thoughts

I haven’t written in a while. Mela and I have been so busy with life. I didn’t even get to send out a Christmas letter this year – I am very sorry. I didn’t get to a Christmas letter for two reasons: we were busy and I have been so uninspired of late. It seems like a funk has settled itself upon me for the last few weeks. Well it’s time to put an end to it!

I have been pondering the actual funk itself and its source. I noticed other people have been afflicted by this funk. I feel it in myself and I feel it in others. There is a funk out there and I have been struggling to put my finger on it.

Let me tell you what I mean when I say “funk”. A funk is a state where you really don’t want to do anything. Nothing sounds fun. Everything requires too much energy to do. Even things that were fun seem to just take too much energy. You end up sitting in front of the TV or the computer and just do nothing.

This funk could be the postpartum depression we all get from the holidays. Christmas trees come down, New Years is over and now you have to get back to the “real world”...

On another note:

Some days it just not worth chewing through the restraints....

I need to update my blog

I really need to update my blog but I don’t have anything to say... Life in the Christiansen household here in the Forsaken Land of Buckeye has been very busy. Christmas consisted of service projects, family visits, getting gifts together, putting up Christmas lights, taking them down and other family stuff. It all sounds really boring but it really isn't...

Andrew and Jaedyn are at the age where they are fully immersed in the magic that is Christmas. Nothing equals the look on my kids faces as they came downstairs on Christmas morning. I love my sweet children!!


On another note...

We finally got our big screen TV – it is super cool. Let me tell you how we got it. In the Christiansen household we've been in get-our-financial-house-in-order mode for the last few months. We didn’t want to put a 42 inch TV on a credit card and we didn’t have cash just laying around. Mela had the brilliant idea of counting our change. We had a 5 gallon water jug about 2/3s full of change. I called my bank and asked them how to handle about 75 pounds of change. The bank gave us these big pouches where we could put the uncounted change; they would count it for us and deposit it into our account in a couple of days. We ended up with $787.13 in change! It turns out we did have cash just laying around. Mela rocks!!

We ended up buying a $800 42inch Vizio at Costco. Super cool.

On another note I made another impulse purchase (so much for the get-our-financial-house-in-order mode). So, we have this really neat TV... My iTunes (the program I love to hate) library has several gigabytes of movies, TV shows and music. My iTunes library lives on my computer downstairs in my Man Cave. I stopped at the Apple store at the Biltmore the other day and bought an Apple TV. The Apple TV is the bomb!! Everything in my iTunes library is now accessible upstairs on the Vizio now. If Andrew wants to watch Cars for the millionth time we can just pull it up on the Apple TV. If I want to watch the Matrix trilogy naked and eat Cheetos, I can do it with just a couple of clicks.

Family Pictures

Nothing brings a family closer than taking family pictures - not!

Thanksgiving in The Land of Pima

We got back from The Land of Pima on Sunday afternoon. We had a great time. We did the following:

• Ate far too much (gained 5 lbs)
• Played the Wii far far far too much (it rained and Mario Cart was fun)
• Chased cats
• Routed wood
• Followed Santa through the streets of Safford
• Ate Mexican food
• Went to WalMart 8 times
• Bought Milk for $3.19 a gallon (rip off!!)
• Bought Gas for $1.799 a gallon
  
• Road the Quad far & wide - nearly drove into a ditch twice
  
• Got my truck covered in mud
• Helped Grandpa Lon in his shop
• Installed Office 2003 on a laptop
• Struggled with up & down internet (it was just terrible I tell you!)
• Bought Christmas gifts
• Went on a date with the wife (we saw 4 Christmas')
• Watched the Cardinals loss
• Watched Handcock on Kyle's iPod Touch
• Jaedyn barfed all over Kyle - Kyle took it like a man (You aren't a real man or real woman until you've had a child barf all over you)
• Nursed Jaedyn back to health
• Took pictures
• Played with many cousins

Below are some pictures from the Land of Pima AZ...

Heading to Pima

I can't wait to 'get the heck out of dodge' and go to the Land of Pima for Thanksgiving. It's funny, of all the holidays I like Thanksgiving the best. All the women cook and all the men do man stuff. Gotta love it!

When I say 'man stuff' I basically mean I will be keeping the kids out of the kitchen. I think I'm supposed to keep myself out of the kitchen also for some reason...

I plan on taking a lot of pictures. I will post them when we make it back into town on Sunday night.

My Latest Playlist

Below is my latest playlist.  What does this say about my tastes in music?  I have Little Big Town mixed in with White Zombe.  Should I be institutionalized??  Probably... no sane person would have the Beastie Boys and Crosby, Stills & Nash on the same playlist let alone the same computer.

Mee-la

I don’t get it. People are always mispronouncing my wife’s name... it’s not Mee-la its Mel-ah. Like Mel Brooks with an “ah” at the end. Mela.

Mela also responds to the following names:
* Mela
* Mel
* Mellie
* Mellum
* Honey
* Chick
* Woman
* Damn-it Woman!
* Pretty Wife
* Sweetie
* Love Bunny
* Hey You
The way she responses to the above names varies.

Mela will have to post all the clean names she refers to me as on her blog...

I was tagged by Mela

Thanks Mela for Tagging me. I was running out of things to write about.

8 television shows that I watch
1. Mad Men
2. Breaking Bad
3. Dirty Sexy Money
4. Heroes
5. Chuck
6. How I met your mother
7. Battlestar Galactica (please please let there be new episodes!)
8. My Own Worst Enemy
I don’t know about you... I’ve kind of lost my taste for TV. We DVR everything and I am so far behind on so many shows I don’t know where to start. I guess not watching that much TV is a good thing. Gotta love hulu.com!

8 Favorite Restaurants
1. Rubio’s
2. Taco Bell
3. Pei Wei
4. Macaroni Grill
5. My Own BBQ Grill
6. Mela’s home cookin’
7. Karen’s home cookin’
8. Red Robin

8 Favorite Singers or Bands (I’ve been into country music... sorry Kirk & Lisa)
1. Rodney Atkins
2. Rascal Flatts
3. Rush
4. Queenryche
5. AC/DC
6. Big & Rich
7. Sugarland
8. Little Big Town

8 Books I have read lately
1. Brsingr
2. The Great and Terrible series
3. Harry Potter (4 times)
4. LDS Handbook of Instruction books 1 and 2
5. Complete Dune series
6. Twilight (too much kissy kissy not enough killy killy)
7. Mere Christianity and many other CS Lewis books
8. An Inconvenient Book by Glenn Beck

I haven’t found anything exciting to read lately...

8 things I did yesterday
1. Went to QT for my 52oz Diet Coke (Mormon Coffee)
2. Two Client visits
3. Worked on revamping internal stats reports
4. Dissected 1,820,179 line transaction file to find instances of the letter “a” in the quantity field. Easy using SQL...
5. Wrestled with the kids (it’s tickle time!!)
6. Wrestled the wife ;)
7. Tried to get the 2009 Stake Calendar into Outlook 2007 and get it to print right... (Outlook 2007 really sucks)
8. Met with the primary president (we need nursery workers really bad), the Bishop and did two scout board of reviews.

8 things I am looking forward to
1. Thanksgiving
2. This weekend
3. Windows 7
4. Quantum of Solace
5. Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince
6. My next long bike ride
7. The Market and the Economy to rebound
8. Go home and play with the family this afternoon

8 things I wish for...
I don’t know... World Peace...?? My kids not to grow up so fast...?

Now the election is over...

Many of my friends are ecstatic Obama and the Democrats won. My mom and my sister are included in this list. I am happy for them. I hope their party can “fix what’s broke” in the nation.

I look at politics like I look at sports. I love the Diamondbacks. Often you will hear me yelling and cussing and getting frustrated at some managerial decision. There have been many times where I was yelling at the TV “Pull the pitcher, PULL HIM!” and then 3 runs later the manager finally pulls him. Does it mean that I’m not a fan? No.

To some degree I feel the same way about being a Republican.

Here are my thoughts on how we have come to this point as a party.

Bill Clinton did more for the Republicans than he did for the Democrats. Under Clinton the republicans were able to find unity, a message, a voice and they were able to come into power in 1994. Twelve years later they were just as bad as the Washington insiders they defeated.

George Bush did more for the Democrats than he did for the Republicans. The Democrats were able to find unity, a message and a voice. Hopefully the Obama presidency will wake up the conservative wing of the Republican Party. Hope

Bush is a good man. I think he means well. I totally agree with the WSJ article that the treatment of Bush has been disgraceful. My biggest problem with Bush is he’s not a conservative. My second biggest problem with Bush is he was too nice. He should have dealt with the Democrats with the same attitude he fought terrorism. They are the enemy and they and their philosophies must be defeated.

1 Kyle 1:1 “Nice guys get screwed.”

If the republicans can get back to being true conservatives then they will start winning.

Halloween

Halloween was fun this year.  Mela did a great job with the costumes.  Jaedyn was a Pirate and Andrew was a Choo Choo Train Engineer.  I know I'm biased but I sure of cute kids!

Opinion: The Election

I can’t wait for the election BS to end. Please, for the love, just let it be over!

I have what I call a serious case of the OJ Syndrome. This syndrome harkens back to ’96 when OJ was on trial for the first time. It seemed like there was nothing but OJ on TV or the news for a year. I finally lost my mind and yelled “fine just let him go already!” If the price of not seeing OJ’s face or hearing about him or reading about him is letting him free THAN SO BE IT. Unfortunately, this ended up being the case anyway but that’s a whole other story...

I’m feeling the same way about this year’s election – just end it. If a true conservative (someone we haven’t had in 20 years) were running then I would think differently. In today’s world I can see little difference in either of the parties. Basically, I dislike McCain just a little bit less than I dislike Obama. It seems like we have a democrat (McCain) running against a socialist (Obama). I really wish Palin was running against Obama – that would make things interesting.

All of the contention and arguing and debating and name calling and other general BS the current election has generated has really left me with a bad taste in my mouth for all politics. I’ve said this before: We get what we deserve when it comes to our leadership in this nation. All the true leadership in America wouldn’t touch the presidency with a 100 foot pole. I don’t know too many people (myself included) who could survive the anal exam given by the media, the campaign and the American people.

Life is good...

I really don’t have all that much to write about...

I went to the dentist yesterday for the first time in 10 years and I was amazed to find I am cavity free. I guess I owe my good teeth to genetics because it couldn’t be personal hygiene – 100s of gallons of diet coke and I don’t think I have ever flossed...

My kids are growing up! The Boy is a boy now and the Girl is a little girl now. There isn’t anything better than coming home from work and them running into my arms giving me hugs and kisses. I love it when my kids try to scare me. I will be standing in the kitchen and I will hear them coming down the stairs whispering to each other “let’s scare daddy...” They will sneak around the corner and go “raaar!!” I always pretend to be scared, then I chase them and tickle them. All other joys in life pale in comparison