MeSoFun Blog

Megdoll, far left, and Dolleen, far right, were 2 years old and an infant when I helped take care of them. *Sigh* People occasionally ask me to write a blog about them. For a writer, this is similar to when people ask a funny person to say something funny. Just do it! Say something! Something. The Cousins are all taller but not much has changed. But when Dolleen, a child I practically delivered with my own two hands (sarcasm) asked me to write something about her, I took the bait. The cousins are always asking me to pick a favorite. There are five cousins on my mom's side and I love them all equally. But sometimes I like one more than another. The Five Cousins are (practically) age 16 to (practically) 21. Without exception, I have changed all of their diapers and fed all of them from a bottle. I love them all the same. But at some point, friends become more important than your family. That point is roughly age 14 and continues until roughly age 17. At some point, they stop sending ...

People still call newspapers with random questions. But in addition to killing classified advertising, the Internet has finished off many of those callers. The calls trickle in on a Saturday afternoon. "What channel is the BYU football game on?" callers would ask in Salt Lake City. It's unclear why someone would call a newspaper and not a television station with this question. The calls now are mostly for other departments. People call with complaints about their newspaper delivery or want to know how to place a classified ad. Sometimes, a reader has a complaint about a story. At least they're still reading. Thirteen years ago, The Valley News in Lebanon, New Hampshire, regularly got calls at all hours. People would call from bars with sports questions. "What was the Pittsburgh Pirates starting rotation the year they won the World Series in the 1970s?" Because people at newspapers know that kind of thing off the top of their heads. Then there were the regula...

The gingerbread house is made of styrafoam, for the record. I'm not that talented.  Forming a relationship with a kid is easy compared to an adult. Step 1: Be genuinely interested in the kid. Step 2: Do what the kid wants to do. Step 3: Besties for life! A handy guide for meeting adults: Step 1: Introduce yourself and immediately acknowledge you are terrible with names. Step 2: Ask superficial questions. Step 3: Search awkwardly for common ground. Step 4: Feign an excuse to leave the conversation. How to keep the kids entertained at lunch time: Selfies. When my aunts were popping out kids in the mid-1990s, I was worried about whether their kids were going to like me. They're in their late teens and early 20s now and they're still calling me. Those early bonding sessions/baby sitting sessions paid off with unusually tight relationships in adulthood. Still, I worried a little about being an uncle. The Wife's brothers and sisters-in-law began having kids a few years ago an...

Daisy Duke, in a contemplative moment along a Connecticut river bank. The Indestructible Mazda has 185,000 miles on it and still runs like a champ. Except for the ABS light that came on about a month ago and the unmistakeable gravely sound the car has been making as it comes to a stop. Clearly, the IM needs new brakes. Daisy Duke and I girded ourselves for a cold jog back from the garage today. I put on a tight running shirt and a running sweatshirt; Daisy danced around excitedly to get her body temperature up before leaving the house. The car guy is about 2.5 miles from our house, if you take a direct route. Finding a good car guy is always the second-least-favorite thing about moving. No. 1 is finding a dentist. It's nice to feel like you know a guy in the business. Our guy doesn't rip us off and has done some small repairs for free. Can't beat that. Daisy Duke hopped out of the Indestructible Mazda and quickly extended the leash until it was tout. We were going downhill,...

This is the parking lot of the popular Mexican restaurant about 150 yards from our house. It's open for business, with nary a car in the lot. Also, this is where Hashtag famously enjoyed several margaritas. As a kid, winter was fun and I was the jackass kid in the neighborhood who always had too little clothing on. A neighbor famously told my Mom that she looked at what I was wearing out at the school bus stop, then put double that amount of clothing on her kids. A lot has changed since I went sledding wearing only jeans and a sweatshirt (Temps were only in the 20s! C'mon, we're Minnesota Tough here.) Not the least change is the  Reynaud's Syndrome  which I have a moderate case of. Goodbye, friends. My fingers and toes go numb at the hint of cold. This isn't because of anything physically wrong with me; it's because my brain can't figure out how cold it is. The brain just assumes any temperature below 70 is near freezing. The result is my digits go white-num...

This can serve as a before picture, though it's from three days into my Thing. You people are making me fat. As has been mentioned, we had 13 sets of visitors spend time at our house over the course of 4.5 months. Three more sets of friends and family have trips planned for October (we'll call them the smartest of the bunch, though you're all special .) People are obviously drawn to us. That creates a good problem for this guy because people want to eat out when they visit and food has always been a challenge for me. I weighed 235 pounds the summer before 10th grade and still have stretch marks to prove it. Then I stopped eating. The "diet" was ridiculous. I skipped breakfast. Skipped lunch at school. Then I came home and had two Healthy Choice dinners, a sandwich and a Diet Coke. I was an idiot. I see neck fat! Back when The Wife and I were merely dating, and broke up, I lost about 40 pounds. Over the course of our eight-plus years of marriage, there's been a...

No, we do not live in perpetual spring. These fall-blooming bushes make the transition to winter a little easier. The low black clouds were seemingly just a few miles west of us when Daisy Duke and I went out for a mid-afternoon run. Better get in a quick couple of miles before the rain comes. We hoofed it for the first half mile up a hill. In Utah, going 10 or 15 minutes up a hill constituted gaining 1,000 feet in elevation. We top out around 300 feet here, but it's still enough to knock the wind out of you – especially when you're a chocolate Lab who can't sweat. The humidity is around 80 percent and the dew point is at 66. Sweat is quite literally in the air. The leaves started going red two freaking weeks ago, when this picture was taken. We passed Ruski's, the dive bar populated by actual blue-collar people on weekdays and ironic hipsters with tattoos on weekends. I watched them open at 6 a.m. one morning to let in an old-timer who just got off the night shift. I l...