June 29th...today was a good day!

This day marks my 7 year wedding anniversary and also graduation from school forever (at least for now). Happy to be at both these points in my life I reflect on the past 7 years of marriage and 2 years of graduate coursework.

Did you know that most marriages end within 7 years(except in Hollywood where you're lucky to last more than 7 months)? In keeping with tradition we exchanged gifts, and for a 7 year anniversary the gifts are copper and wool. So my wife gave me some copper pipe and said this is to fix the kitchen sink and I gave her a wool sweater and told her to not turn on the heat in the winter anymore. Only kidding, but I couldn't resist. This humor though is reflective of what it takes to get to 7, 27, 47 years of marriage. In my young wisdom I have learned that life in general is a heck of a lot better when you laugh and find humor in situations.

As for school, that isn't very funny. I don't know why but 2 years ago I decided I like homework so much that I should do more of it...well not exactly. I wanted to teach at the collegiate level and now with my masters completed I begin to teach in fall at Concordia. I feel great and relieved to know I'm done and wondering what I am going to do with all my free time...perhaps its time to learn guitar from my little bro!!

Women crave Protein

Since Matthew McConaughey replaced Sam Elliot as the voice of the "Beef, its what's for dinner" ads, women now crave (his) protein.

This was perhaps one of the more ingenious advertising campaigns ever. Think about it, who does most of the grocery shopping...women; and what is the best way to help a woman remember...something that let's her escape little Bobby screaming in the grocery cart isn't number one on the list, but its damn close. Genius!!

So the next time you see a woman gazing up at the ceiling in a grocery mart in front of the beef section, go gently blow on her ear. Whatever happens could be worth the risk!

Little Sponges

You always hear the term children are "little sponges" and if you are a parent you see it more and more everyday with your own kids. I see it with both my boys all the time, especially in language development and comprehension.

I'll give you a couple examples;

1.Stacie speaks to both of my boys in Spanish daily, and Gabriel already knows well over 100 words in Spanish.
2.We read to both and sing songs with our children, so much so that Graeme has picked up on certain words that have helped him compose a sentences that make sense.

Now true I am a proud dad, but there is more to this than just that...Why can children absorb so much at a young age?

The way our brain develops is actually quite amazing. At birth we have all the cells/neurons we will need for our lifetime and as time progresses we will form connections/synapses to other parts of the brain. These connections (aka-learning pathways) are formed partially due to your genetics, but are also based off our experiences. Since every experience is so new to a child they form very rapid connections in the brain, so much so that at 3 years of age the child has twice as many connections as an adult. As the child grows into an adult we end up not using all the new connections we had made, but rather strengthen the ones we do use. The example of pruning a tree is used to help give you a visual. Bonsai! You may have a tree with 10 limbs each of them representing a different content area, but to help 7 of them exceed standards you need to cut back 3 of them. That choice is made in the brain by the shortest/weakest connections that are essentially not being used.



So in conclusion, the more repetitive and beneficial experiences the child has, the more the brain strengthens those connections to avoid having them cropped. Pretty amazing, and to think I got this information from the Department of Education

Summer Solstice

Summer brings with it lots of joy, hope, promise, comfort (although uncomfortable at times too), and sanity. In Wisconsin, we've been like caged animals for 6 months out of the year and now that the weather is nice enough we are free!

There is one bad things about summer though...mosquito's. What is there purpose? They are only about 1/2 inch in size yet these blood suckers pass disease and kill millions of animals and people each year. Again, what is their purpose. The females are actually the blood sucker (surprise), but before biting and irritating us they inject saliva that ultimately helps to give us that nice looking itch red bump.

So, since I can't answer as to where these bloodsucking demons of life are here, I can tell you their natural predator is the Dragonfly. Needless to say my idea to make millions is through harvesting dragonflies, which I intend to begin this week.....muuhhhaaa!



...and by the way we are supposed to have record numbers of these fuckers all summer long! You can purchase Dragonfly's by coming to my home with large sums of cash!!!

Untouchable

Certain athletes just seem untouchable; names like Jordan, Aaron,and Woods come to mind. If you didn't see Tiger's performance this weekend in the surge for another US OPEN title, check out these two eagles and a birdie on Saturday;



and then to top it off he hit this birdie putt on the 18th hole Sunday to force a playoff with Rocco Mediate....unbelievable!



Balls are now in the air!

Half-Million Dollar Views

Thought this was an interesting photo of the Riverwalk in Grafton, where about 2 years ago they built $500,000 condo's with walkout access to the riverwalk. Ouch, check out more photo's from this storm at JSOnline

Waterpark Capital of the World - Drained

Well not exactly are the water parks empty, but a major tourist destination in the Dells is. Lake Delton, home to the Tommy Bartlett Thrill Show, has overflowed taking with it peoples homes and dreams of a peaceful summer on the lake.

It is truly sad yet awesome to see the power mother nature once again shows us she has. No matter how many damns, levy's, or protective barriers we put in place, she reminds us that nothing can stand in her way. We pray for the people in these situations and are glad to know it is only material things that were lost in this disaster.

On a personal note, my in-laws who live on the Milwaukee River are experiencing a record high and thank god to this point haven't lost much more than a couple hours of sleep. It is times like this that I think of what Noah had to face on his ark, and we are only seeing about 1/1,000,000,000 (maybe more) of what he saw.

Money "Not" Well Spent

Well if you recall my former post about Political Headaches you will remember my disgust with the campaign spending getting out of control. Now that Hilary has dropped out (surprise) I was going to write about it too but CELESTE KATZ of the DAILY NEWS said it best with this laundry list of how $212 million could have been better spent.

Damn, that's a lot of coin!

Truth

How many lies are you exposed to everyday? email? politicians? personal communication? I'm willing to bet more than 5 per day...so where does this addiction to lies stem from?

I think it first stems from our parents (yes, I am to blame). As children we ask questions like "how are babies made?", or one that my friends nine year old son asked "what's a pedophile?" We don't give them the exact answer because it is too graphic so instead we sugar coat it and make up some reasoning. If we understand this is a lie, this is the introduction to a lie or an exaggeration to the truth.

Another reason people lie is to usually gain something or get out of something; acceptance, praise, acknowledgement, etc. I do believe that most of the time this is harmless, maybe you said you shot a 46 but really with that penalty stroke should have been 47. Even so there are varying degrees of lies as our politicians so evidently prove everything they speak; "landed under sniper fire", which again doesn't really harm me in any personal way but if you exaggerated and lied about this..."where does it stop?"

The lies that are really bad though lead to manipulation and hurting someone. I'll give you a personal example that happened to Stacie and I about 2 years ago from a very close friend. Stacie's best friend at the time was watching our home in Arizona while we were back home in Wisconsin visiting family. She had our home and car keys so access was pretty wide open. After returning home, we discovered about $7000 overall had been stolen (identity theft crime) via credit cards and ATM. Stacie, the investigative detective, quickly linked it to her best friend and questioned her...at first she lied straight out to Stacie. Hung up, only to call her back later and get the truth confessed to her. OUCH! That is when lies can lead to pain.

So what's my point in all this...it is simply to be cautious! Of what you read, what you hear, and even what you see. There is a fine line between being paranoid though too and that is no way to live your life either. My belief is to question but to also have trust and faith in your own judgement, and that there is more truth than lies in your life.