Must run in the family.

Anyway, Amy’s over here in case you want to keep up with her doings…

For a few months now, our family has joined with eight or nine other families in making meals for one another. The way it works is that once per month, each family makes nine or ten (depending upon how many families are participating) frozen meals. Then they meet at one of the houses and swap meals. So you spend a couple of hours per month preparing a whole bunch of meals (all the same), then you give them away. But you get a whole bunch of different meals in return.

Last night the swap was at our house. At the swap, people not only swap meals, but also rate the meals they ate the previous month. That way folks know whether they should make something again. Ideally, people get two or three meals that “work” and they just rotate them from month to month. One other cool thing they’re doing this month is they’re going to make extra meals and donate them to the local Love, Inc office…

Anyway, Amy and my sister and a few other friends started the group and now another group is forming and my guess is that at least one more will begin before too long.

Figured I’d finally get around to posting a couple of vid clips of Tru doing his thing. This one (1mb wmv file) is a relatively uninspired rendition of ‘Ring of Fire.’ He’s done better, but not on camera. Oh well. This one (6.5mb, also wmv) is how he got tired enough to go to bed tonight…running into furniture. 🙂

We were over at some friends house the other day and I was playing with the kids…just tossing ’em into the air. Standard stuff. Then I had Truman and Emma (their daughter) hug each other and I scooped ’em up and threw ’em in the air. Pretty cool picture….

So Pete and I went out for our traditional New Year’s Day surf this morning. And, as we’ve become accustomed to, the waves sucked. The surf report called for a 10′ swell from the NW, but the tide was dropping at 8:00am when we arrived at Pacific City, and the ocean looked like a frothy mess of whitewater. But we paddled out anyway, because sitting onshore looking at the ocean would have been an even worse way to start the new year.

My paddling muscles have apparently atrophied, so I stayed inside again and caught a couple of reforms. Pete made it outside once, got a nice right, then wasn’t able to get outside again, despite trying three times. He finally threw in the towel and paddled in. I followed suit.

We grabbed a nice breakfast at the Grateful Bread and headed home. Gotta love PNW surfing in the wintertime. 🙂

Got my first check from Google for ad sales on Slacker Manager. Cool. I thought there would be more fanfare, somehow. At least some glitter on the check or something. But no. Just a plain old check. But it didn’t bounce, so I’m not complaining. 🙂

I liked this little joke:

A scientist approached God and said “Listen, we’ve decided we no longer need you. Nowadays we can clone people, transplant hearts and do all kinds of things that were once considered miraculous.”

God patiently heard him out and then said “All right. To see whether or not you still need me, why don’t we have a man making contest?”

“Okay, great!” the scientist said.

“Now we’re going to do this just like I did back in the olde days with Adam” God said.

“That’s fine” replied the scientist and bent to scoop up a handful of dirt.

“Whoa!” God said shaking his head in disapproval. “Not so fast pal. You get your own dirt.”

Went surfing Sunday morning. My friend Pete had called late Saturday evening, so I didn’t call him back. Rather, I just gambled that he’d be at the beach when I showed up early in the morning. He wasn’t, but he pulled in a few minutes later.

We watched the waves for a while. The clean-up sets were pretty big, but had really nice shape. Problem was the super-strong offshore wind. Not many people were getting rides because the wind was blowing spray and sand into their faces when they tried to drop in.

I’d hauled along a couple of books and a laptop to do some writing, in the event I didn’t/couldn’t paddle out. Which is what it looked like to me. But as usual, Pete’s enthusiasm shamed me into wiggling into my wetsuit in the front seat of my car and paddling out with him. It’d been about three weeks since Pete had been out, but it had been at least three months for me. On top of that, I haven’t been working out, other than the occasional game of raquetball in the morning. So I had no paddling muscles and no cardio endurance. But I did have years of experience telling me that I was in no shape to take multiple spin cycles on the paddle out. So I let Pete paddle outside and catch the bigger stuff. I stayed on the inside and caught the reform anklebiters. Even so, my shoulders are super-tired today. The result is that I tell myself that I gotta start working out again. But the truth is, I just need to surf more. Nothing builds surfing muscles like surfing. Plus, it’s good for my soul.