While on vacation we spent a couple of days at Cedar Point. The first day was cold and, as it almost always is on Lake Erie, windy. A nice jacket took care of the cold but my face got windburned pretty good. I was still more than ready for day 2. The next day was warmer and sunny. Off with the jacket, a dose of sunscreen to my tender face, and away we went. It was a great time. Unfortunately, I neglected to put sunscreen on my now exposed arms. So as we began our trek back from Ohio, I sported a pair of mildly burn forearms.

Fast forward to last weekend. Saturday I was workin’ the yard. Mowing, trimming, etc. I ended up with mild sunburn on my upper arms & legs. Nothing major. Yesterday, I decided to go vacuum out the pool. Our pool is only 4 feet deep, so my preferred method is to climb in and walk around while doing the housework. That way I can enjoy the water some as I’m getting it clean. Being the genius that I am, I made sure to apply sunscreen to my burned arms & legs. And once again neglected those parts that I would be exposing that were not already burnt.

You can guess how the rest of the story goes. I take my sweet time getting it cleaned out good, my son gets in once it’s done, we enjoy the pool for about an hour, and by bedtime you can fry bacon on my back. Last night was the most painful I’ve spent in bed since I had to share a bunk with my cousin who had daggers for toenails. My blessed saint of a wife didn’t laugh or even chastise me, and for my part I didn’t complain. I am the idiot responsible. If my brain has turned to mush in such a way that I can no longer remember to put on sunscreen before working outside on a sunny 90 degree day, I may be in trouble.

As I’m prone to wildly delusional thoughts anyway, this immediately brought questions to mind. He said the guys name was Aaron. Did he really mean Erin? Does this guy sit around in an orange helmet all day? Does the code he writes turn out to be not exactly what you expected when it’s done? How did this even come up in conversation?

Turns out he said ‘they call him a programmer’. That goes beyond mishearing to totally making stuff up. And I’m just waiting for the AAS (American Anapalactic Society) to show up and ask permission to use me for research. Which means that my going insane will be good for something at least. I mean other than entertaining the people who I mishear.

“I’ve got an anapalactic line on my chin.”

<que sound of needle being pulled across a record>

What? Anapalactic line? What is that? That sounds serious. She said it like I’m supposed to know what it is. Will she be upset if don’t know? How should I respond? With happiness? No, she didn’t seem thrilled about it, a line on her chin sounds like a bad thing, and anapalactic sounds like a real bad thing. Upset? No, that might make her think that I’m too focused on her looks. Bad idea. Resignation? She might think I don’t care. Disbelief? Too over the top. Amusement? I’d be taking joy in her suffering. So many choices, so many ways to hose myself. Argh!

Alright, be cool. She’s your wife. She loves you. Just be honest. It’ll be fine. Really. I put on best confused look (which is easy to do right now) look at her and say “What?”.

She stops to cast a sidelong glance at me and says “I’ve got a black line on my chin.” as she rubs the errant line of makeup from her chin.

Forget making a mountain out of a molehill. I just made a 5 syllable word out of a color. Beat that. Instant laughter ensues as I share my faux pas. And bonus, I get an extra couple of kisses out of it.

Further research shows that anapalactic isn’t even a real word. I’ve created a word! Woo hoo!!! I’m claiming it today, April 21st of 2008. I created the word anapalactic. My use defines it and I become immortal. Feel free to use my word as you see fit. Just remember, you heard it here first.

anapalactic [an'-uh-puh-lak'-tik] adjective - Related to the state of confusion resulting from mis-hearing a word while brushing your teeth.

Sorry.  Different conversation.  On with the farming wisdom.  Have you ever dreamed of running over 3,000 head of jewel producing mollusks?  I’m talking about farming pearls.  Or rather pearl oysters.  Our tip today comes from the Center for Tropical and Subtropical Aquaculture’s document The Basic Methods of Pearl Farming: A Layman’s Manual.  And it points out some conditions to look for when deciding where to park your pearl farm.

• Pearl oysters prefer clean, clear water far away from sources of contamination such as chemicals, oil, sewage or other pollution. Areas near large villages or towns will usually have some pollution, so farms should be located as far away as possible, or up-current from the source of pollution. Do not locate your farm near the mouth of a river or other sources of freshwater since sudden changes in salinity can be harmful. Areas with rough water where sand and silt are stirred up should also be avoided since pearl oysters have trouble feeding in cloudy water. A general rule is that a site with thriving corals will be a good site for pearl oysters.

In essence, pearl oysters are a lot like chickens.  You have a place where you pen them up, you keep them healthy, & then you go rip what they’re producing from them.  And if they don’t produce, you can eat them.  (Mmmm, roast chicken with oyster stuffing)  The differences being that chickens produce more often than once every 2-3 years, you can’t make omelets from pearls, and pearl oyster farms smell a lot better than chicken farms with much better scenery.  So there you go.  Your petite pearl producers prefer pure pollution-free places to provide plentiful pearl profits.  Precisely!  Happy farming!

KHAAAANNNNN!!!!

There. Isn’t that better?  I thought so.

For those of you who don’t follow college hockey, the Michigan Wolverines have the most national championships (9), the most Frozen Four appearances (23), the longest streak of appearances in the NCAA tournament (18), and they’ve been ranked #1 in the country most of this year.

I took my daughter to her first Michigan hockey game when she was 8, my son when he was 11, and this will be my wife’s first time watching them (but she did go to the Frozen Four last year).  We have an excellent chance of winning, but it’s hockey so anything can happen.  We play Notre Dame at 8PM Central time Thursday April 10th, my birthday.  If we win, we play at 6PM Central Saturday against the winner of North Dakota & Boston College.   The semi finals with be on ESPN2 & the final on ESPN.

I know.  Michigan hockey fans in rural Missouri?  Don’t question it.  Just go with it.   It rocks.

• Good Massage Increases Production - When teats and the lower part of the udder are massaged, a signal is sent to the brain which secretes the milk letdown hormone, oxytocin, into the blood stream. The hormone is then carried to the udder where it acts on muscle cells to “squeeze” milk out of the milk-secreting tissue. Massage of all teats is better than massage of only one or two teats and physically squeezing each teat will reduce the amount of milk left in the udder at the end of milking. Large amounts of milk left in the udder increase frequency of clinical mastitis in infected quarters.

You can’t have good quarters with infected quarters.  I think the less said here the better.  Happy farming!

As so often happens with the boy, I wondered about him.  This time I wondered aloud to my wife if our son was becoming a redneck.  My wife disagreed.  “That’s just a guy thing.” she said and walked away.   I thought about it & realized she was right.  He could have stapled the zipper shut without anyone knowing it.  Using the stapler wasn’t redneck.  Duct tape would have been redneck.  The stapler was brilliant.  Hadn’t I made creative use of safety pins in the past?  Of course.  What a fine piece of creative thinking my boy had laid down.

So I drove of to work sitting up a little straighter, head held a little higher.  With a gleam in my eye and a smile of satisfaction on my face.  For my boy is becoming a man.  Just as long as he doesn’t try to staple his sister.

There are sights that you see that you simply cannot forget.  The entire week in Juneau was a never ending parade of unforgettable images, events, & experiences.  We explored glaciers, climbed through ice caves, got up close to feeding whales, flew in sea planes, boated down the Inside Passage, and had our senses assailed by the most majestic, amazing, beautiful land I’d ever seen.  I guess it can’t be called a ‘life-changing’ trip since my course hasn’t been altered by it to this point.  But it certainly changed me.  Part of me was left in Alaska.  Whether it was taken from me or I left it willingly doesn’t matter.  It’s there.  And although I’m not a globe trotter, I’m a fairly well-traveled man.  Never before had I ever felt the urge to stay in a place I was visiting.  Even with my children and home at the end of my journey, it was with great reluctance that I boarded our plane.  For as long as we could, my wife and I stared out the window until all that we had seen faded from sight.

Now that urge to stay continues on as an equally strong urge to return.  Always present, it lurks and seizes my daydreams in an attempt to gain control of my heart.  Someday it might.  For now, it succeeds only in keeping bright and vibrant in my mind the images and memories of a land that is still a true wilderness.  Then I long for a glacier breeze in my face and an ice-capped mountain in my sight.  Alaska.

What’s that?  The fire was burning anhydrous ammonia?  Um….   nevermind.

Darn.  Now I’m all hungry for a T-bone.