Snowtime

Kaddi's sister Traci and her family came out to visit and pick up their son at BYU. Taylor just received his mission call to Brazil, and will be leaving for the Brazillian MTC in March. Meanwhile, Merissa and Kelsey got to spend time playing with Meg and Jake in the snow.

Meg with Kelsey

Jake, Taylor, and Merissa

Can I get 500mg of common sense?

I have to admit that sometimes I get tired of being a stereotype. Kaddi is constantly bewildered as to how I can remember infinite numbers of names, dates, and events from history, but can't remember that ten minutes ago I left the tv remote next to the microwave. It is a serious problem, but one that I control using medication. Every so often, however, I experience a flare-up. Sometimes it occurs a rather public, and therefore embarassing, manner.

A few years ago one of these incidents occurred at Halloween. When we lived in Madison our ward used to organize a trunk-or-treat at the church. One year Halloween fell on a Sunday, so the member decided to hold the activity on the previous Friday instead. Everyone gathered in the parking lot to admire the children’s costumes (barely visible underneath their winter jackets) and exchange candy from the back of our vans. Since only a few families have young children, the entire operation takes about twenty minutes.

It’s difficult even now for me to explain what happened next. Perhaps I was feeling particularly festive. Maybe I was disappointed with the chocolate to crap-candy ratio in the kids treat bags. Whatever the reason, I decided twenty minutes of Halloween simply wasn’t enough. We’d invested in the costumes, the kids were already dressed up, why not knock on a few doors in the neighborhood?

The truly perplexing part of this tale is that those who should have been looking out for me allowed me to continue with my plan. I told Kaddi that I was taking the kids to do a little trick-or-treating and that we’d be back in a few minutes. She simply gave me a quizzical look and said, “You are? Well…okay.” I also remember telling Nivea-for-Tom to bring his young one along. He looked at me like I was an idiot before declining my offer. But did I let that bother me? Mine was the revelry of the blissfully unaware.

I’ll never forget the reaction of the lady at the first house on our route. When she opened the door to find two little kids on her porch asking for candy, her response embodied the civility and decency of the Midwest. “Oh,” she said, “Well…okay…I think I have some candy you can have.” Off she went into her cupboard, producing some Hershey’s kisses and dumping them into the kid’s sacks. No doubt she was taken with their overwhelmingly cute costumes and probably also felt pity because their father must have a severe disability.

We received the same puzzled but courteous greeting at the second house, but somehow still left laden with candy. It wasn’t until we were walking down the steps of the third house that my thoughts began to coalesce around a rather obvious conclusion:

“Hmmm…people sure seem surprised to see us out tonight. Huh, I wonder why there are no other kids outside. Well, it is pretty cold out here. Although it seems odd that no one else from church is knocking doors. Wait a minute..."

And then the little hamster started running in the wheel again.

"Oh...right. Halloween isn’t for…two more days.”

Immediately I had that same sickly feeling you get when you wake up at 9 AM and suddenly realize your final exam began at eight. Meanwhile, Meg and Jake, who were enjoying themselves immensely, were already half way down the block. I quickly called to tell them that we needed to head home because… mom wasn’t feeling well. Then I began the long walk of shame back to the church building, where I would face the ridicule of wife and friends alike.

I wish I could say that was the last such occurence. Sadly, I experienced another flare-up last week. Thankfully, my kids were not involved this time...

Because Need Knows No Season

Christmas is a time to turn our thoughts to those less fortunate than us. Particularly the children whose parents can't afford to purchase them Video game consoles or new clothes, or sports equipment. This week I captured footage of a poor little boy who was kicking around a milk cartoon because his family couldn't raise the funds for a soccer ball.

Please watch the video and give generously.

Make an on-line slide show at www.OneTrueMedia.com

Preserve Us From the Wrath of the Marmot King

In my world civilization classes I've consistently tried to stay on the cutting edge of instruction. Most history courses, for instance, focus solely on human interaction as an explanation for turning points in history. But avant-garde historians like myself recognize that animals can also be important actors on the stage of history.

For example:

You may not know that it was marmots who are partially responsible for the Black Death, which decimated the populations of China, Europe, and the Near East. Fleas spread the bacterium throughout the Central Asian marmot population, and some unfortunate Mongol hunter probably skinned and ate an infected marmot, thereby unleashing the whirlwind of pandemic. This much is widely accepted.

But here's what you won't read in your 'traditional' textbook:

At the end of the twelfth century an army of marmots, under the leadership of the legendary Marmot King, devastated Central Asia. They swept the peoples of the Golden Horde before them like a tidal wave. As they moved westward, the marmots cleverly formed alliances among other rodent populations, signing treaties with the porcupines and making vassals out of the Richardon's ground squirrels.

Once the rodents of Asia were united under the sovereignty of the Marmot King, they launched their attack of the great civilizations of Europe and the Islamic world.


In 1347, an army of marmots surrounded the Genoese port city of Kaffa, on the Black Sea. During the resulting siege, thousands of marmots died from the plague. The Marmot King then ordered their corpses to be placed in catapults and lobbed into the city in the hopes of infecting and terrorizing its inhabitants.

Marmot military tactics devastated their opponents. When the armies of the Marmot king faced the forces of Kwarizm near the Sea of Azov, marmot sappers went out to the battlefied the night before and dug thousands of holes in the field. During the next day's battle, when the Sultan's cavalary charged the field, the horses caught their feet in the burrows and came crashing down. The marmot infantry quickly fell upon the Persian cavalrymen and ate their livers.

The attrocities of the Marmot King were unspeakable. In Baghdad, marmot soldiers gnawed the eyeballs from the sockets of eight-hundred Muslim clerics after they refused to bow before the invaders. After their conquest of Kiev, the marmots forced the Russian princes to run continuously inside specially-constructed stationary wheels until they dropped dead of exhaustion. In Krakow, the Marmot king tried to blackmail a local newspaper into firing an editor, threatened to pull funding for a children's hospital, and requested bribes for appointing potential candidates to a vacant Senate seat.

In their search for a scapegoat, Europeans blamed their own rodent populations for conspiring to help the marmots conquer all of Christendom. They organized massive rodent pogroms, massacring the mice populations and burning thousands of rats at the stake. It was a dark time for Europe.

Just when all seemed lost, the great marmot hordes disappeared as suddenly as they had appeared. Historians are at a loss to explain why. My own research speculates that the Marmot King was poisoned by one of his captured concubines. Without his leadership, the alliances disintegrated and the rodent world was plunged into civil war. Europe was saved.

Perhaps I'll make this the subject of my next book project.

It's down to you, Green Mountain State

Those of you who have your own blog know the joy of google analytics. The program allows you to track hits to your website and determine their location of origin. At 301NIB this information is very useful for following user trends. For example, last year a large percentage of our traffic came from Hawaii. But in the last few months, Utah has climbed into the number one user spot. This information helps our staff coordinate revenue projections and marketing campaigns.

Since its inception in 2006, 301NIB has quickly become a worldwide phenomenon. We consistently have visits from around the world, all ten Canadian provinces, and every state in the union...except one.

Vermont.

I confess I'm at a loss to explain this inattention, since I know very little about Vermont. Do I need to feature more content about Lake Champlain? Is it because there are less than one hundred thousand people living there? Or because they spend so much time outdoors? Do people there not have computers? And what do you call those people? Vermontites? Vermonters? Vermonties? Yeah, I like that last one...

Perhaps I'm obsessing a bit here, but I won't rest until I get a single hit from Vermont. That single white space on my analytics map needs to be shaded light green. So, this week I decided to call up the Green Mountain State to discover the source of the problem. The conversation didn't go as well as I'd hoped:

Vermont: Hello?

301NIB: So what's the deal, Vermont? You haven't checked out the blog.

Vermont: The what?

301NIB: Don't pretend you don't know what I'm talking about. What - you think you're better than me, Vermont? Is that it?

Vermont: Who is this?

301NIB: You think just because you're the outdoor playground of the Northeast that makes you so great? Look, I may not be able to afford to vacation on your ski slopes or stay at your many bed-and-breakfasts, but I...uh...well, I forgot where I was going with this...

Vermont: (long pause) How did you get this number?

301NIB: Don't wory about it.

Vermont: (click)

So telephone contact didn't produce the intended results, but I'm confident Vermonties will give me another chance. And why shouldn't they? I've forgiven them for letting Howard Dean loose back in 2004. But I realized I needed to change tactics.

Here's the deal, Vermonties. In return for a hit from your state, I'm willing to make the following concessions:

1) I will agree to mention Vermont in no less than three posts during the 2009 calendar year.

2) I will purchase genuine Vermont maple syrup the next time we make pancakes for Meg.

3) I'll order a Vermont Teddy Bear as a Christmas present (and not return it).

This is a no-brainer, Vermonties. All you have to do in return is type in a website address, you don't even have to read the content. Face it, during this extended economic downturn it would be irresponsible for you not to accept my offer. The advertising power of 301NIB could increase your state revenues 15-20% over the next fiscal quarter alone.

You have my offer, Vermont. The ball's in your court. I'll be checking google analytics every hour, waiting for your response.