Science and Friday

Before I get to the Friday Fill-Ins, I have a report to make about Kellogg's Frosted Mini-Wheats. I didn't do the research. I'm just reporting their reporting.

So it's 5:30 in the morning and I'm awake and there's no juice and it's too early to go to the store, so I open a big box of cereal Keith bought at Costco. Inside this big box are two big bags of Frosted Mini-Wheats. Cool. I'm deciding whether to flatten the box for recycling or save it whole for maybe sending a Christmas gift to Kirby or something, and I notice this important clinical news.

It says it's going to improve my attentiveness.

So I start paying more attention right away. There's fine print.

Oh. It will improve kids' attentiveness by nearly 20%. Up there by the happy cereal guy's piece of chalk (chalk while I'm eating powdered sugar is gross, but it's not real chalk) there is a footnote marking. 1. I'm looking for the 1.




There's a note, over there under the happpy cereal guy. It says there's more information on the side panel. Isn't that the way it always is? But this is different. This had a footnote. So I get the side panel, and I get a magnifying glass. I'm starting to have more Need to Know than I have hunger for cereal.



See right below the easy-to-read yellow box? In the orange. The print that's even smaller than the notice about sugar at the very bottom, it says something. It's my footnote. I have scanned and enlarged it for the edification of those who read this blog.



So wait...
"kids who ate (this...) had up to 18% better attentiveness..."
If the highest measure they got was 18%, and that wasn't the average, then they rounded that up to 20%.

But my important question had been "better than WHAT? what did the other ones eat?"

Nothing. Three hours after eating this, some did (and some didn't) pay attention 18% better than kids who had eaten nothing. A kid who's three hours out from breakfast and has eaten nothing hasn't eaten for twelve hours or "up to nearly 14 hours" maybe I should say.

So compared to someone who hasn't eaten since the day before, this cereal will rate somewhat better in "attentiveness." Attentiveness to what!?

I know how to improve kids' attentiveness nearly 100%. Only talk about things they want to know. Only show them things they're interested in. Be dazzling and funny. Look at them and smile, and stop testing them and calling them kids. Stop starving them and making them perform scientific experiments in the name of advertising sales. Let them sleep!! Let them eat when they want to. Give them many choices alongside of or other than Frosted Mini-Wheats.


1. My blueprint for success includes finding happiness in small things.

2. M&Ms was the last candy I ate.

3. The best facial moisturizer I've ever used is !? I've never used a facial moisturizer yet, but I guess if I come to need one I'll find this post and follow the links to where hundreds of people (or dozens) have named their favorite facial moisturizer!

4. Singing can be good therapy.

5. I'd like to tell you about how wonderful my kids are, but I've already done that other places in this blog.

6. Speed is my strongest characteristic. Not running or walking, but I can think and write and type and speak at a brisk pace, which is sometimes useful. Perhaps a few hours ago I was nearly 20% faster than people who hadn't gotten up at 5:00, cleaned a kitchen quietly and then eaten Frosted Mini-Wheats. Perhaps.

7. And as for the weekend, tonight I'm looking forward to sitting with Keith and working on a jigsaw puzzle while he watches crazy wrestling, tomorrow my plans include nothing particular and Sunday, I want to help Jasmine celebrate her 18th birthday by going to Garduños for dinner. I am opting out of the air-soft battle in the mountains. Holly will represent our family in the celebratory imaginary carnage.

I'm grateful for...

This Wednesday's gratitude list, and a link to last week's.

A review so I don't repeat myself:Holly safety, water, toilets, washing machine, cars. Internet, Keith, singing, hot tub, children.
Okay. Besides those?

1. I'm grateful that our house doesn't leak. It has in the past, and it may in the future, but right now these days—not leaking.

2. Our house has a fireplace that works, and we have firewood. I love that. (The photo is from last year. The couch is moved, the mending is done, and we're down by one cat.)

3. I'm glad for an oldies station I listen to while I'm working in the yard, or driving. Real Oldies 1600. Seriously. It helps me play the lyrics game.

4. I'm grateful that people come and play The Lyrics Game with me, and that Photobucket recently added an option to arrange images most-recent-first, because that has made my image use WAY easier, and I can get new posts in there without much trouble at all. (Today's word is "light.")

So I guess #4 was actually two things, but I've saved one for #5. I've not said anything about politics except that I was tired of people asking me about it, but here's what I have to say now, having voted in private and trusted that people could tell quality from poop.

5. I'm glad that it won't be so embarrassing, for a few years, to be an American.

Holly's 17th birthday

On the left is Sadie, and the right, Holly.

Today my youngest is 17. It's early and everyone's asleep but me. The party was yesterday afternoon, and is documented below. Other than dinner with Brett, I don't know how Holly's day will unfold.

Last night when she got back from Paul's birthday and costume party (she went as Charlie's Angels, one or a generic other of them), she got in the hot tub with me and Keith and that was a nice, quiet ending to a busy surprise-party day.

I'm going to have cake for breakfast. I'm feeling old but very happy.

Halloween and Holly's birthday

Here are some pictures from the weekend thusfar:



I made Marty a breakaway dress shirt to be a Chippendale dancer kind of guy. A week ago he had gone to a costume party dressed as he dresses for work, with the addition of a vest, and said he was a valet (or a chauffeur, depending) and kept asking people for their keys, and then going and moving their cars. He didn't hide any too far.

So last night, he said, when he showed up one guy said "I'm not giving you my keys," and someone else knowing Marty works in a restaurant and wears a white shirt and bow tie there, said "What's your costume?" So that was his cue.

I hear he put the shirt back on and disrobed several times, but this is the only video I have so far. There are others I hope I get pointers to.

Holly was a fairy. There's a picture her but her wings were off and the flower headband was gone.



Here's Brett, who's not as much a costume-wearing guy, but he was the fairy's bodyguard. He's the one in the middle, in black.



Kirby was working, in Austin, and I haven't heard what he did after work on Halloween. He is a costume-wearing guy, but also a working-weekend-evenings guy.

Then today was Holly's surprise party. It worked!! People met at a barbecue place very near our house. That way they could do the "Surprise!" moment, and park their cars in the public parking lot at a shopping center, and then walk up the alley to our house. I was setting up at the house, so I missed the barbecue meet-up, so the photos are as new to me as to most others.

Here's the musical moment and then mini-images and links to the rest of it (some good photos, by Marty! Thanks!). Oh... the end cut off, but Holly was admiring the candles, and I was telling her those are the candles she picked out for Kirby's birthday, and we didn't end up using.


The cake is from ABC Cake Shop on San Pedro near Constitution, in Albuquerque. Great cake shop.

Retroactive Friday Fill-In

I like this week's questions, but I couldn't have filled it in on Friday, due to lack of time and secrecy. So retroactively, what I would have liked to have written on October 31, written retroactively, early on November 2.

1. My favorite food seasoning is green chile, but that's already food. So lately, coriander. (Or if chocolate counts...).

2. Kirby on the phone is music to my ears.

3. Lucky is never appreciated as much as unluckiness is bemoaned.

4. Happiness is something I take very seriously.

5. Many people could be much happier with the smallest of attitude changes.

6. Grease and Grease II, and a birthday card, was the last thing I bought at the store. (Not counting the grocery store. That was pineapple, maraschino cherries, tortillas and brown sugar.)

7. And as for the weekend, tonight I'm looking forward to finishing a gift for Holly, tomorrow my plans include Holly's surprise birthday party, and Sunday, I want to recuperate!     and possibly go to a movie with Holly, although at 17 she will no longer need me to go with her to R rated movies. Maybe she'll take me anyway, sometimes.

Kirby's second 22nd birthday

DARN IT! I meant to let people know this earlier in the day. They made a mistake on Kirby's Texas driver's license, so in Texas he's 22 today. (In New Mexico, he was 22 on July 29th.)

I had intended to ask people to send him e-mail or MySpace greetings. He's been a big MySpace slacker, though. His email address is KendallKDodd and the end part is gmail, if you want to help us celebrate his 2nd 22nd b-day. Today's his day off, so he's home and very likely awake for a few more hours.

Sixth Picture

Another game of chance. A randomizing factor in real life.

Okay. I have this from Mandaroo's blog. You take the sixth photo from your sixth file. I'm going to do it from photobucket, the main folders. I haven't looked yet. Hers was a very cool Dia de los Muertes figure.

Mine is...


Brett Henry, in his cowboy hat, which dates it to before the mystery Brit stole it at Frontier Restaurant.

Here's another photo from my Brett Henry collection. This one is Kirby, Brett and Marty (seated, in red) at a pirate party a couple of years ago.



My kids have hung out with Brett since he was eight or nearly nine, maybe. He left school in third grade or so, and they hung out at park days when they were little, and increasingly other times as they got older. Marty and Holly will be at a Halloween party at his house tomorrow night.