Now the eyes really do have it…

and when I refer to “it” I mean sight.

Just talked to my dad and he is done with his cataract surgery and is doing well. He says he can see great where he could previously see not much. Cataract surgery is pretty routine nowadays, but given his track record with medical procedures this is a big win. Having near blindness in one eye restored to “not blindness” is going to make many things easier for him. I’ll be happy to hear from him over the next couple of days to see what else he thinks about having this fixed. Whew! At least that’s out of the way now….get out the crossword puzzles dad!

The eyes have it

Eye surgery tomorrow for my dad. As some of you know, among the various ailments that have plagued him over the last year, one of them is a significant cataract in one of his eyes. Apparently it isn’t run of the mill cataract surgery and has been a long time coming as his health hasn’t permitted them to fix this until now.

I will let everyone know how this turns out, and if there are any best wishes left in the well, break them out again. I’m sure my dad can’t wait to read the newspaper in full resolution and watch the first place Cardinals continue to tear up the central in September. Sorry Mike…had to be said.

Write or wrong…here goes

Due to my obsessive need to post something every day I am announcing that I have written 3 pages of the yet unnamed book of our adventurousness. There is more to it than just the trip that we went on, as there is much behind the scenes things that went into the process of deciding to take such a trip. As with this blog I will be writing it with my usual disregard for grammar and rules, but will be trying instead to tell a story. I will let Jen fix the typos and big mistakes, otherwise I get too bogged down in the rules. I’m sure there are a thousand writers out there who will say to do it differently, but hey, I’m not a writer…just a person who writes.

What was the last thing to go through the crash dummies mind?

Why is it that when people get in a car they are somehow transformed into an angry, hulking, unstoppable force? The same person who will get into a “No, you first…no really go ahead…I don’t mind” argument with you in the supermarket checkout line is the first person to cut your ass off at the stop sign in the parking lot. You can see people yelling at each other and sending hand gestures, but if the same two people came across each other on the sidewalk pushing baby strollers they would smile, say hello, give each other plenty of room and move on. Can you imagine this scenario? Two guys are at Wal-Mart when one of the guys suddenly turns in front of the other one and the carts bump…One guy says “Hey a$$hole..look where you’re going!” the other guys says “Screw you” and next thing you know fingers are in the air, groceries are flying across the aisle and the 94 year old Wal-MArt security guard is fishing for his bullet. Of course not! Although here in Florida it might be an opportunity to see whose gun is bigger. If this actually happened at Wal-Mart each guy would smile meekly, mutter an apology and slink off to electronics or meats so they could redeem their manhood. Seriously. Please remember. Being behind the wheel of a 3,000 pound vehicle does not  make you invincible, invisible, or some other “I” word. Smile and move on.

Happy Birthday!

On August 29th the best thing I can write about is the person behind the man, behind the “WLL” blog. My Mom. It’s her birthday today. A while back she told me the best thing I could get her for whatever holiday it was, was write a letter to her. I’m not going to use this as a replacement for a letter, but I do want others to read some things I have to write about her.

I’m almost sure that without my mom, Larry might not be here with us today. She will tell you she wishes she had seen this, and done that, but I have no doubt that without her care and concern that things would be much worse than they are, or were. My mom has always been the caretaker of “this is what you should do” to the point that we all give her a hard time about nagging us about doctors, dentists, and everything else. The thing we sometimes miss is that she wants everyone to be the best that they can be and not to suffer or be hurt in any way. As an adult with two growing kids I have no idea how she managed all the things she managed while we were growing up. I had the childhood dream. I played baseball, soccer, went to Cub scouts, camped, hiked, boated, skied, mowed the lawn, slept in a tent in the backyard, had a pool, had a paper route, walked to school, made snowmen, rode my bike all over town, all because of my parents and very much because of my mom. They made sure I had such opportunities growing up to do so many things that I apparently decided to grow up and take my family on the adventure of a lifetime these last 6 months. So…if you get a chance, drop Wilma an e-mail or give her a phone call on her birthday. She is a special person to me and if you are reading this it’s likely that she is special to you also.

wcarroll@frontiernet.net

309-526-3505

Love you Mom,

Jon

Thomas Paine don’t live here

At what age do you learn common sense? Is it a gradual thing? Is it a genetic thing? It’s driving me crazy. My kids do the craziest things because their brains haven’t figured out the proper way to do them. As I type I’ll try to think of an example from my own kids, but here’s one from a few minutes ago. I stopped to let some kids cross the street as they made their way home from school. What I didn’t know is that one of the little goobers was going to take that moment to stop in the middle of the road, take a moment to collect his wits, get his bicycle all set up nice, and THEN pedal away. Did it not occur to this kid that the middle of the road wasn’t the place to figure all of this out? My kids are constantly saying “I can’t find (insert dumb thing here)” Inevitably I walk into the room, assess where “dumb thing” is most likely to be and find it in 10 seconds. It only takes a modicum of common sense. There is a twitter feed that some guy keeps up and it’s simply a bunch of crazy stuff his dad says. Here’s the link. (CLICK). It’s accurately titled “Shitmydadsays”. I think I’m going to start my own…”shitmykidsdo”. I’ll let you know how it goes.

Only 17 days left…

Ok, put this one down as kinda weird / kinda cool. (Why does spell check not like the word “kinda”?)

Wired magazine has an author that is running a contest where he has decided to disappear from everyone for 30 days. Basically a giant game of hide and seek. I think this guy is living in Orion for 30 days and laughing at everyone.

Interesting idea, but who has the money, time or whatever it is to find this guy. It is worth $5,000, but that’s not a ton of money. I’m keeping my eye out though.

Here is the link( CLICK)

For fun…

Some links to keep you busy, amused, or annoyed.

Rules of thumb – I thought these would be more dumb than helpful, but I was pleasantly surprised. Here is one to help you decide if you are going to click it or not. People are willing to walk for seven minutes to get to a McDonald's. That's why you'll find McDonald's restaurants a 14 minute walk apart in downtown areas.

List of pasta names – You want to click on it…mostly because you think to yourself. “How many could there be?” Go ahead. It has pictures.

Space meals (Apollo 11) – Ok…kind of dumb, but I kept scrolling wondering how in the world they survived on that stuff. I get all mad if someone takes some french fries from my McDonalds value meal.

I’ll find more stuff…really.

Not much to report from Land of the Lakes….let’s cobble something together for you to read.

The Mike Locander of “many comments in this blog” fame has a letter to the editor that was published and worth reading. When he isn’t a blog comedian he has some good points.  (Click here)

We had some kid from Estonia hit us up for some door to door educational book sales deal. I didn’t think twice about it until I saw our neighbor was visited by the same guy. He seemed harmless, but apparently in the course of his sales pitch for educational supplies he mentioned to her that basically “Americans are stupid”. As soon as he left her house our neighborhood got drenched. Take the worst pounding rain you’ve ever seen and imagine that poor kid walking to the next house. Always be closing kid, always be closing.

The plastic snake in my garage scared the crap out of me the other day…especially when I realized it wasn’t plastic. I hate snakes.

Have you ever taken apart something and not be able to put it back together again? Put bike gears and brakes on the list. I’m sure I’ll eventually figure it out, but I’ve done this many times with many different things. At some point I’m going to realize that I don’t know everything and wise up.

I wish Southwest would send me free drink coupons for a local bar rather than their flights. Drinking on an airplane is just odd to me. The bathroom is always crowded, you are basically sitting there alone and trapped. I think this is one of the signs you might be an alcoholic actually. Maybe a coupon for a sandwich, or a coupon to cut the line to get on the plane. Note to self…call Southwest.

Sometimes no title is the best title…

Ahhhh yes, yet another post that may only be funny to me. It involves another one of those signs that you spot and look twice at. I’ve been driving by this sign for a week now and every time I smirk at what I think it says, even if I might know differently. Who knows? Maybe I’m reading it right and the local veterinarian is forming a wind instrument ensemble. I don’t even want to speculate on the belly dancing part. Overall I would have to say that whoever put this sign together needs some sort of help next time.

Dumb things I have done this week

- Poured orange juice in my coffee rushing to get Sam his breakfast.

- When the phone rang I had the TV remote in my hand. I instinctively tried to answer the remote.

- Went to the car to with my phone and wallet, realized I forgot the keys, went back to get the keys and left my phone and wallet inside. Rinse and repeat.

- Sent an e-mail explaining a file that was attached..forgot to attach to file. Went to send it again and after explaining how I forgot to attach the file I sent it again…without the file. Take 3!

- Told the girl at Publix “Thanks” when checking out…in Swedish.

- Put Sam’s shoes on the wrong feet. How do I keep doing that? I’m looking down at my feet now to make sure I didn’t do it to myself.

Dear old golden rule days…

Well the first day of school has gone better than we hoped. Apparently when you become a high school administrator (paper shuffler) your skills get a little better. They basically had no record of Sara at her school this morning, but they made some calls, printed some forms, faxed some stuff and she became a student. If they could just do those things and get her to turn in her homework this year we are golden. After months of traveling abroad and encountering travel related troubles, we have pretty much shrugged off encounters like this and we even have kind of a laissez faire attitude toward bureaucracy and paper shuffling. Maybe this is where the French get it from? Sam, I could tell, was a little bit skeptical about going to school today. He wasn’t very talkative or excited, he went Larry on us and became reserved, nonchalant, and went into observer mode. If we can just get them home after the first day we will call it a success and check the entire year off the list of “things to figure out”