Author: Steven

Yeah, she was way better than average.  The audiologist lady said she had the best hearing she had seen in a long time.  

Seporah and I went to take a hearing test for her today, and it was really interesting.  First of all, I went to the wrong hospital.  I was told to go to Kapiolani Medical Center because Tripler didn’t have the capacity to take care of everyone and Märia set up and appointment and gave me the suite number and everything.  So I show up, on the second floor like I was told, and there is audiology, right where it was supposed to be… except I was at the wrong hospital!  Apparently there are like 5 Kapiolani Hospitals on the island and I was at the wrong one.  I was at the “main” one, the largest, but not the right one.  

So I had to call Tricare (military insurance) and cancel the other referral/appointment and get a new referral/appointment at the new hospital, as I couldn’t make it to the other place in time.  After a half hour on the phone with different people and robots, it was all taken care of.  

Märia and I had wondered how they were going to test our very active and not very verbal 3 year old’s hearing.  Well, it was flippin awesome!  They made it into a game for Seporah, and Seporah loved it.  They had this little machine, like a box the size of a cash register, with a little metal part that stuck out and looked like a really big coin return, or maybe like it came off a vending machine.  So we went into a sound proof room with this machine, and they asked me to show Seporah how to put her hand on this star on the front of the machine when the room beeped.  Otherwise she had to keep her hands on the table in front of the machine.  When the room beeped, Seporah put her hand on the star and a toy popped out of the machine.  She then was to put the toy in a cup off to the side.  Seporah loved it, and got the game almost instantly.  

So as soon as they knew she got the game, they put the normal ear testing head phones on her, and she got to play the game with all the tones, high and low and so forth.  She apparently scored better than normal, and close to perfect.  Seporah was totally good the whole appointment long.  She let the audiologist look into her ear and put sensors in her ear that had to stay there for minutes at a time.  She never threw a fit or gave any of us any trouble.  She was a very good girl.  =)

The Baby Is Sleeping!  Shhhh!

And she was so serious when she said it in a not so hushed (but obviously trying to be hushed) tone!  =)

Yeah, so I post about things, not “the day” apparently.  Märia wanted a break, so here goes.  

We woke up this morning around 7 or so.  Well, I woke up then.  Märia had been up a long time already, and had been playing Final Fantasy 12.  She really is enjoying that game.  So when I got up, she quit and we started doing dishes.  She is doing all the washing right now, as my hand is really cut up pretty good, and I didn’t want to get dish germies in it.  I fell off my bike when I was riding down our hill in the rain way way too fast.  

Anyway, so we did lots and lots of dishes, and then the girls started talking and saying they were awake and why weren’t we in there getting them up?  So I went to go get them up, and Märia started cooking Sunday breakfast (which is normally my job).  She cleaned out the pan first though, and didn’t get all the soap out, and so our chocolate malt-o-meal tasted like soap.  The girls didn’t mind though.

So today was stake conference, and so we went up to the primary room as we didn’t see the girls sitting through 2 whole hours of people giving talks.  Suzanne Bree and her kiddos were there and the kids all had lots of fun playing while Märia, me and Suzanne tried to referee the kids and also listen to the talks that were being piped into the Primary room through speakers.  We had the room all to ourselves because as soon as we got in I shut the door so noone knew they could come in.  I probably should feel bad about that, but I figure anyone who came in would’ve left as soon as they saw how our kids acted, so it’s morally even in my mind.  I even saved them some time, so maybe I come out in the positive!  =)

So we came home, and EVERYONE GOT NAPS!  You can’t understand how rarely that happens.  And it wasn’t a short nothing nap either, I think we all slept an hour and a half at least!  When we woke up we cleaned some more and Märia played some more of her game and we ate a salad and we rough housed and read books.  It was really a pretty good day.  

I made a new pizza too.  It was kinda interesting, I sautéed onions and red peppers and chicken in rosemary, basil, parsley, salt and pepper and a very little pizza sauce.  Then I threw it on my standard dough with just a little more pizza sauce, a normal amount of mozzarella cheese and lots of parmesan, compliments of Seporah who dumped the whole can.  =)  I say I made this, but Seporah helped the whole time, “cutting” veggies and chicken with her plastic knife and putting all the herbs in for me (Thats enough Seporah, how about some more of this one…) and stirring everything.  She is a super kitchen helper.  And it all turned out quite nice.  The pizza came out tasting like a sweet barbeque pizza and everyone ate dinner.  You really don’t know how rare it is for everyone to eat at a meal around here; Seporah and Felicity can be super picky – unless I bust out the hotdogs or something and then someone else gets picky.  =)

Oh yeah, and Seporah peed in the potty every time, had no accidents, and was very nice all day long.  

The only negatives for the whole day was Felicity being a little snotty, and Märia beating the stuffing out of me at dice Monopoly.

So books I have read recently huh?

I read Little Brother by Cory Doctorow maybe 3 weeks ago now.  It examined the results of a terrorist attack in San Francisco.  While I enjoyed it, it was way too preachy to me.  It was written by a flaming liberal and so of course the government goes way overboard and imprisons and tortures it’s own citizenry and places cameras on every corner and taps every phone.  It is up to a dysfunctional teenager and his hacker friends to bring Homeland Security down.  The book was just too political to me.  I enjoyed the single book, but would not have finished had it been much longer and wouldn’t recommend it to others or read anything else by this author.  I quit reading the conservative/objectivist Sword of Truth series for the same reason and I actually agreed with what that series was preaching!

Märia had me read The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins as she really enjoyed it.  I think she has posted about it.  It is an excellent book about a dystopian post apocalyptic society after the breakup of America.  Salt Lake City essentially conquers the rest of America (my assumption, they describe the conquerers as “a city in the Rocky’s” but Hill Airforce Base has Minute Men Nuclear missiles and they nuke one of the conquered to oblivion) and puts them under their subjection.  It gets nasty from there.  Anyway, basically the Hunger Games takes 2 teens from each of the conquered nations and throws them into an arena where they have to kill each other.  The only fatal flaw in the story is a lack of closure.  I know books need to leave an opening for a sequel if said sequel is going to exist, but this book simply doesn’t end.  Or rather, it does end, but without an ending.  I would most definitely recommend it, but after the series is complete.  =)

I just finished Brandon Sanderson’s Hero of Ages which my brother got me for Christmas.   Jason has mentioned Mistborn before; this is the concluding novel in that series.  I wonder if Mr. Sanderson knew the end from the beginning.  The books fit so well together that it is as if he wrote them all at once, and released them over time.  When reading series’, and I have read many of them, you come to expect many inconsistencies and contradictions as the author changes his ideas about the story world or it’s characters.  Sometimes the author simply forgets what he wrote before.  In any case, this is simply part of reading long series’.  They don’t exist in this series.  The author ties everything together very well.  The littlest things from the orginal book and it’s sequel become profound in this book.  Highly recommended.  

On my “To read” list:

nothing!  Leave me comments on books I need to read!

So when we make a cake, I get a piece, a big one granted, and I eat it.  And then I am good for the day.  Sometimes I will grab another for a midnight snack, but cakes last a while around here.  I can eat it in fork sized bites and feel satisfied after a nice big piece with chocolate icing.  Cupcakes are another matter altogether.  You (or I at least!) can eat one in two bites and then you dive in for another in 5 minutes.  We made 24 cupcakes yesterday, and we have  5 left.  19 cupcakes gone in 24 hours.  My estimate:  Seporah 2, Felicity 2, Mommy 5.  You do the math.  Cupcakes are the Devil.

Since she did it, I figured I would write what I am reading, or have read recently.

  Ask me any time what I have read recently and I will probably say I have read Ender’s Game.  I probably have read it 300-500 times, and I know between reading it and listening to it on audio book, I ingested it at least 20-30 times in 2008 alone.  The story surrounding the book is interesting… I saw it on a book shelf at a book fair in Beeville Texas the last week of school at FMC elementary school when I was in the 4th grade.  I looked at the book all week long, from Monday to Friday, and wanted it all week long.  I think it was $4, but I didn’t have that kind of money in the 4th grade, and I knew my dad wouldn’t have it, or at least I was afraid to ask for it.  Anyway, I am not proud of this, but on Friday, as they were packing up the Scholastic Book Fair, I snuck it under my shirt and ran off.  While I am ashamed of this particular action, I cannot say I regret it.  The book has shaped my life and philosophy on it.  Many many things in my life would have been very different without this act.  

The book is the exploration of a series of games set up to make leaders out of children.  Ender is my number one hero (followed by Jack Bower!) and we would all do well to emulate his empathy and wisdom.  

Which leads to the most recent book I have read.

  While there have been many sequels to Ender’s game, and a parallel series, Ender in Exile is the first direct sequel to Ender’s game, in that it picks up directly after the surprise ending in the first book.  After having read Ender’s Game hundreds of times, I didn’t know what to expect of a direct sequel.  It almost screams “sell out” at this point, like the author needed a good holiday book to make some money.  That was my initial fear at least.  I couldn’t have been more wrong.  I should wait to say this until I have read it more than once, and may alter my opinion, but it may very well be better than Ender’s Game, and I can’t say that lightly.  It more than fleshes out Ender’s character – it tortures his character to show what he is made of, and he comes out a man, having been a boy in my mind for 15 years.  

I have run out of time for now, but will continue later with 2 other books I read in December 2008, and concluding with what I will be reading in January – February 2009.  Happy New Year!

Yeah, that is right.  Märia and I went to a recent bone marrow donation drive to swab our cheeks and be put in the National Bone Marrow Database or whatever.  It was at a bowling alley and you couldn’t get in or out of the place because some genius had arranged for the drive to happen right in front of the door in a hallway.  Anyway, Märia and I are juggling Seporah and Felicity while filling out our donation paperwork – Seporah is going crazy because there are balloons everywhere and she just loves balloons.  When we finished up, we went to give our donation slips to the handlers, and when I showed them my ID, he asked me if I was active duty.  I said that I was, and he refused my donation. Seriously.  Said I don’t own my DNA and they can’t process active duty, we have to go through Tripler, the local military hospital where Märia works.  So yeah, I thought the military couldn’t take anything else from me.  =)  crazy

Me: Seporah, we made pizza, would you like some pizza?

Seporah: No! Apple!

Me: The pizza is super good! You will like it alot!

Seporah: Milk! Milk! Milk! Juice! Juice! Juice! Cereal! Cereal! Cereal!

Me: It is pizza or nothing Seporah.

——–

So yeah, we made pizza today, and didn’t let her eat anything but the pizza. She never did eat it, but when she got hungry enough (5 hours later) she finally did pick the tomatoes, peppers and broccoli off of it. And she only ate the tomatoes because I cut them in half, ate the insides and made them look like red peppers. Then she would eat them. She still calls the broccoli trees. I wonder if she thinks broccoli are baby trees. =) Anyways, I wonder if the neighbor’s think we are horrible for giving our children pizza and refusing apples, cereal and other things they ask for. They have no idea of course that we only put veggies on our pizza, and no oily pizza sauce, only pesto and cheese. =)

So (ever notice how many of our posts start with the word so?) we were camping and Felicity wouldn’t quit screaming and after we just put up with it for over an hour Märia kicked me and Felicity out, telling me to drive her around until she went to sleep.  So I proceeded to drive Felicity around, probably around 9 at night, and we saw a dumpster on fire.  Not one of the little trash cans, but a huge dumpster.  So I called 911, explained the situation, the transferred me to the military 911, who gave me the Bellows Military Police phone number.  So I called them and explained the situation to them as well, and when they said they would come check it out, I drove off.  This probably took about 5-7 minutes phone time.  I got back to the tent and start settling in.  Maybe 20 minutes later MPs are knocking on my tent, asking if I own the red neon with the bike rack on top.  Yeah, I do, I say.  Apparently while I was parked out front of the fire, calling the MP’s, someone called saying I started the fire!  Great.  Anyway, he was respectful, but asked me all sorts of questions over and over, asking me if I was “sure” I didn’t dump my coals from my fire in the dumpster and all sorts of other junk.  Then he had to detain me until the Hawaii Police could show up, because anytime there is an “environmental incident” they have to be called in.  The HPD officer interrogated me and both of them wanted to see my cell phone verifying that I made the calls.  Craziness.  It ended up taking up like an hour just talking to the police and they took my information and my commands information.  Ugh.  Next time I am driving on by!  Well, probably not, but I would sure think about it!

BTW – word count on this post is 342 words, and it only took 5 minutes or so.  No need to give up Jason!  But get your english done first!