for-the-Wii hugs.  There were days spent entirely in pajamas.  There were sore abs from laughing and sore arms from Wii bowling, Wii boxing, Wii baseball and tennis.  (Wii didn't golf much.)

We loved spending the time together.  We loved the activities, the inactivity.  We stayed up late and slept in late.  We rang in the new year with poppers and Martinelli's Sparkling Apple Cider.  We even started Birthday celebrations for a prime, palindromic young lad.

But it's over.

It went so quickly.  I loved every minute of it.

It's hard being back at work today, but it's work that makes such times possible.  I'm already plotting and planning for more time away, but until then, I guess I'll get back to work and get something done.

I may or may not blog any more between now and Christmas, so I wanted to take a moment to wish all of you a very merry Christmas.

First and foremost, Merry Christmas to the love of my life. I'm not always the easiest person to live with, so thanks for putting up with me and my moods and my stress and my silliness. Thanks for loving me. Merry Christmas, darling!

Merry Christmas to my boys. It's amazing how much you've both grown up and how much you've both accomplished since last Christmas. I'm looking forward to a couple of weeks of being home and playing and spending time with you.

Merry Christmas to my family--those that read this blog and those that don't. It's been a year of change and pulling together*, and I think we're closer than we were a year last Christmas. The monthly get-togethers have done wonders.

Merry Christmas to extended family. Even though we can't always see each other, we think about you all often--especially those of you on missions and going through difficult situations. Our thoughts and prayers are with you.

Last, but not least, Merry Christmas to my friends. You know who you are, and I appreciate your friendship more and more as the years go by.

Merry Christmas, and here's hoping for a wonderful and prosperous 2008!

*Cheesy Saturdays Warrior Song not intended.

Tonight was my work party.  It was quite a lot of fun.

In order to save money (gotta be fiscally responsible in a publicly held company), we had the party in the unfinished building that they're building next to the building I work in.

When we arrived, there were various appetizers and drinks.  After a few minutes of introduction by the site executive, they served a very good dinner with an excellent pasta salad, barbecued chicken, pulled pork, and beef brisket.  Delicious!

In another area, they had games like guitar hero, rock band, DDR, and foosball and table tennis going on.  It was a very casual, very relaxed atmosphere.

So now the Christmas parties are over... On to Christmas!!

On Saturday night, we went to another Christmas Party--Susan's work party in the Skyroom at the Brigham Young University Wilkinson Center.  The last time her work had their party at the Skyroom,  we all sat at one or two tables.  This time, they rented out the entire Skyroom.

It was a fun party.  They hired a folk band called BrushFire to provide entertainment.  They were a lot of fun.  They did a mix of gospel and bluegrass and American folk music.  My favorite:  Oh Susanna Around the World.  They played Oh Susanna in the style of different countries around the world.  It was quite funny.

At the end of the Oh Susanna number, they said they had a "prize" to give away.  It was a double cd-set of folk music from BYU.  They would give it away to the first person that could tell them who wrote Oh Susanna.

*flashback to a speaking part I did with the Saltaires Show Chorus a few years ago*

In the last half of the 19th century, a young man appeared on the musical scene who was to give us nearly 200 songs.  His name was Stephen Foster, whose poems and melodies reflect so well the time in which they were written.

*end of flashback*

So I yelled out "Stephen Foster!" and won the CD.  Hooray!

The party was fun.  The food was good, the entertainment was excellent, and the gifts (a Christmas bonus, Sees Chocolates, and the new Manheim Steamroller Christmas CD) were nice as well.  The company was okay...  Susan works with a lot of rather young people and we have a hard time relating to them.  But it was a good time.

Every year for the last few years, we have been invited to Miss Giggles' Christmas party.  It's been fun year after year to go, meet new and interesting people, eat goodies, and see what Christmas music box she picked out.

We're going to miss attending now that she's moving to Tucson.  I'm sure we'll be invited, but it's going to be too far away to attend.

Miss Giggles said the funniest thing though...  One of her "second counselors" was there at the party.  She had been Relief Society President in her ward, and had gone through different sets of counselors since several of them moved out of the ward while she was in that particular calling.  So she recounted the different counselors during her tenure, and ended with, "Then all three of us got deleted."

Deleted??

After a short silence with quizzical looks from some of us, she realized what she had said and clarified that all three of them were released from their callings.

This clarification was, of course, followed by MUCH laughter.  I guess that's what you get when you have someone that works with computers all day talking about church callings!