I got a McGriddle for my birthday breakfast this morning. When Max saw the single candle, he looked confused and asked, “Dad, are you 1 years old today?”

I came in 38th (out of 164) place this year in the annual Orchard To Ocean 5k.

Race results here.

27 minutes for 3 miles??? And I thought last year’s score of 23:30 was insufficient.
I barely made the PFT minimums for the USMC 3 mile run. Time to start running again
now that the sun is up before I wake up (mostly).

Today Matt ran in the Orchard to Ocean Carpinteria race. It’s a school district fundraiser-y type race. He did pretty well for not having run in awhile. Then I whisked Max away to his friend Nathan’s 5 birthday party. It was an ‘outer space’ party – with a planet cake and other fun stuff. I got to actually leave him there – what a change! Such a big boy now. I had a date with myself at Trader Joe’s – truly a marvelous experience. 🙂

*Disclaimer: I am not a music guy *

I love hymns. I love the music to them, I love the theology that is contained in them,
I love the verse, chorus, verse, chorus structure (am I easily impressed?) Both of
the churches my family attends (Reality
Carpinteria [Calvary
Chapel] in the morning, Santa
Barbara Community Church in the afternoon) are more into modern praise songs for
worship than hymns. This is disappointing to me.

From the church I grew up in,
and my Dad, I have a lot of hymns rolling around in my head (at least the first verse
and chorus). Often, I will recall snatches of the words or tune, but not be able to
complete the song or will get the words wrong. I try to sing hymns to my kids, so
they will at least be familiar with them. Max knows 5 or 6.

The other night I was trying to keep Weezy awake for an extra hour and a half, so
I was singing to her and throwing her around. I wanted to get more verses to a hymn,
so I Googled the hymn and got the words. I also came across a hymn website with the
words to a ton of hymns. CyberHymnal.com also
has MIDI music and a short history on the hymn / hymn author. One hymn that I had
forgotten about was When
The Roll Is Called Up Yonder. With Weezy and Max (he can’t be away from his sister when she is laughing) each sitting on my knees we bounced up and down in Mom’s desk chair and sang out at the top of our lungs. By the time Mom got home and Weezy could go to sleep for the night, I was a giant sweatball (Max is heavy). It was a great time.

I am a member of One Million
Dads and the American Family Association.
As a member, I have kept up with all of their action items, even the ones I don’t
100% agree with (I figure it is better to be more conservative in this area). So it
was a surprise to me that I had never visited the Parents
Television Council website. In visiting the site, I was impressed by the huge
amount of television content that they had rated and the breadth of the additional
topics that they cover. Although there are a very limited number of TV shows
that I watch and am familiar with (more on that later), I was glad to see so many
shows rated. However, I do have one disagreement with them. In their review of Lost (on
ABC), their rating in the Sex and Language categories was Green (the best). The rating
for Violence is Red.

The violence on the series might be frightening to
children. Thus far it has primarily revolved around the plane crash, the passengers
injuries, and flashbacks to the pivotal event. However, a mysterious creature seems
to lurk in the jungle of the islands interior. The jungle is also the location of
one graphically depicted scene of violence. Offensive language has been infrequent
and confined to words such as ‘hell’ and ‘damn’, with one instance of ‘ass.’ Sex on
the series has not been much of a problem. The third episode did contain one brief
instance of non-sexual obscured nudity. Other sexual content has been confined to
very veiled innuendo.

The problem that I have is that the Overall rating of the show is Red. If 2 of the 3 categories are Green and 1 is Red, shouldn’t the Overall be Yellow? The first sentence of their review states that the ‘…series might be frightening to children.’ The Red for violence is probably warranted, although it doesn’t sound like the reviewer thinks that the show has horribly gratuitous violence. It is the Overall Rating of Red that I think is not accurate, based on their own rating system.