.: bistan.net :.

So this is what I was doing seven years ago . . .

(Sorry for the low quality picture. This was before we were 100% digital!)

Earth Day is right around the bend, and everyone seems to be on the green bandwagon lately.  It seems respectable to want to save the planet.  I’m all for it when the price is right.  I’m just not going to buy a “green cleaner” when the regular cleaner is half of the price, especially when the regular cleaner has been used for generations without the earth imploding.  I did make a choice to buy a vehicle with better gas mileage, although that was more for financial and political reasons, so the environmental reasons are just icing on the cake.

Businesses are jumping on the bandwagon as well.  Hotels don’t want to wash your towels and sheets every night, but again, that’s probably more for financial reasons than for environmental reasons.  Other business decisions, such as recycling are practical and noble. There is, however, one place where businesses should not “go green”: the restroom.

My biggest pet-peeve about the whole thing is when paper towels are eliminated in favor of the air dryers in restrooms. The paper towels that most public restrooms have are the brown ones anyway, made from previously-recycled materials.  So by providing them, you aren’t completely anti-Earth.

First of all, they are loud and they scare the crap out of small kids.  Trust me, I know.  If the kids were to dry their hands before using the restroom, it would make them wet their pants.  It’s a good thing they wash their hands afterward.

Yesterday, we visited Stone Mountain and Tristan had an accident.  I’ll spare you the details, but let’s just say that the accident was so bad that I lost my lunch during the clean-up process.  That is not an exaggeration.  Some messes can not be cleaned up with cheap toilet paper.  When we left, that restroom stall was thoroughly violated.  I honestly would have cleaned up the mess had paper towels been around.  Unfortunately, some minimum-wage employee had to do it.

I was once, in my grocery store days, the guy who had to clean up comparable messes.  I always wondered how someone could “violate” a restroom like that.  Now I know.  In this case, it’s because someone tried to go green.

Every Easter morning as a child, my mother made my sister and I stand in front of the house in our fancy clothes for a picture. I used to hate it. Eventually I refused and I always swore that I would never subject my kids to such foolishness. But then, apparently, I got old.

Easter 2010

Easter 2009

Easter 2008

My kids, unlike their parents, love to get dressed up.  Maybe it’s because we don’t force it on them like it was forced on us.  This year, we didn’t even buy “Easter clothes”.  In 2008 and 2009 Tristan wore the same pair of shoes and in 2009 and 2010 Mackenzie wore the same pair.  No rosy background this year.  We pruned them to promote new growth.  And look in those pictures at how much weight Monk has lost in the last two years. (I’ll save a Monk update for a later post when I’m in more of a creative zone.)

Now I see why my mother did this to me!

I hope you had a Happy Easter as well!

Last weekend kicked off a string of holidays . . . Valentine’s Day, Presidents Day, Fat Tuesday, Jonathan’s 31st Birthday, Ash Wednesday.  I pretty much missed them all.

Mackenzie was sick for a week straight.  It was a viral infection — the kind you just have to wait out.  Every morning Kimberlie and I would compare work agendas to see who could call in that day.  As for my birthday, we still haven’t picked up a birthday cake.  We didn’t even make it to Baskin Robbins until five days later.   My plan to eat all 31 flavors since I became 31 sort of failed too — the Warner Robins Baskin Robbins only had 24 flavors!  I guess birthdays are suppose to suck after you turn 30 anyway.

Oh well, Mackenzie is back to school today and we are both back at work.  I hate routines until something happens to throw off the familar routine.  Then I long for them to return.

2010 isn’t shaping up to be a very good year.  I’ll take 2007 or 2009 back in a heartbeat!

Here are some of my accomplishments and favorite memories for 2009:

I completed my first half-marathon and marathon, as well as sliced 4 minutes off of my best 5K time.

We visited Walt Disney World SEVEN times in 2009, compared to once in 2008.  (You won’t see this on next year’s list!)  We celebrated both my 30th birthday and Tristan’s 6th birthday in the most magical place on earth.

I visited for the first time: Colorado, Louisiana, and Mississippi.

I began working on another masters degree.

I fell in love . . . with my new iPhone. Ha!

I cut two years worth of hair off.

Tristan learned to ride his bicycle without training wheels, and then later got a new bike.

My kids got to see their first Georgia snowfall, and then later  got to play in six feet of real snow for the first time.  I had never even seen that much snow before!

I went on field trips with both Tristan and Mackenzie.  So much fun!

I volunteered at Tristan’s school — my alma mater — Heard Elementary school.

We went roller skating.  It was Tristan and Mackenzie’s first time ever and my first time in 20 years!

I saw the space shuttle launch at night from the beach — although it was from 200 miles away and not quite as I originally planned.

I’m finally learning how to make money online. My blog made $2019.94 (compared to $78.41 in 2008).  Guess I’m getting a 1099 this year.  If I could sustain those percentage gains, I wouldn’t have to work anymore!  (Of course, if I were a professional blogger I would actually have to blog more.)

I ran 497 miles in 2009 (compared to 343 in 2008).  That’s pathetic, but I’ve been dealing with pain injury pretty much all year.  I’m even wearing a brace on my left foot as I type this — trying to recover enough to run next week’s 5K, half-marathon, and marathon.

Of course, there are many things that I’ve left out.  You can read my blog to find some of them, but there have also been (many) times where I’ve been too busy or lazy to blog about it: such as our Six Flags Trip or Discover Macon, etc.

2009 was overall one of the best years and it was much much better than 2008.  Let’s hope that 2010 is even better. Happy New Year!

Once again this year, I’m not making “resolutions”.  I do have several goals for the new year.

Fitness Related:

Run a half-marathon in less than 2 hours. (Let’s hope this happens on January 9!)

Reduce my 5K PR to 22 minutes.

Run 1000 miles in 2010.

Restart and actually complete hundredpushups.com.

Commit to and begin training to run (not run/walk) an entire marathon.

Drop my weight down to 160.

Eat out no more than once per week.

Finance Related:

Eat out no more than once per week (this falls under both).

Be completely debt free by 2011.

Work/School Related:

Take two masters degree classes each semester and stay on top of them.

Stop passing up greener pastures.

Home Related:

Spend more time teaching my kids things.

Get rid of more junk.

Computer Related:

Tweet more.

Blog more.

Facebook less.

I think that’s enough for now. I’ll try to revisit this post every few months to see how I’m doing.

A few weeks ago, I mentioned that we attended part of the taping for the Disney Parks Christmas Day Parade.  I also included a few of the 500 pictures I snapped and one of the videos I shot.  Here is a tilt-shift video, created by Disney of the Christmas parade.

As you can see, tilt-shift is a cool technology.  I consider it analogous to HDR photography, but even cooler.  Here are links to two other tilt-shift videos with short explanations by Disney if you are interested in the technology:

Magic Kingdom Tilt-shift
Epcot Tilt-shift
Tilt-shift Explanation

Here are some screen shots from the video, so that you can see where to find us in the parade.  It airs tomorrow, Christmas Day, at 10:00 AM on your local ABC channel.

As a hobbyist photographer, I always want the best picture – especially when my child is performing.  We learned a hard lesson at the preschool open house last year: Don’t get there on time . . . get there very early!  So this year, we did.

Here is a question for the reader(s): Suppose you arrived somewhere an hour early to get a good seat.  You rushed home from work, rushed to change clothes, and had to entertain two small children for that entire hour.  All of that just so you could (hopefully) take some decent photos of your three-year-old child singing carols.  After sitting for 45 minutes (and trying to entertain those two small kids), the room is about 90 percent full.  There are several seats in the back and one seat next to you. A man with a cane sits in the empty seat next to you.  His overweight wife then asks you to give up your seat so that she could sit next to her “handicapped husband”.  What do you do?

Now I certainly have ranted before on this issue.  I hate it when handicapped people attempt to exploit their disability to gain something.  I politely suggested that they sit together in the back, however, the thoughts going through my mind were much more colorful.  Throughout the entire evening, the man kept making remarks to his wife about how sorry he was that she didn’t have a seat and how inconsiderate people can be.  I bit my tongue . . . so hard.  I haven’t had a reason to show anyone at Mackenzie’s preschool the ugly side of Jonathan and I certainly didn’t want to do it at the Christmas Open House.

Should handicapped people have reserved seating at the front when there are clearly no visual or hearing disabilities?  Parking is one thing, but seating is another.  Like you, I may have left my “What Would Jesus Do” bracelet back in the nineties, but I would have given up my seat to a blind or deaf person.  I will not, however, give up my seat to someone attempting to exploit their perceived handicap.  Notice I say “perceived”, because I doubt that toting around a cane makes you handicapped.

So that’s what Jonathan did.  What would you do?

Last night, Mackenzie’s preschool had an open house.  There were finger foods and the kids sang three songs.  Mackenzie actually sang this year!  Unfortunately, my video camera battery was dead, so no video today.

Mackenzie singing

Mackenzie with two friends: Rosie and Ryan

Mackenzie and her teacher Mrs. Beverly

Something did take place last night, that makes me want to rant, but I’ll create a new post for that.

No family blog is complete without a photo of the kids with Santa, so here we go.

I’m not exactly sure how the birth of Christ translates into Santa or Black Friday Sales or the Jonas Brothers or messy cookie-making kids, but it sure is fun, so we’ll take it!