remembering forrest

There are two dangers in my posting a memory about Forrest.  The first danger is that it will be all about me, which is something he would absolutely call me on if he were still here.  The second danger is that I gush.  He'd call me on that too.

As I have noted, my friend Forrest went to be with God a couple of weeks ago.  While his illness had a sense of inevitability about it, as he had a form of cancer that very few people survive more than half a year, it has only hit home with me now that he is gone.

Seven years ago, Forrest utilized his influence encouraged a group of friends to start blogs to express ourselves and stay connected.  That is how this blog originated.  He moved on to other forms of expression as the years went on, including a successful and prolific level of painting.  Even without him being here directly, though, his influence remained with me and the others who continued to write and interact.

Probably due to my selfish nature most of my friendships are structured in ways that the relationship can meet some specific social need I have.  For example, I have some friendships with people I can laugh about specific things, I have some friendships with people with whom I can discuss specific topics, and I have some friendships with people who I can share specific experiences.  While I only saw Forrest once every few weeks over the last two or three years, I am realizing now how significant he had become in my social world.  I have already had several instances where I thought that some specific thing would be great to discuss with Forrest, then remembered that is not a possibility.

The aspect of Forrest's character or personality that I appreciated most was how incredibly easy it was to be honest around him.  We could be open, straightforward, and sometimes blunt with each other in our discussions.  It was often to a fault.  Among our group of friends who met at Homer's Coffeehouse I could discuss topics and opinions that I would not bring up in many other contexts.  That was largely due to the atmosphere that Forrest brought to the group.

Forrest was a great friend who I was very fortunate to get to connect with.  His memory and influence will always be with me, and he will always be missed.

If I miss him some, I know that his family misses him a hundred, a thousand, or a million times more.  I can only pray that God will provide each of them peace through the grief.  Please remember them in your prayers.

competing with facebook

Throughout the past couple of years this blog has gone through a few droughts and surges in readership. Right now is kind of a drought. The reason is different than for past droughts, though. I blame the recent slowness on Facebook.

I figure that if most people are like me, they have their websites that they regularly visit, and they rarely go outside those sites. Occasionally a website will get added to the list, but that usually means another gets visited less frequently. Since a lot of people are checking Facebook more frequently, that has reduced some of traffic to mine and a few other of the blogs.

I am kind of in a quandry with this. I could link to my blog through Facebook and send notifications about new posts there. This is something that Dash has been dabbling with. I feel weird about sharing this blog with potentially anyone I may have been mildly acquainted with at any point in my life, though. I went into this in a little more detail a couple of years ago. I have been very purposeful in who I have alerted to this site simply because I want to be able to let my guard down a bit. I definitely would have to go through and review what I have already posted before opening the floodgates like that, because I am sure there are things that I might not have said in the same way in some of my worlds.

For now I have no intention of changing things up. Even with the current situation, I have enough readers to justify adding new content. I will continue posting and won't push this site out to more people than my comfort will allow. I'm open to new ideas for the site, though.

second announcement

If you haven't seen Golden's site yet you probably don't know the news yet. So, in case you do not already know, we have a second child on the way. Golden is due at the very end of November.

Golden and I have both long believed that having two kids is the ideal number for us. If something happens that causes us to have more, we will enjoy it and love all our kids the same. However, since we both know life with one sibling the best, and since we both doubt that we could retain what little sanity currently have with more than two kids, that number just seems right.

I have asked many parents already how different it is to have two kids rather than just one, and I am amazed that there does not appear to be a consensus on whether a second child adds just a little extra effort or exponentially more effort than the first. In case you haven't figured out, I am hoping that for us having two kids is not much more challenging than having one. I actually think that how NJ interacts with his new sibling is going to have the biggest of any influence on this.

Finally, we do intend on finding out the sex of the baby when we can, but that will probably not happen until some time in June according to my math. I can't wait to find out.

musical guilty pleasures

I have been meaning to post on this for a while, but I haven't gotten around to making a list that I felt covered the gamut. After reading Forrest's post on musical artistry, though, I decided that it is a good time to list a few of my musical guilty pleasures.

First, I have a few rules. Some music that I like that would be considered a guilty pleasure by someone else, but I would not consider it a guilty pleasure for myself. I have two qualifying factors for whether I consider something a guilty pleasure. I have to like the music in question enough that I can't fool myself into thinking otherwise, and I have to be genuinely embarrassed about it.

Now, on to displaying what I have to be embarrassed about.

"I Will Survive" (Gloria Gaynor)
I figure I'll start with what I think is the most shocking of my guilty pleasures. There is no reason that I should like this song. It is not targeted to me. That does not stop me from loving (and, ashamedly, that is the right verb) how the song slowly builds tension until the chorus. I can't help but get sucked into this one.

Just about anything by Creed
By rights this should not be here. I am not always embarrassed to admit that I like Creed. There are so many people who think that this band was the worst thing that happened to music in the late 90s, though, that I have to hesitate before confessing that "Higher" is among my favorite songs.

Josey and the Pussycats
Golden nonchalantly listed this as my top guilty pleasure once. Specifically, I like the theme to the movie that came out a few years ago. I never actually saw the movie, but I do like the song.

"These Boots Were Made for Walking" (Nancy Sinatra)
The Nancy Sinatra version is the only one I can recall. I don't know what else to say.

Michael W. Smith
I have to work him in here, but I am not sure how to do it. There are specific songs of his that I like and I am embarrassed about it ("Give it Away"). There are specific songs of his that I like and am not embarrassed about it ("Secret Ambition"). There are songs of his that I simply don't like (anything in the last fifteen years).

I'm sure there is more that I can't think of right now, but this is enough to reveal for the moment. So, do you have any guilty pleasures as well?

a nice repose

I do not have too much to say this weekend, so this will be short and light.

As Golden mentioned on her blog, we have been working on the bathroom for the last two weeks. I should get the major stuff done today, meaning I expect to have the toilet and sink reinstalled by the time I go to bed. If this works, I am hoping that my next post will be a walkthrough of the transition that has been our bathroom.

Aside from the obvious fact that we have been without the service of a toilet and sink in our only full bathroom for the last two weeks, two other things have made this project feel like it has been going on forever. The first is that the cold spell that was snapped yesterday started roughly when we started the project. The second is that colds that everyone in our family has had and that we are just now completely getting over started roughly when we started the project. It is not just the end of the renovation that I am excited about.

Hopefully, the next time you see a post life will be a little more stable.

for men only

About two years ago Golden read through For Women Only: The Inner Lives of Men and posted on it. The book did present some opportunities for her to understand me, so I appreciated the fact that she read through it.

After coming across the book again a few weeks ago I started wondering if there was a For Men Only companion. When I found that the men's version existed (and still exists) I ordered it. I wanted Golden to get the benefits that I got from her book. Plus, I was curious what this new book had to say.

I already knew quite a bit of what I read, but there were things I didn't. Here are some things I did not already know.

• If a wife is acting like she is trying to drive her husband away, she is probably trying to get him to reassure her of his love. Golden has not ever done this to me, so I have not had to give this too much thought. I would never have figured it out on my own if Golden did do this, though.
• Many women have issues pop up in their minds like computer windows that they cannot easily close. There are often many more windows than just one open. Even if I can put something out of my mind, that does not mean that Golden can. I actually kind of knew this, but it was described in better detail in the book than I understood.
• Emotional security is more important than financial security to most women and most women will tolerate financial turmoil to get emotional security.
• The scenario I described last January about a husband trying to solve his wife's problems was slightly lacking. I did not mention that what Jane needed out of the conversation was for John to validate the emotions that she was feeling. I did not mention this because this is something else I learned from this book, so I was clueless in January.
• "Does this dress look good enough for the party," usually has nothing to do with being properly dressed for the party.

Probably some of this seems obvious. It wasn't to me.

There are a lot of things in For Men Only that I already knew when I read the book, but that I did not know seven years ago when Golden and I married. As a result, I think that For Men Only and For Women Only are probably good wedding gifts, if only so husbands and wives don't have to learn everything about each other the hard way.

from scratch

Every two years or so something happens the requires me to reinstall Windows on our PC and start from scratch. Last time it was a hard drive crash and I lost a lot of data. This time, it was a fan breaking and causing some of the hardware to overheat.

This might come as a surprise to those people who see me as a computer guy, but I don't really like the process of rebuilding my computer. I think that is largely because I usually only do this if something breaks. There are other problems, though, like the fact that the process is time consuming, the fact that I always lose something in the transition, and the fact that being without a PC is inconvenient.

As an example of the inconvenience, part of the reason that Golden hasn't posted much is that she is not used to using my laptop. After quite a bit of work, I hope to have the computer at least partially operational tonight, though. Maybe she will have more blogging opportunities shortly.

keep in touch

I have moved a lot in my life and I have had a lot of different friends. Every time I have moved I committed to keeping in touch and every time I didn't. It's not that I don't care. It's that I am not good at knowing what to say to one person. Does the person I am writing to care about every minutiae of my life or should I just say, "Everything's going fine?"

Anyway, I created a MySpace account about a month or two ago. It was against my better judgment, but with enough pressure I jumped off that bridge. I like the way Blogger is structured a lot more, so I don't plan on using MySpace much, but I have noticed that it is easy to find old friends on MySpace. In a few weeks' time I have made contact with at least a few friends that I have not contacted in years, I found out two old friends have kids, and I have been overall surprised with how much everyone I find has changed.

If I am ever to "keep in touch" it's probably going to always be through a blog or something of that nature. I am just not able to maintain a long distance friendship in any other way.

why i blog

Both T and Forrest have posted their reasonings for why they blog a long, long time ago (in a galaxy far, far away). At the time of those posts I had a vague reckoning of why I maintain this site, but I didn't have something clear enough in my head to type a post on it. I still don't, but since when has that mattered? Also, note that, for such a simple question, I certainly take a long time to answer it.

When I initially set this page up I was a little excited, but concerned about the idea of a personal blog. The problem can be best illustrated by the following deductive reasoning.

1. For Dust to write a blog he has to write something he likes and that people can understand.
2. To understand much of what Dust likes writing about one must understand how Dust thinks.
3. To understand how Dust thinks Dust needs to open up.
4. Dust is not sure how willing he is to open up.
5. Therefore, either Dust will clam up and run out of topics he enjoys to type quickly or he will take the chance of opening up too much.

I really have two purposes with this blog.

The first and more important goal for this site is to give my readers insight into what is going on in my head. I have gone through periods in life when I didn't really say much. Sometimes I still do. When I do this, most people around me have no clue what I am thinking. This is especially a problem because almost every opinion or feeling I have seems to require a lot of explanation.

The second goal for this site is to be entertaining. I want to know that I can write original material that some people actually want to read. I also want to get better at entertaining readers. Sometimes I purposely step away from this goal, but people have to want to read what I write for them to visit.

So I blog for my benefit and for yours. Doesn't that make you feel so warm and fuzzy inside?

is anyone out there?

I don't really have a typical post today or for the rest of the week given that I will be at Golden's family's house over the weekend. I just have an informal question. Has anyone noticed that things have slowed down dramatically over the last month or so in our little blog world?

Comments haven't totally dried up, but I am getting the feeling that perhaps there is a widely held feeling that either this is getting boring or that this isn't as important as it once was. It could be that several people are just taking a break at the same time. At this time I have no plans to change my habits on the blogs, but if I notice it continuing to slow down I'll probably reduce my posting to two or three a week rather than four a week since it seems like overkill when compared with most of the other blogs.

Don't read this as a complaint. It is actually me trying to test the waters to see what is happening out there. I'd like to keep the blogs going as long as possible because I think they are incredibly valuable, so I want to make sure my routines are encouraging rather than discouraging people to continue to post their thoughts.

So... what are your thoughts? Are things really slowing down? Is it just temporary? Should I keep my current pace or should I slow down a bit?

dust sampler

I don't have many big cohesive thoughts this weekend, so this is just a sampling of little ones.

First and foremost, I have been thinking about the responsibility of taking care of NJ. I am very glad we had him, but I am even more glad that we had him now rather than earlier in life. The level of commitment from a time and money perspective is significant enough that I know I wouldn't have been ready for this even a year ago. I think I am ready now.

I can think back through all the times when people told me that you shouldn't wait until you can afford kids, because you can never afford kids. I kind of agree with that with the caveat that you shouldn't completely abandon all common sense. We actually didn't wait until we could afford kids, but a few things in our finances have lined up in the past six months or so that NJ won't break the bank, though Golden will still need to work for a while. Given that I don't really have a bad job and our house payment is lower than average, I don't know how people who make much less than me do it.

On a related note, we'll never be able to afford the time NJ requires. :)

Next, my parents are visiting us next week so we can have NJ dedicated on the July 30. This is only the second time they will have seen my house (and obviously the first time they will see NJ). The last time they were able to visit us in KC was three years ago.

Also, I've seen three movies in the past couple of days. Two were duds and one was pretty good. I wasn't that impressed with Domino or Carrie. It wasn't that they were particularly bad movies, but the elements that some might find appealing were wasted on me. However, the 1954 French version of Diabolique was very entertaining. It was one of the first plot twist movies made, and Golden said was the scariest she has seen since she watched What Lies Beneath six years ago. I was concerned that the subtitles would detract from the movie, but in this case the story was strong and intelligent enough that the subtitles weren't a big deal. The movie actually concluded with text requesting the audience to not spoil the ending for their friends.

Finally, a couple of people I didn't know real well struck up conversations with me today. First, I was outside when the mailman came by, so he stopped and talked about how nice it is now that the heat has died down some. I like our mailman, so I enjoyed this conversation. Someone else started griping to me at the gas station a little later, though, that he couldn't believe he has to pay for gas before pumping it. He started with, "This isn't Iran, is it? These people act like they can't trust American citizens any more." I pointed out that since I pay at the pump that policy doesn't affect me as much. Then I heard about how people put too many purchases on plastic nowadays. Sigh.

I have a new idea, though. I think I'll start commenting to posts before reading them. That way everyone will know that I am not trying to fill up on their stories without providing the proper textual payment.

south carolina: land of paradise

Growing up I always believed that God wanted people to be conservative and that He desired to turn the nation into a theocracy. That is what conservative circles tend to preach, and that is what I accepted as a kid.

My views have changed a little since then. If God has established every authority that exists, then every nation is indirectly a theocracy already.

I was reading the paper earlier today and came upon a story (same article with no required sign-up here). Apparently, there is a group that is trying to mobilize people to move to the already conservative state of South Carolina so that they can eventually exert enough political power to make the state a conservative paradise of sorts. Only four families have actually moved as a result of the effort, though.

What makes a family decide that this is even a realistic goal, let alone a noble one? While mine is probably the blog in our little circle of sites that hits preachy topics the most, I have purposefully stayed away from true political discussion. This is partially due to the fact that I honestly believe that any time an area becomes a conservative or liberal paradise, bad things start to happen. When you start to believe that a paradise on earth can be found by getting the right laws, politicians, or judges you depart from the reality that humans, conservative and liberal, are naturally selfish.

Most conservatives and liberals (and "independents") will have specific ideals which are ends that may be justified by any means if not they kept in check. I believe that even those people with whom I most sincerely disagree has been placed in power by God to keep things in check. Of course, that doesn't mean I'll vote for them.

God has to have ultimate control, be it in Washington D.C., Topeka, or Charleston. If He doesn't we're all in trouble.

hello...

Hello... Hello... Hello... Hello...

Is anybody there?... there... there... there...

Echo... Echo... Echo... Echo...

Quack

Goodbye... bye... bye... bye...

the dead day

What makes a day a good one to post or a bad one to post? I have noticed that there are some days when just about everyone is involved with a post somewhere and several lively discussions are maintained throughout the day. Then there are days like yesterday.

It could be that Dash and T were gone on a vacation day. It could be that Forrest only has a half day at work on Fridays and so doesn't take as much time on blogs on those days. It could be that yesterday was BB's anniversary and so he was too busy to post. I don't know. I must not know if I think BB may have an impact on how much posting is going on. What I do know is that what just a day or two earlier seemed like a bustling world of discussions, observations, and joking became a rarely interrupted dead planet of sorts.

The reason I am working through this is that I want to figure out what that sweet spot is for the best times to post specific types of posts. Some are just filler (like this post) meant to keep me in the running on Dash's tally and some are important enough to me that I like to post them at a time when I know I will get the most traffic.

Maybe I can just keep posting the more important ones over and over. That will serve a dual purpose. I can get what I want to say in front of everyone and I will pass T in Dash's compilation.

reach out and link to someone

When I started my blog it was essentially to keep up with Forrest, Dash, and Dar who had created blogs of their own already (thus the name). None of the girls had started theirs yet.

Once Golden started the girls off with her blog the list of people with blogs continually grew, as did a new problem. Do I link to just the guys? Are we going to keep the worlds separate?

After three months, I feel pretty comfortable in assuming that instead of having a smaller guys' world and girls' world that this is one larger combined world. This has been more or less confirmed by the fact that Dash has included everyone on his links. As such, I don't see any reason not to link to the sites where I comment regularly. I have updated Golden's links as well.

At the very least this should make it easier for me to keep my site open and just click down the list of blogs to be sure I am up to date on the posts. At the very least.

cruciverbalist

I am a cruciverbalist. Any time I go on a trip of any length I bring along a book of crossword puzzles that Mrs Dust bought for me a couple of Christmas's ago and work through them when I have (five letters, a fifth tire) time. As I am going on a short trip to see (six letters, a class) this weekend, so will my crossword puzzle book.

Thing is, I am not a crossword puzzle purist. If I can't (six letters, "______ eight") out a section of the puzzle, I am more than willing to look up the answer to a clue in the answer to move things along. This is because I don't think it is relaxing fun to stare at a page for twenty minutes to try to determine the spelling for some (six letters, to cut green beans into strips before cooking) town. As a result, I don't like doing the newspaper crosswords that come with the text, "Answers Next Week," or something to that effect. Mrs Dust thinks I am cheating, but I disagree.

If nothing else, doing crosswords has added to my (ten letters, Tarzan had a small one) several four and five letter words containing a lot of (six letters, they can be bought from Sajak). Now I can construct meaningful sentences such as, "I will elide your idea as I puree the oleo on the dais."

Oh yeah, and I had every intention of posting this even before Jadee posted the cruciverbalist description on her site.

acting serious

Things are never gonna be the way you want.
Where's it gonna get you acting serious?
Things are never gonna be quite what you want.
Or even at 25, you gotta start sometime.

Again with the Jimmy Eat World lyrics.

I have a bad habbit of making snide, sarcastic, or otherwise dry wisecracks that don't always get noticed or acknowledged as jokes and sometimes are believed as honest opinion. This problem is magnified when I try to relay them online. I think I need some help to improve this. I have come up with a few ideas.

Idea #1 is to use smileys a lot. For example:

So, Citi has at least 3.9 million customers? :) :) :) :) You'll never guess how I know that! ;)

Idea #2 is to use shortened AOL-speak a lot. For example:

O Mi Ga, the posterior regions of these jeans are real tight. ROTFLOL!

Idea #3 is to point out the sarcasm and punchlines. For example:

Pessimists are the biggest risk-takers around (this is sarcasm).

Or I could just combine them all.

O Mi Ga, have you heard the difference between Dust and God? :) :) :) God doesn't think He is Dust (this is the punchline)! ROTFL

Let me know what you think. Will my ideas above work? Do you have any other ideas?

the family that washes their ears together...

... stays together.

Mrs Dust has been commenting that her ears just didn't feel right so could we try to wash them out soon? We came to the conclusion that last night was soon.

The procedure was to put some liquid in the ear, let it set for 10-15 minutes, then flush constantly for the next 15 minutes with an "ear syringe bulb," hereafter known as the blue squirty thing. I figured it would be a breeze, but it is hard pointing the blue squirty thing perfectly in the ear canal while squeezing it at a constant rate with backwash water running down your arm. More than once I was told that I was not pointing the blue squirty thing in the right place.

By the time Mrs Dust's ears were fully cleaned we were both covered in water as was the bathroom. She noted that the instructions recommend doing this four days in a row. Like that's happening. At least if Mrs Dust's ears are still clogged she may not send me to investigate bumps in the night as much. Or maybe not.

Your ears cannot be washed by me
Nor can my bathroom bear this splashing
Need is a burden which cannot be revealed
Therefore I will remain silent with my blue squirty
Whenever you are before me with yours
My ears fill with tears that are unable to flow like a squirty blue ocean
That stands still at the sight of my lost ear wax passing by

bottoms up

Yesterday at work we were discussing how free we are with our wives in discussing bathroom issues. I am not sure why the discussion has come up recently. It may have been a post over the weekend at Golden Sunrise's site. It may have been that one of my coworkers was complaining that someone was letting their dog make on his yard. What matters is that the issue came up.

Apparently Mrs Dust and myself are much freer with our discussion of what ends up in the toilet than some others at the office. If one of us is feeling backed up, not backed up enough, or gassy we freely discuss it. If one of us just had a good or not so good time on the stool, we freely discuss it. A few of the guys were freely disgusted by it.

It seems that about 50% of the people I work with are comfortable with those types of discussions at home, and about 50% are not except in health-related matters. This encouraged one of the people that feels more free on this subject to share the last discussion he had with his wife on the topic. The question was what do you do when almost all, but not all, of it comes out. I think I figured out that this must be the time to pull out the paper to check what's going on in the world, but first check the comics section.