Canoe Goals

A couple of weeks ago my son and I went out on the reservoir in my canoe. My goal was to reach a train trestle that's inaccessible by road. It was a little windy out, but we decided to go for it.



Immediately the wind started pushing us, and not the direction we wanted to go. I'd try to head directly into the wind, but kept getting turned and pushed off course. The trestle is, what I know now, a little over two miles away from where we put in. It didn't seem possible we'd make it. And at one point we gave up and decided to head back.



But, what else did we have to do that afternoon? Nothing! We decided to give it one more big push.



If you're not familiar with the Harry S. Truman Reservoir, there are parts upstream where trees still stand in the middle of the water. They are long since dead, but you can still navigate through them almost as if the land had never been flooded.



These trees proved to be the key. When we decided to make our last big push, instead of focusing on the bridge over two miles away, I picked out a tree just a few yards ahead and made for it. Before I knew it, we'd reached the tree, so I picked a stump yet a few yards ahead again. We reached it.



We leap-frogged from tree to stump to tree in this way and found that, though the paddling was strenuous, we were making progress. We would do so well at times that I would fail to pick out an intermediate target and just paddle toward the bridge. That's exactly when the wind would get a hold of us and turn us around. So I'd have to spend a few minutes getting the canoe pointed in the right direction, which wasn't easy. Then once again I'd pick out a tree and make for it.



It took us about two hours to get to the bridge and about a half hour to get back. Yeah, it was ridiculous.



There's got to be a lesson there about how in order to reach your big goals you have to set smaller, intermediate goals.



Here's the trestle. I'd like to jump from it some day, but it is very high. About a hundred feet I would guess. I suppose I need a smaller, more attainable goal. I'll paddle out to it on a less windy day next time.

Cheap Halloween Costume

Halloween is coming up, and I know what I'm going to be-Left Behind Guy. All I have to do is write 666 on my head with a Sharpie. That'll be freaky scary at the Sunday school get together.

Adam Sandler would be proud.

Kanye West?

Let's pretend it's a couple three weeks ago, and Kanye had just verified for us that Beyonce had one of the greatest music videos of all time.

Why is everyone so mad at Kanye? I'm not. I don't even feel sorry for Miss Swift. If Kanye's interrupting her VMA acceptance speech is the worst that that happens to poor Taylor this year, then she is having a pretty good year. I bet there's a million 17 or 18 year old (I don't know how old she is) pretty young blonds with half a voice that would give her left ovary to be interrupted by Kanye at the VMAs.

I don't hold a grudge against him, but I'm not in love with Kanye either. I wouldn't recognize a Kanye song if I heard it. I don't hate rap or R&B, it's just been a long time since I've paid attention to popular music.

But here's the deal. While they were raising money for Katrina victims, Kanye and Mike Myers were supposed to read from cue cards. Myers read his part, but West went off script with some impromptu rant and punctuated it with, "George Bush hates black people."

Correct me if I'm wrong, but back then I don't remember even one person calling Kanye an A-hole.

Coke Zero

In my opinion, Coke Zero makes no one happy. My wife says she can't drink it because it tastes too much like regular Coke. It tastes like Diet Coke to me. So who's going to drink this stuff?

If it truly tastes just like regular Coke, why still make regular Coke. Coke would say, "Hey, look how healthy our soda is. And you can't tell the difference!"

Now It's Personal

Now he's gone too far! What's he going to tax next? Tea?

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/2009/09/08/2009-09-08_president_obama_says_sin_tax_on_sodas_is_food_for_thought.html

Take That, Mary Poppins!

The Right to Buy Pants

Today I should be in a better mood, after all, I have the day off from work. But alas, it's raining outside and I don't have anything planned besides babysitting the kids. My wife hates when I say I'm babysitting our kids. I guess I'm exerting direct parental control over my kids today.

I feel like I should write about health care. Well, I'm not not going to say much about it, except that it will hurt providers if more people sign up for some kind of "public option". The reason is the "public option" will likely pay Medicare rates, and who can live on that? Last year the Missouri Hospital Association was pushing this program where more Missourians could sign up and gain coverage through Medicaid. This was somehow supposed to be a boost to hospitals, who otherwise were seeing these patients as self pay. I opposed it, on principal. It's not worth dealing with all of Missouri's stupid Medicaid regulations to be paid 22 cents on the dollar (if you're lucky). Like right now...oh never mind. I was going to talk about the convoluted way you have to bill the drugs a Medicaid patient receives in the hospital, but this paragraph is too long already.

Let's talk about pants. I did buy some over the weekend-two pairs of jeans, dungarees. Why would I buy jeans? Well, I recognize that in this culture I live in there are many instances where jeans are quite appropriate, and I didn't have any that didn't have big holes in the knees.

The first pair I picked are Levis 501 button fly. I know, I didn't think I could wear those either, but I bought a size bigger than what I normally wear, and they actually fit. The second pair are made by Vans, the skateboarding shoe company. I thought they only made shoes. Who knew? At any rate, they were a size bigger also.

So, maybe I'm fatter now. Since I was 19 or 20 I've worn 32/32, but recently I've bumped the waist up to 34. But here's the thing, I'm pretty sure I'm not taller, yet I've also had to bump the inseam up to 34 as well. This is not just my jeans, is all the pants I buy. I feel like when my stats are recorded they'll have to put an asterisk beside my pants size earlier in my career. "*Pre modern era pants size."

This went a little long. Sorry. But that's how it is once I start talking about pants.