Month: December 2018

Megan saw this at the grocery store and sent me a photo. She was thinking of Zaque, of course.

Today in church, we were reminded that complimenting someone can be a great way to show our love and respect for them.

I turned to Zaque and said, “I really like your eyebrows.”

He responded, “I really like how you have two nostrils. No more, and no less.”

I busted up laughing, which of course was a little awkward because we were in the middle of the church service. Thanks a lot, Z.

Zaque frustrates me sometimes because he isn’t a very good planner, and just sort of throws things together at the last minute. My frustration isn’t necessarily with that– it’s with the fact that regardless of how poorly he plans, somehow things always work out anyway.

Take, for example, last week. College applications for BYU were due on Saturday at midnight. Something went wrong with transmitting his SAT scores, and he didn’t find out until late Friday. It was too late to do anything, so he could only hope that the scores would magically be sent. Also, one of the teachers he’d asked to provide a recommendation hadn’t completed it yet, and of course it was also too late to remind the teacher. Keep in mind that Zaque had months to get all this done, but only in the final 24 hours did he figure out that stuff was missing.

It looked like he would miss the deadline, not get into college, and end up as a hobo living under a bridge.

But nooooooo. Not Zaque! We found out today that the deadline has been extended until this Thursday. That’ll give him time to remind his teacher about the recommendation and figure out the SAT scores. And once again, his procrastination works out fine.

How does he do it?

When Zaque plays video games with friends, he uses a headset and a chat application so he can talk with them in real-time while they’re playing. (LAN parties are so early 2000’s!) Since we can only hear his half of the conversation, it makes for some interesting times.

He often gets, shall we say, very animated during these games, and absolutely screams as he’s playing. Some of my favorite recent lines have been:

(does he even know what the Thunderdome is? That was, like, early 80’s)

(sung at the top of his lungs to the tune of Bon Jovi’s song, of course)

I think this sums up kids and moms throughout history.

Today one of the kids in Laralee’s church class– a ten-year-old girl– gave her a little note after class.

How sweet! And dang it, why didn’t I think of that first?

In computer-speak, the number of monitors connected to your computer is referred to as the number of “heads”. For many years I’ve been running a dual-head display, and when I first switched to two monitors, the upgrade was astounding. Now and then I’d attempted three monitors, but I finally “inherited” an old video card that supported a triple-head display so I figured I’d grab a spare monitor and give it a go.

Although I haven’t yet found a driving need for a third screen, I do find that it’s really nice to read the central display face-on. With dual heads, you’re always twisted slightly to the left or the right as you look at the monitors, but with three you can put non-essential things off to the sides while focusing directly on the task at hand.

So although I wouldn’t call this “life changing” in any way, it’s been kind of fun to have three 30″ widescreens glowing at me in my basement office…

Laralee and I have a running argument (as in, a decade or more) about whether or not Die Hard is a Christmas movie.  I, of course, maintain that it is… and much of the internet backs me up with “top 10 Christmas movie” lists.

I think getting a sweater like this will settle it.

Zaque was preparing for his calculus test, and I asked him how it was going.

Yep, that sounds about right.

Zaque is taking a psychology class this semester, and really enjoys it.  Their current assignment is to keep a “dream journal” for a few weeks, presumably to analyze those dreams. Here are a few entries in Zaque’s journal:

I don’t remember my dreams, but if they’re anything like Zaque’s, I’m really missing out…