Birds in My BBQ

So... I like to think that I take good care of my parents' house. I mean, Jessica thinks I do yard work all the time and I'm somewhat anal about following the maintenance schedule so lovingly magneted to the fridge before my parents left in June 2006. But I guess I forgot one thing... covering the BBQ over the winter.

Actually, I didn't forget. I tried to put the cover on, but it kept blowing around and smacking the house so that I thought there were hooded/masked men on the back deck poised to attack and steal the $23 in my wallet (actually, the masked men on our back deck happened when I was like 10, but that's another story that I think my family thinks I dreamed but I swear was real. I digress...), so I took off the cover and figured that a hunk of metal could survive a winter without a thin layer of tarp to protect it.

In my spring cleaning efforts (this was not on the maintenance schedule but certainly was implied), I pulled the BBQ away from the side of the house, where I put it so it doesn't blow all over the deck and make the kids next door think my deck is possessed. I had noticed during the first few months of the year, mind you, that there were lots of twigs and that there were a few birds spending a lot of time on my deck. But, knowing nothing better, I figured that just LOOOOVED my deck. I mean, who wouldn't? It's a nice deck, has a great view, and the birds could even catch some fine TV programming through the window at the right angle. Upon closer inspection, I saw some twigs sticking out from under the lid of the BBQ. So I opened it.

Wow.

As you can see from the pictures, there was a male starling and his baby momma who had put together quite the nest inside my BBQ. How they got in and how they chose this spot, I defer to ornithologists (bird people, people) -- but they had a nest in there, with three little starling eggs. Truth be told, they actually look a lot like those hard candy Easter eggs you buy at the store. Go figure.

I called my lovely bride-to-be Jessica (who I ironically actually call "Lovely"), who wanted me to promise not to move the birds, disturb the nest or even talk in the general direction of the nest/BBQ for fear of scaring away the mom (also pictured, or is it the dad? No idea). I had no intentions of messing with their lives, so for the next several weeks if not longer I don't have a BBQ and I've added a few animal souls to my house (beyond Pixie).

This whole story reminds me of perhaps my greatest college achievement -- finding a loophole in the General Ed requirements to bypass Chemistry by taking an Appreciation of Nature class. This was a fascinating class that also happened to enjoy one of the finest male/female ratios in all of BYUdom -- as I recall, there were about 6 men and about 210 women in the class. One of the biggest projects in the class was to identify 100 bird species, and I dutifully carried my field guide around campus and took note of different sparrows, finches, etc. My progress on the project really took off when I headed to the SLC Zoo and identified exotic species like an osprey and a New Zealand kookaburra. At any rate, I aced the class and avoided Chemistry. Oh, the memories...

Anyway, welcome to the birds. I love that there are three of them, and my sister is having triplets in September. Good things come in threes... unless you ask Dwight Schrute.

By the way, I have decided the baby birds' names will be Shadrach, Meshach and Abed-Nego, since they were in the fire (OK, BBQ) and were not consumed. That was one of my favorite Bible stories growing up, along with Moses floating the Nile in a basket.

How I Won Miss USA

How, you may ask, does a husky, masculine and (dare I say) devastatingly handsome man such as I win Miss USA? You probably asked yourself that when you read the title of this entry, and you should pat yourself on the back for asking such a good question -- it's because of those smarts that you're my friend or family member (or other blog-stalker, you KNOW who you are). I'll answer.

A few years back, a benign break from a board game at my friends Gilbert and Nicole’s house turned into a full-fledged contest. The venue? Miss USA. The object? Guess the judges’ choices for Top 15, Top 10, Top 5 and Miss USA. We thought we'd just amuse ourselves by watching the introduction of each state winner, but we were enjoying ourselves so much that soon after all the introductions, we abandoned the board game and pieced together a rudimentary scoring system for the pageant. Yes, I’m sure at some point we thought to ourselves, “what in the world are we doing? C’mon, are we SERIOUSLY enjoying this?” But we were. Gilbert in particular had some choice lines that I won’t repeat here, but sufficeth to say he spoke his mind on the contestants and who should be moving on to the next round. A guilty pleasure? Most certainly, but if being pleasurably guilty is wrong then I don’t wanna be right. Since that first contest we’ve done a few others, including Miss Universe last year. Classic.

This year there was a real effort to make the scoring equitable – you see, in years past (OK, maybe just last time) I did an incredible job of selecting the Top 15 and the Top 10, only to lose the overall contest on points since I didn’t select the exact order of the winners correctly. I, being the patriot I am, called out for reform and freedom, for the audacity of hope that some day my proper evaluation of hotness would be… well, properly evaluated (my engagement to my lovely fiance Jessica has since confirmed to one and all that my hotness evaluation is top-notch, but that's too sappy and besides the point). So we had fancy scorecards and a printed-out scoring system.

So how did I do? I won. No, not just won. I KILLED. We missed the Top 15 selections thanks to an extra-long Blazers game, but I called 8 of the Top 10 and all five of the Top 5. And when it really counted, I came through with Miss Texas to win it all (she looked like a mix of Rhianna and Beyonce, so I called her "Rhionce"). I don’t know if we counted up the final score, but rest assured I wiped the floor with the others. In fact, below are three scorecards for your perusal. Enjoy:

This is my tremendous work -- notice my "good gaze" comment next to New Jersey, she won me over with that. I actually picked South Carolina to win it all, because she was hot but also because she was on the "Amazing Race" which is one of my favorite shows:

You may noticed that Jessica's is a bit wrinkly -- that's because she was so upset with the inane judges (in her defense, one of them WAS Joey Fatone) that she crumpled her paper and hurled it at me. The emotional pain hurt more than the physical when it struck me... :) Good effort honey! She liked Miss Tennessee a lot, using the term "like a Barbie doll" pretty much every time she mentioned her.

Gilbert did quite well in the Top 10, getting 9 of them right. He promptly collapsed in the Top 5 after talking trash to me -- don't EVER give me a reason to come after you Dewey! You can tell from Gilbert's many cross-offs that he struggled with some of his choices. He's a tough emotional nut to crack, so you rarely see the manifestation of Gilbert's inner turmoil in writing so vividly as you see below:

In the end, a good time was had by all and much hilarity ensued. I'd say we're all winners by having a good time, but then I'd be lying.

The Miss Universe pageant is in August, time to train! Early money is on Miss Venezuela.

The Question -- Before & After The Ring

Moments before... she has NO IDEA, just wondering why the tripod is so dang important




How unfair of me, and no way to start up a blog! I tease with a picture of my engagement and then wait 6 weeks to give more information. See below:

The Engagement

I was planning on proposing the Saturday after Valentines Day at the beach -- there's a hidden trail past the rock wall on the Manzanita Overlook that takes you down to an isolated outcropping hanging over the ocean, and I always thought I'd do it there. But we had a birthday party for a friend's son that day, so I opted for a very very good alternative -- The Gorge.

Much went into the picture you see below. First, I spent the night before timing at what "beep" on the camera's timer I needed to kneel, open the box, ask Jessica to marry me and get a reaction when the camera snips its pic. I practiced this about 20 times and determined that the 12th beep was the one I needed to kneel on. This would no doubt have been hilarious to observe, as I knelt time after time practicing. Yes, I am a card-carrying dork.

I had gone to the Shane Company the week before to get the ring (yes, I guess all those nasally radio ads worked somehow) and picked out a nice Princess Cut diamond. It's very nerve-racking to go into a jewelry store for the first time without any experience. I actually went in the first time the Saturday before Valentines' Day, which was perfect since it was so busy I could walk around without any questions and view diamonds to my heart's content (which was about 20 minutes -- they start to look the same at that point).

Finally, the day came. Jess told me the week before she wanted to take some pictures in cool places in Oregon with my camera during our trip, which was my perfect cover. We headed out for the Gorge, with Jessica happily snapping pictures with her new camera, totally unaware of what I was about to do. I attempted to smile and play along, but my heart was POUNDING in my chest. She did notice my sweaty palms when we held hands, but that was it.

Finally we get to the Women's Forum Park up on the old Columbia River Highway, which was my targeted site. Immediately upon arriving I saw two problems:

1. There were TONS of people. It was a beautiful Saturday on a three-day weekend, and normally I wouldn't care but at that moment I hated every one of those people. I wanted them to either drive off at that moment or run like lemmings off the cliff.

2. I tried setting up the tripod, and no matter how I tried the camera WOULD NOT FIT in the tripod. I was getting quite frustrated, which Jessica could see but had no idea WHY I cared so much about getting the tripod set up. Why not ask one of the hundreds of people there to take the picture? Well, that would just about be the worst thing in the world if you ask me so I kept trying to fit the square peg in the round hole until my lovely future wife discovered the right plate in the camera bag. It WORKED! Yes!

So I set up the tripod and waited (and waited, and waited) until the crowd thinned out a bit at our overlook. Suddenly there was only one other photographer, visibly entranced by the location and oblivious to us. In one motion, I set the timer, ran over by Jessica, and kneeled exactly at the 12th "beep." I asked her to marry me, she put her hand by her mouth, and I heard the camera click.

At that point, a part of me already felt victory. I mean, I had somehow pulled off an amazing picture that would be legendary forever in my mind. Now, whether it was a GOOD legendary or TRAIN-WRECK legendary depended upon her answer -- which was "Oh my gosh, Oh my gosh, Oh my gosh..." This was OK, since she had not said "NO" yet, but with each "oh my gosh" I felt like my chances of a "YES" were slowly dwindling... sort of a movement from a shocked "oh my gosh" to a panicked "how do I get out of here, could I perhaps hitch-hike back to Los Angeles immediately oh my gosh."

Finally, Jessica picked her jaw up and gave me a firm YES. We then kissed and walked over to a stone bench by the camera (By the way, as you can see Pixie is ignoring us the entire time probably fixated on a distant squirrel). We hugged and kissed and talked some more, until I realized I hadn't put the ring on. DUH!

It was at that point that people began to realize that we had just gotten engaged and congratulated us. I don't remember what they said, except I think one old man told me in some sequence of words and in some Eastern European dialect that I picked a hot one. I think I thanked him for his kindness as he waddled back to his own wife, who I'm sure appreciated his sentiment about another much younger woman.

Our lives since that romantic Q&A session have been a whirlwind of wedding planning, moving (Jess still lives in another state, but it's Camas and not LA), and realizing every day how happy we are.

More to come on the wedding...

The Question & The Answer

Not much to say about this one, except that she said "yes" and that I am a happy man. Much more to come...

Why "A-Team" Could Save Society -- The Lost Manuscript

EDITOR'S NOTE: I thought I had lost this post, but somehow I figured out what the heck I'm doing with this blog thing and found the draft. I haven't re-read, I'm just posting it (making two posts in the last 24 hours, athankya!).

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So for those who don't know where the title of my blog comes from, first of all shame on you. Actually, it's likely not your fault because you're either too young to remember "The A Team" or you were raised in a home so devoid of love and affection that the charitable antics of a band of renegades was not allowed to be shown.

At any rate, Hannibal Smith (played by the late George Peppard), at the end of an episode of successful underdog-saving, would often smile and say as he clenched his cigar between his teeth, "I love it when a plan comes together." Given that Hannibal was pretty much the coolest gray-haired character ever on television, it became a goal to be able to say that at the end of any exploit. For instance:

• TPing a house



• Tightly pegging one's pants (hey, it was the 80's)



• Getting an A on a test you basically didn't study for



• Making up a book to do a book report on (I am not proud of this, but whatareyagonnado?)

Aaanyway, back to my point. A few years ago a friend of mind gifted me a DVD of "A Team" episodes for Christmas, and during my break from school I decided to watch some of these first-season gems. Meanwhile, my nieces and nephews wandered into the room (when there are about 15 people in one house during a rainy Oregon holiday there aren't a lot of places to hide) and started watching with me. At first, I'm thinking, "There's guns and explosions and cars tipping over in this show... should I let them watch this? Will I, on some future Nancy Grace or The View show, be castigated for my early indoctrination of violence into the little growing minds of my nieces and nephews?" I figured I had already ruined Andrew when he was about 4 and came downstairs to find me playing "Quake" on his mom's computer, but the REST of them... how dare I poison their little lollipop-loving minds with such killing and mayhem?

It was then that I realized how good the show really was. Although I deemed it violent in my day, I began to notice that:

• Nobody gets killed. When machine guns are used, they blow things up next to people, followed by some tremendous stuntman leaps filmed from below.



• When cars explode or flip over in the air, they always show the passengers alive and getting out of the car safely.



• There is a lot of smashing of plate glass windows, but no blood or death or really much in terms of injury. When the A Team vanquishes its opponent (remember, in the name of good), their enemies just seem really tired and they get tied up and ostensibly taken to the authorities.



• The A Team, while mercenaries, are hired to help "the little guy" in their fights against wealthy landowners, mafia members, drug dealers, gangs, and the occasional just plain jerk.

Suddenly, I was quite proud of the programming I was allowing the kids to watch. What a great uncle I was! They loved the show and wanted to see more episodes. The lesson is (I suppose) that TV programming can send a good message and still kick some butt. I think we need more of that on today's shows. In fact, why isn't any channel showing "A Team" reruns during the writers' strike? I see great Nielsen ratings in the future...

Making Lemonade Out Of Melons

Those who have known me for a long time know that I just plain don't like melons. I'm not exactly sure why or if it started at a specific time (like my 10-year boycott of mustard when I once put too much of it on a hamburger, but that's another story for another time), but it's even become a more violent, proactive dislike for the dang fruits. Why, you ask, would I openly despise not just one fruit but an entire phylum of them? Because they have taken over fruit salads and cocktails and changed the assorted fruit landscape as we know them.

When I go to a restaurant and I'm thinking about the healthy choice of fruit, I have to ask what fruits are in their mixture. Without fail, it's mostly canteloupe, watermelons, honeydews or some other strange type of melon I've never heard of, topped off with a whole one (usually seedfull rather than seedless) grape and a lonesome, often uncomfortably bruised strawberry. As you can tell by the tone of this paragraph, I don't eat a lot of fruit at restaurants unless they bring me some apples or oranges to gnaw on.

But today, quite spontaneously, I made a change. I was sitting on my flight from Denver to Portland (after a 4-hour overnight layover in Tulsa, long story on that one) where I was tired enough to use some of my upgrade certificates on United to get into first class. They served breakfast on the flight, and when the attendant asked me which meal I wanted I was still half asleep and somehow agreed to an assorted fruit plate without subjecting her to a CIA Rendition-type interrogation on the elements thereof. I should have known, however, that this assorted fruit plate would not only be dominated by melons but would be exclusively and entirely melons. (At that point, why not just call it an assorted melon plate? Just don't get my hopes up with assorted fruit, it's like a video store offering a wide assortment of movies when all they stock are the "Ernest Goes To..." series. But again, I digress...)

What a dilemma -- no other real option for the meal besides a scary omelet-type concoction that I swear I saw move on its own on the guy's plate across the aisle. All melons. And I am hungry. So what did I do? Well, I'm proud to say that I made a conscious decision to EAT THE MELONS. My inner dialogue went like this: "Dave, for many years you've taken a strong stance on eating melons. At times, you have violently opposed their tyrannical rule over assorted fruit plates. But is it rational? Does it make sense anymore, Dave? You used to hate broccoli and asparagus -- now, you gobble them whole as long as they're cooked right. There was even a time many years back when you thought 'Lost' was overrated, and you were way off on that point too. Why not just TRY the melons again with a fresh perspective, and see how they are?"

So I did. I ATE THE MELONS. Not all of them, but I ate all the watermelon pieces and a few of the canteloupe-type ones. Sorry, it's been a while so I'll need to bone up on the melon classifications again. Don't get me wrong, I will still choose a good pear or berry over any melon, but I consider this a decent first step towards an unimaginable reconciliation with the Gwen Stefani of the No Doubt fruit assortment collection.

Happy New Year!

I enjoy celebrating the New Year (particularly this year, since I had someone to kiss) because of the fresh start. Jessica and I enjoyed some intriguing conversation (well, I enjoyed the conversation anyway, I can't speak for her) about the effectiveness of goal-setting at the beginning of the year and how to go about it. Regardless of whether or not it works, I have my own system that I rather fancy (and no, writing in a British accent is not one of my goals for this year).

I like to break down my resolutions into separate categories of my life: Financial, professional, social, spiritual, intellectual, physical and -- for lack of a better term -- "Grab Bag." In each of these areas I usually have one main goal and other secondary goals; for instance in Financial my primary goal is "pay off private student loans." Those of you who have spoken to me on a regular basis over the last 3 years will perhaps be more pleased than I when that one is crossed off, since I feel like I start half of my conversations with "I can't wait to pay off my Citibank student loans."

Then there are the random resolutions that don't lead up to my main goal in each category, and those go in "Grab Bag." In the past this list has included, "Shoot 82 in golf," "Get Christmas gifts bought by early November," "Buy a $5 cup of lemonade from a kid's stand," and "Complete all-night road trip with Mountain Dew and Red Vines" (crazy delicious in case you were wondering).

Here are some main goals I would like to share with you, since sharing them makes it more difficult for me to quit:

• Pay off private student loans (Enough already Dave!)


• Write on this blog weekly (This one is especially for Jessica)


• Frame 5 of my pictures and hang in my house


• Shoot a golf round of 82 (this one is still there)


• Read in the scriptures daily, no exceptions (except some exceptions -- no, wait, I guess not)


• Hike 50 miles


• Work no more than 55 hours per week, including conference calls with Hong Kong and late-night email blitzes


• Back to my playing weight (and no, not my sumo wrestling playing weight thankyouverymuch)

I would appreciate your friendly assistance in these endeavors. Let's start with helping on the first one... I take donations via PayPal.