DarthTater and Christmas Zombie Children

Val and the kids visited me at work the other day for lunch. I had a little extra time since I just finished up on "Up" (Coming to a theater near you May 2009), so I took them all to my office. Valerie commented on all my toys on my shelves and was surprised at all my Darth Vader (and other Star Wars) toys. I thought I would share them with you. Here's what's in the above picture (from left to right). This is one of 3 shelves of toys in my office)

A paper Boba Fett helmet I made to fit one of the maquette sculptures of a character on UP (the fat mullett-haired nurse from the trailer).
R2-D2 candy container.
Behind them is a smallish Darth Vader head (the symetrical one from the prequels). It's filled with miniature Darth Vader heads like the one to it's right. That is a sigg water bottle they gave us at work to encorage us to use instead of disposable ones (it's the green thing to do, you know). I glued a Vader head to the lid and use it as a display instead.
In front of that is my Darth Tater. Fitting cross between Star Wars and Pixar. Mia calls it my "Dark Vader Tomato Head".
Next we have Boo from Monsters, Inc in her monster outfit and behind her is a dragon with Nemo in it's hand, being ridden by Kate Bekinsale (actually Anna Valerious from Van Helsing), wearing a paper Storm Trooper helmet while holding a blue bird from Cinderella.
Next is Jango Fett with Boo climbing out of his head and reaching to touch the dragon.
Behind them is a Venom Mask, and to their right is Yoda dancing with Jaques from Cinderella. It's a celebration of Pixar. Though neither are Pixar characters, Pixar started out as a part of LucasFilm, and then teamed up with Disney.
Last is my full sized Darth Vader Helmet. There aren't many things cooler than that!

On to Zombie Children. During the Christmas season the kids watch "Polar Express" - a lot. That movie creeps me out soooo much. Every character looks and acts like a zombie with their dead expressionless faces. Anyway, we also drink a lot of hot chocolate. Because of that movie, every time someone says "hot chocolate", someone in my family says "Yeah, we got it (hot, hot)". They're all zombies too.

My Talented Wife and the Father's Guide to Pregnancy.

I want to share with you one of Valerie's talents. You might think I'm going to talk about how she's an awesome teacher, or super crafty-creative. Or, you might think I would go with her obvious (and recently realized) photography talent. Well, if you thought I was going to talk about those, you're wrong, and if you would stop interrupting me and trying to finish my sentences, I would get to the point - as soon as I share some thoughts.

Pregnancy is different for every woman. It's got to be hard right? I mean they have a parasite inside of them stealing all their nutrients and energy. They get fatter - which seems to be every woman's nightmare. And then there are the uncomfortable things like having to go to the bathroom every two minutes, craving food at odd times, and of course puking all the time.

Let it be known that I am fully sympathetic of all pregnant women.

BUT...
What about their husbands? Pregnancy is really hard for us too. First of all, from the moment she finds out that she's pregnant, she is constantly questioning whether or not she is showing yet. Every man knows that the answer to "Do I look fat?" is ALWAYS "No!". It gets more complicated when you are dealing with a pregnant woman. She is conflicted. She doesn't want to be fatter, but at the same time, she is excited to see the proof of the baby inside her. So if you answer "No" she hears "You're are getting all excited about the baby and just imagining that you can see this miracle growing each day" and she gets frustrated and upset. If you answer "Yes", she hears "You look fat". I try to go with an "honesty is the best policy" approach which just frustrates Val (because her belly is just barely showing so far).

Next you have the cravings. These can actually be a good thing for the Husband - as long as she is craving something you also enjoy. Val craves red meat - delicious! I look forward to her saying "Will you run to a local fast food establishment and get me a burger?" She feels bad about making me go, so she lets me get some for myself as well. So what could be bad about it? Imagine it's mid December. It's cold and rainy outside. The kids are all down for the night, and you have just gotten ready for bed. You climb under your favorite fleece blanket and settle into bed all nice and cozy. You flip on the TV and - look at that - a great show is just starting. -- Something about your total comfort triggers her cravings. Now you have to pull off the warm covers, get dressed, go out into the wet cold night, and miss a good show. But hey, you get a hamburger right?

Apparently pregnancy shrinks a woman's bladder too. Yesterday, in the time we were shopping at Target - maybe 30 minutes, Valerie had to go to the bathroom twice. For some men, this could get really annoying, but the way I see it, it actually means more time for me to play the Demo Playstation 3 in the electronics depatment. So Val, take your time, and maybe you should go one more time before we leave - just in case.

Lastly there is the puking. Most women get morning sickness. Not Valerie. She gets evening sickness. I figure it's really morning sickness - it's just confused. Valerie was born in Korea, so it's on Korean time. Morning there - evening here. This leads me to Valerie's awesome talent. She has total control of her puking. in fact, she seems to be able to decide whether or not to she should puke. She says to me; "I'm nauseous, I can't decide if I should eat or throw up". If we have instantly available food she'll eat, if not, she'll puke - but only when she's good and ready. Seriously, she can totally control when she will puke - the way most people can with going to the bathroom. It's not unusual for her to say that she needs to puke, but on her way to the bathroom she'll get sidetracked by some project and 20 minutes later she say "Oh I forgot, I need to puke". She's AWESOME! You probably already read her thoughts about puking at her blog.

If I don't get to write again before Christmas. Merry Christmas everyone!

Communication is Key!

Val and I are getting older, but we still try to stay up to date with the newest technology trends. Ok, maybe not up to date, but just one or two versions behind the times.

A couple of weeks ago, we both got new cell phones. We replaced our old "free when you sign up so there are no bells or whistles" phones (Ours were identical except for color) for fancier "almost free when you sign up so they are a little nicer" phones. Well, Valerie's was still free, but we got to pay for mine (so it's better). Sure they don't have touch screen or multitouch interfaces - but they come with twice as many ringtones as our last ones! And they are very shiny! Anyway, we also let Val have text message access this time around too (I already had it). It's great! We never have to talk directly to each other the way old fashioned people do.

When it works, I just text Val from the living room when she is in the kitchen and I can find out whats for dinner, how her day was, etc. I say 'When it works' because, despite having had a cell phone for 2 years, Valerie still isn't used to just carrying it around with her everywhere. Often times I'll text (or call) her only to hear her phone ringing 4 feet away from me. That's really ok if I'm in the living room and she is in the kitchen, but if she is further away (like the bedroom), how am I supposed to communicate with her?

Truthfully, we find other ways to communicate. Sometimes we comment on eachother's blogs or facebook wall. An even better technology though, is gchat. Like if I'm on the computer in the office, and she is on the computer in the living room, we can both log into our gmail accounts and chat back and forth - in real time!

Technology is so great now days that we've pretty much decided (while g-chatting) to do all our Christmas shopping online! I bet we could even have the gifts all wrapped online!

"Up" Trailer

For the past year and a half or so, I have been working on Pixar's next movie "Up" which comes out next May. It's really fun and exciting, but there are a couple of frustrating things. First, everything is 'top secret', so I can never share too much with anyone. Second, it takes a couple of years (from when I started) before I can show off any of my work.

Well, they just released the trailer for UP, so now people can get a taste of what this movie is.


It's tiny on my blog, but you can go here and see it bigger and make it full screen.
You want to make it full screen so you can really see the expression on Russell's (the boy scout kid) face at the end.

The very first things I worked on at Pixar are in the trailer:
The fat orderly/nurse guy, I shaded his scrubs and name tag. (shaded = did the color and textures).
The window shopping family, I shaded their skin and clothes, and made their grooms (their hair).

Much more to come in May.

The Award and Halloween

First off, Thank you to everyone who voted for Pajama Gladiator online! I hope you enjoyed it. If you haven't heard yet, WE WON THE VIEWERS CHOICE AWARD! This is the second award we won in this festival. I just got the plaque/trophy for the Producer's Choice award. Here it is.


Halloween is the best! My friends and I have been playing a lot of "Call of Duty 4" lately, and decided on the 30th to have a COD4 party at Lou's on the 1st. We decided we would dress up in military costumes and make it our Halloween party. After a couple of hours scrambling around at thrift stores, we had our costumes. Since Halloween was the next day, and it's a huge deal at Pixar, we decided to wear our costumes to work. I really needed a special piece to my costume, so I built an M5 rifle out of a golf club, foam board, a couple of flashlights and a lot of electricians tape. On Halloween,we went out on the Pixar property and posed for a bunch of pictures.





At work they have an awesome Halloween party. People come with the best costumes you can imagine. But even more impressive is the 'show'. There are prizes for the best costumes, but you have to 'sell' you costume as well by performing some kind of skit. Here are a few fun ones. The "Enchanted" group was awesome. Giselle got on stage and was lip syncing to a song that was beautifully sung - by the prince in a beautiful falsetto. He came on stage and they danced together while singing a duet. they would dance in a circle so that his back would be to us when he was singing her part and his front was to us when he sang his part.



The Bunny is Alec. He is the magician's rabbit from the Pixar short "Presto" that showed before Wall-e.


One hilarious part was when everybody who was planning on performing was done, there was a little lull in the show. Suddenly Elliot rode by on the bridge above with ET in his basket. It caught everyone off guard and was sooo funny!

Vote Today & Tomrrow (Oct 29 & 30) for Pajama Gladiator!!

The film I produced at BYU is up for a Viewers' Choice Award from the Nicktoons Network. You can watch it online today Starting at 11 pm eastern and all day tomorrow!!!! Please visit their site today and click "Rock" to vote for our film. Remember it's called "Pajama Gladiator"
Here's the link
Here's a press release from BYU
Thank You and Enjoy!!!!

6. 6 M&Ms. Ah Ah Ah Aaaahh.

This past Saturday evening, we had a Halloween Party at our church. It was pretty chaotic, though less so than last year's where they did a trunk or treat and just let the kids run free to raid the trunks. This year there were no trunks, so they just let the kids run free in the church to raid the treats. The best thing about the party were the contests that the adults could participate in. I'm talking about the "guess how many M&Ms are in the jar" contests, or, my specialty, "how much does the punkin weigh?".
Some of you know of my amazing super talent of being able to determine the weight of things pretty accurately simply by holding them in my hands. It's a power I acquired while working at UPS. For those who may not know, for 3 years I worked as a UPS package handler. I basically unloaded packages from 55 ft semi trailers onto a conveyor belt starting at 3:00 am. each day. 1200 per hour. Averaging 20 lbs a piece. That's 24000 lbs an hour. 96000 lbs per shift. 480000 lbs a week. 24,960,000 lbs a year. 74,880,000 lbs during my time there.

Whoah! I'm tired after all that! The math - not the package handling.

Anyway, Each package had it's weight clearly marked so I just started associating the feel of the weight with the number.

The only reason I'm bragging about this is because at the Halloween party, they had 3 punkins there for you to guess the weight of. I thought I would test to see if I still had the superpower or not. I guessed on all three punkins. I was actually pretty worried, because I wasn't super sure of the weights. I haven't worked at UPS for over a year now. There was a wide range of guesses from other people ranging from 20 lbs, to CJ's guess for each: 520. Not 520 lbs, just 520.

Just before they announced the winners, I confessed to my friend that I think I have completely lost my super power.

BUT IT DIDN'T!

They said I guessed all three right! They changed the rules and tossed out 2 of my guesses to let others win. That's OK by me, I wouldn't have been able to carry all 3 punkins home anyway.



As for the number of M&Ms in a jar? I never get close on those. Mia was probably closer. I asked her how many were in this jar. She immediatly answered "4". I asked if she thought there were really only 4, or if there were more. This time she thought about it for a bit and said nodding her head "I think 6. No, maybe 7. No, 6. 6." I entered that as her official guess.



She didn't win.

Video Game Lingo & Pizza

First thing, let me calm all the panic I caused with my last post. I am currently leaning more in the McCain direction. - SO CALM DOWN EVERYONE!!!

Now on to what I really wanted to talk about. Most of you probably don't play video games enough, so I wanted to give you a brief lesson on a piece of gaming lingo. Today's lesson is the word "respawn". I know it sounds like fish procreation - a second time, - but it has nothing to do with that. Respawning is what you call coming back to life after dying in a video game. So like in Call of Duty 4, if you get splattered by a grenade, you respawn somewhere else and continue fighting.



Good, now that you understand what respawn means, I want to tell you something funny. Today at church, one of the speakers was talking about a story from the Bible. It was a story where someone asked Jesus a question. The speaker said "Jesus responded...", Valerie looked at me and said "Jesus respawned"? I hadn't been paying real close attention so I looked (confusedly) at her and thought to myself "Well, I guess He did respawn after His crucifixion didn't He." I answered, nodding my head "Jesus respawned". We had a hard time not laughing out loud and will probably be struck by lightning, but it just goes to show you that even violent video games can help remind you of the most important things at times.




Now lets talk pizza. We ate pizza for 5 meals in the past 8 days. Valerie can't stand to have it more than once a month, but somehow we tend to eat a lot of pizza. Oh, and since you brought up the pizza topic and all, I thought I would share my pizza recipe with you.

If you have ever looked up pizza recipes on the internet, you'll find they aren't much help. You get things like this: Mushroom Pizza, ingredients: Crust, sauce, mushrooms, cheese. or fancy recipes like: Gourmet New york Peperoni Pizza: Crust, sauce, peperoni, cheese. Basically just a list of toppings to put on a pizza - as if you need a recipe for that. (Incidentally, sandwich recipes are almost as useless too). Here is a real pizza recipe that is de-lish-us! It's step by step so start at the top and continue downward or you'll get confused. PS - make the sauce first.

Makes 2 large pizzas.

Crust
2 tbsp yeast
2 tbsp sugar
2 cups lukewarm water
Stir these together and let them sit for a few minute while you do the next steps (to let the yeast get all foamy and active).

1 cup softened butter
1/4 cup sugar
1 cup flour
Put these together in a mixing bowl (use a kitchen-aide or bosch or the like)and pour the yeast liquid in with it. Mix it up into a soup and add the following seasonings.
1 1/2 tbsp garlic powder
1 tbsp basil
2 tsp oregano
1 tsp marjoram (optional)

It should smell reallllllly good right about now. Now add the following a cup or 2 at a time and let it knead for a while.
5 more cups flour

Cover and let it rise for 20 min (until doubled). Build your pizza and cook at 450F for 15 -25 min depending on how thick it is.


Sauce
1 can tomato sauce
1 can diced tomato
1 tbsp sugar
1 tsp black pepper
salt to taste
1 tbsp oregano
1/2 tsp thyme
1 tbsp olive oil
1 tbsp minced garlic
Stir it all up, and put in in the fridge while you make the crust.

Toppings
Here's what I like on mine:
pepperoni
mozzarella Cheese
mushrooms
bacon
also:
green olives
artichoke hearts

P.S. For those who care, we are planning on visiting Utah right after Christmas.

Politics

So a lot of my family are concerned about my political affiliation. Well, I thought I would take a few minutes to explain my views. Unfortunately I could fill a book with them, so I'll have to abbreviate. I think the majority of the country has chosen a side and blindly votes for their side time and again. Don't you think it would be better for the country if everybody would actually look at both sides each time and pick whats best from EITHER side? Maybe the bad guy is more honest.

First Let's look at what's wrong right now.

Our current Leader is an idiot frat boy whose cronyism and fear mongering has made him an all powerful Emperor. He reminds me of my Senior Class President in high school. He was elected Class President because he was popular and could drink more beers than any of his competitors. The fact that it would be his responsibility to organize our reunions didn't seem to bother anybody. Now years later, his ineptness is all too obvious through our lack of reunions. W and his buddies took care of all their agendas during their time. They got to attack Iraq and 'show Hussein whose boss'. Their friends in the oil business got richer than ever. And I could go on.

The point is simply this. The current Republican Administration doesn't seem to care how they destroy the country as long as they get what they want. Almost everything needs to change!

So lets look at the pros/cons of the candidates. I have a chart at the bottom that summarizes all this.

McCain Pros: He's experienced in Washington. He has military experience so he would probably be more cautious than W and his buddies when it comes to war. He's got a reputation for crossing his party to push legislation he believes is important for the country.

Cons: He's a grumpy old guy who thinks it's OK for the leader of the most advanced country in the world to not know about 'the internets' or use computers. He has really short arms - like a velociraptor. He appears to be towing the party line of fear mongering, and although he has sometimes crossed his party, he seems to be comfortably backing the GOP message. I hope that he's doing that because he needs the party's support to be elected, and as soon as he is, he'll go back to following his conscience. How much do I trust him? 3 out of 5. I worry that he'll be bullied by his party to do things their way.

Palin Pros: She's pretty and young. Tina Fey does the best impersonation of her and 4 years of that would totally be worth it! See for yourself.

Cons: Could she be less qualified to lead this country? Just watch the SNL clip to see what I mean. I know it's a joke, but some of here answers are nearly word for word from the real interview.


Obama Pros: He's young and intelligent. He's NOT a Republican. He wants to change the way things are right now. He preaches Hope instead of Fear.

Cons: He's a Democrat - that's a big one, we could go from a fascist regime to a communist society. He's a slick talker. This isn't necessarily bad, but i get suspicious when i hear the silver tongue. How much do i trust him? 4 out of 5. I'm pretty sure he'll try to do the things he says he will.

Biden Pros: He has lot's of experience.
Cons: He seems to be a non-entity. No one talks about him good or bad, maybe he doesn't do anything beyond being a grumpy old man.


So what it comes down to is this. I would like to vote for McCain because his ideals match my own the closest, but if he were to die because of his old age, the country would be in a very bad situation if it had to rely on Palin to lead. Also, who knows if he will bring a change to Washington, or if he'll just join with the current Empire.

THE REAL REPUBLICAN CANDIDATES


Obama's ideals are far from my own in most cases, but I believe he'll bring a needed change to Washington.

THE REAL DEMOCRAT CANDIDATES



The question is Do you vote for the guy who believes the same as you, but may be more of the same problem. Or do you vote for the guy who doesn't share your views, but at least you know where things stand with him?

I don't know. But I still have a few weeks to decide.

The Orange Carpet

"Pajama Gladiator", The student film I produced at BYU won the Producer's Choice Award in the Nicktoons Network Animation Festival. That means that the producers who are responsible for Spongebob Squarepants, Dora the Explorer, Backyardigans, etc. liked our film best out of 4500 other animated shorts. That's pretty impressive and gives me a little hope that we might actually have a chance to win some more festival awards.

The award ceremony was held last Friday at the Nickelodeon Studio in Burbank. They flew me down, put me up in a swanky hotel and sent a limo to pick me up for the event. Glenn, the Director of Pajama Gladiator, just moved down to L.A. to start working for Sony Feature Animation (they made Monster House). He drove up and met me at the hotel and we rode together in the limo. It wasn't a stretch limo, it was a nice Lincoln Towncar with black windows and black leather seats. You know that little cubby on the side of a car door where you can store maps or trash? They filled those up with suckers (blowpops and dumdums).

When we got to the studio, a guy in a white uniform opened the door for us so we could get out and walk down the orange carpet (Nickelodeon's color is orange). We walked down and waved to the lone photographer who promptly asked us to get out of the way so he could take a picture of the front entrance of the event. When he was done, we hopped back on the carpet and proceeded to the front gate where the security guard told us he couldn't let us in yet.

Whatever.

Glenn and I hung out and talked until our friends Dan and his wife Kori showed up. Dan also worked on Pajama Gladiator and, thankfully, he got be there because he works for Nickelodeon. Eventually the guard let us in.

We walked to the check-in desk to get a cool yellow tag, but were told to go to the other table because we actually got a special blue tag identifying us as nominees. Along the walkway there were pictures of the 29 finalists. In front of the Pajama Gladiator picture, there was a little 'light table' pedestal with the trophy plaque on it. We walked into the main area and went straight to the bar. There's no way we were going to let the open bar go to waste! 7-ups for everyone! We took our drinks and grabbed a seat on some cool Ikea couches in front of the stage. I should mention this was all out-doors. Pretty soon one of the event producers came and told Glenn and I that we had reserved seats closer to the front. That was cool, but we decided to lower ourselves to the level of the little people and sit by Dan and Kori until the event got started. We had reserved seats after all. Shortly before the program began, some people sat in our reserved seats. We asked the producer lady about it and she said they were the family of another winner, and said we could sit in some other reserved seats instead. We did. And we decided Dan and Kori are like family, so they came and sat by us in the reserved area.

The program consisted of some dirty jokes by the emcee, an entertaining question and answer with Stan Lee (if you don't know who that is, you are not allowed to read my blog anymore. But in case you had a lapse in memory and you want to be able to read it in the future, you should know he invented Spiderman, the X men, the Hulk, and 200 other Marvel superheros), a performance from a band I'd never heard of, and the announcement of the winners of the various awards. When they announced us, we just stood up and waved while people clapped.

Afterward, the limo picked us up (this time a black SUV with no candy in the doors) and delivered us back to my hotel where I slept on the worlds most softest bed with the softest sheets and pillows. It was like sleeping on room-temperature butter! I flew home the next day and saw Natasha Henstridge in the Burbank airport.

She is a year older than me. I only say that because comparing celebrities ages to mine puts my oldness in perspective. When I start to think celebrities my age are old, I will know for sure I am old. So far, so good.

It was pretty fun over all and I hope we win more awards where I can attend an event. Next time I'll bring Valerie so I'll have pictures to share.

Oh! I almost forgot. Pajama Gladiator is till in the running for the "Viewers Choice" Award. On October 29, you can go to the NNAF website and watch and vote for Pajama Gladiator. It will also be shown on the Nicktoons Network at 11:00 pm EST that night if you have the channel. Anyway, remember to visit the website on Oct 29 and vote for us! Here is the URL: www.nicktoons.com/nnaf

I love Fall!

So there are 3 main things I love about Fall. I look forward to each of them for months! They are: Halloween, BYU Football, and the new season of TV! I have a little to say about each:

"103 UNANSWERED POINTS!!!!"

And you would be disappointed in the lack of Halloweenness in my home so far. I usually decorate the house for Halloween on Sept 16 (My Birthday), and spend birthday money on new decorations. This Year, I live in a real, live, haunted-house-looking victorian! But I sold most of my decorations before moving to CA and it depresses me to think how cool it 'could have been' compared to what it 'will be'. I am feeling repentant though and will be decorating very soon!

As for the TV shows. THANK GOODNESS the new season finally started!!! We were going insane watching stupid reruns of stupid shows all summer long. I checked for all our favorites and wrote down a schedule of when they premier and what we will watch each night.

It works out great! We will be watching Chuck and Heroes on monday, House and Fringe (If I can get passed the main girl's 'always worried' eyebrows) on Tuesday. Wednesday is the only problem, Val likes Pushing Daisies, I like Bones. (That is a weird sentence if you don't read it in context), followed by Ghost Hunters (the only cable show on our schedule). Thursday is "Play XBOX with Val night" until The Office is on, and Friday is dvd date with Val.

It's silly that I look forward, for months, to 6 1/2 hours of TV each week - but I do. I just worry how our near perfect TV schedule will hold up in early 2009 when we will need to squeeze in LOST (and possibly 24).

The End of the World and Eating Slugs

A couple of weeks ago something very significant happened in the scientific community. The Large Hadron Collider went online allowing scientist to study things that have only been theorized before. There has been a lot of fear about the LHC though. So much so, that some girl in India killed herself rather than be destroyed by it. What's so scary? Well, I'll tell you.
The purpose of the LHC (according to CERN - the people who built it) is this:

To smash protons moving at 99.999999% of the speed of light into each other and so recreate conditions a fraction of a second after the big bang.

Sounds academic enough, until you realize what the conditions after the Big Bang were like. If you know any physics at all, you probably know the Law of the Conservation of Matter. That is that matter can neither be created nor destroyed. Well, it's not entirely true when we're talking about the big bang. To understand what happened think about this: The number 0 means nothing right? That's what there was before the big bang: 0. But this also equals 0: 1 + -1, or 1zillion + -1zillion. When the big bang happened, that 0 was torn into 2 halves. Suddenly there was all the matter in the universe (1) as well as an equal amount of antimatter (-1). So we instantly get everything from nothing. This splitting of nothing into something released an unimaginable amount of energy. In fact, just 10 to the -43 (thats "point" followed by 43 zeros and a 1) seconds after the big bang, the temperature was 10 to the 34 (1 with 34 zeros after it)degrees Kelvin (imagine Celsius if it's easier, there's only about a 273 degree difference).

So with temperatures that hot, will the earth just incinerate?



The other big fear is that scientists think they will be able to create a black hole. Yeah, that's right. The thing that is so dense that even light can't escape it's gravity. The thing that sucks everything into it never to escape. At least if they do make make a black hole, France will be the first to be sucked in.

One more fear. Did you ever read "Angels and Demons" by Dan Brown? Remember how it all started when someone stole the antimatter from CERN (yes the same people who are behind the LHC), and it was going to cause an annihilation? Well, the LHC is expected to make antimatter too (remember: 0 = 1 + -1). That antimatter will surely meet matter and you have the big bang in reverse - with a huge amount of energy being released.

The only reason I bothered to explain all this, is to share a website with you. You can go to this site to see if the LHC has destroyed the world yet. It's real scientific. They actually have a program on the web site to see if the world has been destroyed, and they have a warranty - just in case the world ends and they failed to update the site.


In related news, I was eating pot stickers the other night. We eat them often and love them. As I was thinking about how much I loved them, I suddenly found myself wondering why we love them. There are so many reasons why I shouldn't.

They smell horrible. For hours after cooking them, the house smells like a poopy diaper. It's even worse when that smell comes out of your mouth when you burp!

They look and fee like slugs! I can't help thinking of Ron Weasley puking up slugs in "The Chaber of Secrets" when his broken wand backfires on him!



The insides look like an owl pellet. You know, owls swallow their prey whole, then puke up the fur and bones that they couldn't digest in the form of a pellet.





Despite all that I still love pot stickers.

My Birfday... and PS I have the Best Wife!

So Tuesday is my thirty-somethingth birthday. I say Thirty-somethingth , not because I feel old and don't want people to know how old I am, but because I can't really remember which thirty it is offhand. After about 25 I kinda stopped caring how old I was, so when people ask me, I have to do the quick math to figure it out - and if you know anything about my allergies to math, you would know there is no such thing as "quick" math. Ok, Fine. If you must know: I was born in 1975, that means in 1985 I was 10, 95 I was 20, 2005 I was 30, in 2015 I will be 40 minus 5 = 35 in 2010, it's 2008, so take off 2 more = 33. There I'm 33 - and that wasn't much of an exaggeration of how my mind caculates math.
Not that that pain is over with, let me tell you about my Birthday present. I've never really been one for big birthday celebrations. Parties are fun, but usually more stressfull than they are worth. As for presents, I never know what I want. Cash is usually a safe gift, but then it burns a hole in my pocket and I just end up buying lunch with it. Valerie is pretty observant about the random times I'll be watching TV and a commercial for the newest Batman or GI Joe toy will come on and i'll exclaim "Ooo, I want that!" But this year she gave me an awesome gift! The gift of nothing. That's right, this year she said she wasn't going to do or get me anything for my big day. Instead, what she did, was let me spend the entire Saturday (this past one) Hanging out with my friends.
The morning started early. I met my friends Jacob and Emron (both of whom I went to BYU with and who work at Pixar with me now) at Lou's house. Lou works at Pixar too but was about 12 letters off and went to NYU instead of BYU. The four of us loaded up in Jacob's spacious extended cab F-150 with our golf clubs in the bed and went golfing. Jacob even played Gwen Stefani for me while we drove. The course we went to was a tiny pitch -n- put par 3 course. This was Emron's first time golfing (though he dressed like a pro), and Lou's first time since he was a kid. We had a great time. We basically had the course to ourselves and played several balls each. The best thing is, I started with 5 golf balls and fiished with 20! Ohh Ye-ah! I would have had dozens more, but the fairways are lined in Blackberry bushes. THORNS! These are some pictures Jacob took - which is why he's not in any of them.




We finished golfing in time to head back to Lou's to watch the BYU vs UCLA slaughter on his wall with his High Definition projector. 59 -0?! Are you kidding! That was AWESOME! After that we played Call of Duty 4 on the PS3 (1080p HD!) That is a seriously fun game! We tried a bit of Halo3 on the xbox360, but Call of Duty was really much cooler. Finally after about 12 hours of fun, I went home to my beautiful wife who was glad that I had a fun day. That was such a fun birthday present!
Now tomorrow we'll have cupcakes to celebrate, but that is really for the benefit of Val and the kids. They all love birthdays way more than me so I don't mind a little partying for their happiness. After all, I do have the best wife and kids.

PS Val made this Blog for me because I kept complaining about not having time to start my own blog. Thanks Valerie!

PPS I just want to clarify, I know there is a picture of Barak Obama in my header surrounded by things I like. I am not currently a Barak Obama supporter (or democrat even), I'm just not convinced yet that McCain/Palin will be any less fascist than our current emperor.