The writings of Mark J. Lehman

The Selfish Hippie returns with a tirade against pages "intentionally left blank"

noreply@blogger.com (Mark J. Lehman) — Sat, 14 Mar 2009 06:54:00 +0000

What's the point of pages in a booklet that say "This page intentionally left blank"? I’ve seen this so many times in so many different publications, and it has always irked me. Always.

Just thinking about it, right now, I’m feeling irked.

A quick Google search came up with this, which I have deemed as the best answer to my question (via Calvin Sun / TechRepublic.com):

This sentence, when I first saw it in an IBM manual, totally confused me. “What is the point,” I asked myself, “of having this sentence? Of course I can see that the page is blank. What’s more, doesn’t the sentence actually contradict itself, because the page really ISN’T blank anymore?”

Then I thought about it some more, and realized that they had a reason for printing that message: they didn’t want people to think they had “messed up” by forgetting to print material on that page. The material from the previous page DID really end on that page, and the material on the following page DOES really start there. In other words, they were saying, “It’s OK, we know what we’re doing, and we didn’t make a mistake here.”

His point is all about credibility: if people who read your documents see a blank page, they will immediately think “Wow, this company doesn’t even edit their documents to make sure they don’t have blank pages,” or “I hope they didn’t forget to print something and I’m not missing part of the instructions!” Calvin’s point makes sense for including the sentence “This page intentionally left blank.” But what about the fact that they’re including a blank page in the first place?

When someone gives a speech, or when you see a public speaker, he or she might pause every now and then in order to put emphasis on certain phrases or drive home a point. But you never hear, during that pause, a speaker say “This pause is intentionally left silent.” Do people think the speech is over, or the speaker screwed up if he or she pauses for a moment? Probably not, unless he’s a terrible speaker.

You might think that paragraph is inconsistent with my argument; actually, it helps prove my point. Public speakers can pause like this to add effect because they likely have a meaningful message to relay and because they’re controlling the experience. Novelists and writers have a meaningful message to relay, too, but they don’t have as much control over the experience. Once those words are down on paper, it’s up to the reader how slowly or quickly they want the experience of reading them to last, and no amount of blank pages in between is going to make a significant difference. The only thing pages that are “intentionally left blank” will do is confuse and frustrate the reader.

The worst of it is that the places you see this type of thing are standardized tests, operations manuals, technical documents, etc. This is exactly the place where pages like this are most unnecessary. Are you skipping to the next topic? Fine. Start a new page, slap on a large header, and people will get that we’re moving forward. We’ve got a lot of stupid people in this world, to be sure. But I refuse to believe that they’re so stupid as to not understand something as simple as this.

So be a selfish hippie : stop wasting paper, stop wasting my time and stop wasting your money. Don’t print extra blank pages with “This page intentionally left blank” on them. If you don’t, you’re going to start finding your publications and manuals in garbage cans with the handwritten phrase “This bunch of papers intentionally left where it belongs.”

This makes me very sad.

noreply@blogger.com (Mark J. Lehman) — Fri, 13 Mar 2009 04:45:00 +0000

2.01% if you have $10,000 in the bank. Just a short while ago I remember banks offering 5% APY savings accounts with no minimums. I guess that's why they all went belly up.

I'm having a bad driving day.

noreply@blogger.com (Mark J. Lehman) — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 21:08:00 +0000

Really, only a bad half of a day.

(Don't worry, this picture isn't my car. I've never been in an accident while I was driving. Though I have been in a remarkable number of car accidents as a passenger. I don't read much into that, though.)

Anyway, I get off work at 4:30, hop in the car, and start cruising. I'm sitting in traffic, watching some ridiculous driver speeding and whipping around people in a Celica. A Celica! Kids these days... I take a drink out of my water bottle and almost drop it on my lap. Then I start imagining making a scene in a movie where someone driving drops a hot cup of coffee on his lap and swerves around and smashes into the guy next time him. Maybe it's been done before, but it makes me laugh. Either way, I'm not paying much attention to the road.

Next thing I know, a Chipper (CHP - California Highway Patrol) goes by, and I look down and realize I've been speeding (only 5 mph over, but still). So I watch him in the rearview and see him pull over, as though he's going to turn around and come get me. I slow way down, and keep watching him in the rearview as I come to the stop sign.

The guy in front of me goes, and I stop and then go as well, all the while keeping my eye out to make sure I don't have the Fuzz on my ass. Of course, as I'm going through the stop sign, I see one of the other cars at the stop sign and notice that the two teenage bros driving and flipping me off and mouthing (probably shouting, but I couldn't hear them) F-bombs at me. So engaged was I with making sure I didn't get in trouble for driving poorly that I continued to drive poorly.

The rest of the way home went without incident. Oh, except for the fact that I'm sweating in my car when it's 60 degrees outside and I finally realize a mile from my house that I've had the heater on the whole trip.

I'm an excellent driver. I swear.

A glorious paradise on a weekday work day

noreply@blogger.com (Mark J. Lehman) — Mon, 09 Mar 2009 21:24:00 +0000

As soon as I stepped into the room, my eyes were filled with the sights of golfing on astro turf and oversized sports equipment, the splendor of giant playgrounds and rock walls, and tears of joy. I had to restrain myself from kicking off my shoes, running up the nearest ladder and sliding down the closest slide.

This was the beauty (and the torture) of the California Park convention in Santa Clara last week.

As I’ve said before, my new job is interesting and fun at times, but often torturous because I sit all day looking at pictures of kids having a blast on magnificent playgrounds and water slides and don’t get to enjoy any of it myself. Well, that wasn’t quite the case at the CPRS expo.

Though the day started with a two and half hour drive at 6 am down to Santa Clara, it quickly became much more interesting when I arrived at the convention and was greeted by my company’s booth. It was a small gazebo-like area, covered in SofTILE (rubber playground surfacing) and the highest quality turf. It had park benches and trash cans, a few large plastic playground peripherals, and even a giant dragon neck and head that spewed fog out of its nostrils. If we had some archers, catapults and a few flying buttresses, it would have almost resembled a castle.

Of course, most of the morning was spent schmoozing park and rec folks, getting the word out about our products, and doing lots of salesman-type activities. But as soon as lunchtime rolled around, I grabbed some free food and then let loose on the convention center. I skipped right over Baggo , a rehash of those old toss-the-bean-bag-through-the-hole carnival games, and went straight for the good stuff: the climbing wall.

Even with my fancy pants and my fancy pants shoes I scrambled up to the top to achieve maximum invigoration. After, my boss wanted to get back to our booth so we didn’t miss any customers, but I wasn’t having it. I needed more fun.

We found an awesome spinning carousel doohickey where people would grab the handles, run around to get some speed, and then enjoy the centrifugal forces lifting your feet of the ground, endowing temporary Superman qualities. So of course, when I saw that, I ran and jumped on. Then I promptly flew off and took a tumble on the heavenly softness of the fake grass and got up to do it all over again.

I still restrained myself and didn’t get too childish/childlike on all of the equipment. Of course, some of it looked more like torture devices than play structures anyway. If I’ve come away with one thing, it’s this: there’s a definite advantage to selling playground equipment. Just like anything else, you have to know your product in order to sell it, and to know playgrounds, you’ve gotta play.

Jesus is like heroin? What?

noreply@blogger.com (Mark J. Lehman) — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 05:13:00 +0000

It’s always a little unsettling when a white Dominican man starts talking like a drug dealer during a Catholic mass. Even if he is a priest. Scratch that—especially if he is a priest.

Fr. John Bowman (names have been changed to protect the fact that I don’t remember them) was visiting St. Mel Church over the weekend, so he got to do the sermon on Sunday. Of course, Bowman doesn’t sound very Dominican, or Latin at all, but that would be because he was a priest of the Dominican order. Most of the time it’s easy to tune out or sleep through the morning homily. Not with this guy. His voice boomed like a drill instructor giving an inaugural address. He went on for roughly 10 minutes about why everyone should spend “a little more quality time with your best friend, Jesus.”

Whatcha got there, Father?

Catholics believe in this thing called the “real presence,” as in when the priest holds up the holy Necco wafer and the bells ring, Catholics believe that it turns into Jesus. Not just symbolically; the belief is that that little cracker is Jesus himself. So what this Bowman guy was talking about was recruiting people to spend some time in the chapel, where a piece of Jesus is kept on display and has to be constantly accompanied by somebody (I guess because Jesus craves companionship like Rush Limbaugh craves attention).

“Find some time, and spend it with your good buddy, Jesus” Father tells us. And then tells us again. And again. Even with a booming voice, one can only hear the same thing so many times before it becomes white noise. Then he said something that grabbed some attention: “Re-up on Jesus!”

I’ve been watching a lot of reruns of “The Wire ” lately, and this phrase “re-up ” is used just about every episode. Typically it’s the at-risk youth peddling heroin on the corners of West Baltimore that are saying it. For example: “Yo, we short, we need a re-up” = “We’re out of our supply of heroin to sell. We need to restock our inventory.” So essentially, this old white priest was comparing Jesus to heroin.

But I guess I actually listened to that part, and it even made me think long and hard enough to want to write an entire post about it. So I guess if he was trying to spread awareness, he succeeded. Well done, Fr. Bowman, or whatever the heck your name was.

Now I just hope that this Jesus/drug comparison doesn’t go too far. I’d rather not see any religious groups cropping up with names like “Jonesing for Jesus.”

I feel like an old man

noreply@blogger.com (Mark J. Lehman) — Sat, 07 Feb 2009 06:33:00 +0000

And I don't mean in all the ways that it's awesome to be an old man.

I got a new job at a company I'd never heard of before that is a vendor for recreational systems. In other words, they sell and install playgrounds and water slides, among other things. Sounds great, right? Well... it's kind of what I imagine Hell might be like.

Don't get me wrong, the job is interesting. I'm learning all kinds of stuff about contracting and estimating, my boss is young and pretty friendly, and the pay is actually better than I was making at my last job after being there for two years. Plus there's the whole "the economy is dying, the sky is falling, you should be glad you even HAVE a job" jive talk that everyone keeps saying. Here's why this job bites.

I spend eight hours a day looking at pictures of little kids running around with huge smiles on their faces, playing on playgrounds that I could never have dreamed of when I was a kid. They've got "climbing adventures," rope swinging attachments, tunnels, slides, the works. I mean, some of this stuff looks like they're trying to recreate an Indiana Jones movie.

Don't even get me started on the water activities. They've got hoses, sprinklers, shower systems, slides - all the cool gizmos at water parks except for the really big stuff. And everyone in the pictures is laughing and splashing and playing along, having a gay old time.

And then there's me, wishing I was a kid again, or at least wishing I was on the playground, swinging and climbing and having a ball. Instead, I'm going to bed at 10 pm so I can be awake at 7 am to go sit at a desk in an 8' x 12' room and be tortured all day long.

And here's the icing on the cake: with the five minutes of my thirty minute lunch break when I wasn't eating, I found out there's shuffleboard in the break room.

My own little personal Hell.

(And yes, those pictures are actual products we sell, so if you're in the market for something like that, hit me up.)

More valentines for the loved and the lonely

noreply@blogger.com (Mark J. Lehman) — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 06:34:00 +0000

Unloving, uncaring, and oh-so-un-Hallmark-y valentines are back on www.misusingecards.com. There's a new one up every day until Valentine's Day, so check back often. Here's a sample:

And if you'd like, you can have new ones delivered straight to your e-mail. Try it, you'll like it.

Busting out the big one

noreply@blogger.com (Mark J. Lehman) — Mon, 26 Jan 2009 03:33:00 +0000

Not to worry; despite the title, this story will not be pornographic.

Senior year of college I was burned out. I had been working on finishing my thesis, applying to jobs for when I graduated, and just generally had had enough of school. Unfortunately, there was still one more final to study for: Modern Ireland. I was also Managing Editor of our school newspaper, and since we were in the midst of transitioning to next year’s team of editors, I had very little down time. Of course, due to the aforementioned burnout, I did not want to spend any of it studying when I could just as easily be spending it drinking and making out with my girlfriend.

The day came for the final, and I showed up with pen and blue book in hand. I don’t remember the exact essay question we were assigned, but I know that it had something to do with the establishment of religion in Ireland and how the Church of England was in conflict with Irish leaders about this. I had very little idea of what to say, but I practically had a B.A. in BS, so I started writing.

I was whizzing along, making stuff up but using lots of big words so it sounded legit, when all of the sudden it came to me. I started talking about those English folks, the establishmentarians, who wanted to impose the Church of England on the Irish as the national religion, then talked about the perspective of the Irish who opposed that—in other words, those who agreed with disestablishmentarianism. You can probably see where this is heading. I put a few more sentences together, and then dropped the bomb: antidisestablishmentarianism. This wasn’t just a hundred dollar word, this was basically a million dollar word, and I was sure it would redeem me for the rest of the garbage I was spewing forth into my essay.

Needless to say, the teacher ate it up, and I pulled off a ‘B+’. Not quite the ‘A’ I was hoping for, but probably two full letter grades higher than I would’ve gotten without my stroke of genius.

Bald, bold, or bull: a treatise on lies

noreply@blogger.com (Mark J. Lehman) — Wed, 21 Jan 2009 05:06:00 +0000

I grew up a soft-spoken child, the strong silent type who settled disagreements through action rather than lengthy discourse. However, somewhere along the line I became a bit of a wordsmith, enjoying dropping large and complicated phrases to make myself sound smarter and, partially, with the hope of attracting ladies with my huge... vocabulary.

That said, I came upon a phrase I enjoyed quite a bit: bald-faced lie. I don't know why, perhaps because it suggested that only completely bald men lied. In high school, I had a friend that also liked this phrase. The problem was he said "bull-faced lie."

My world was turned upside down. Admittedly, though, a bull-faced lie was even more fun to picture than a bald-faced one.

Years pass, and I continue using "bull-faced lie" with reckless abandon. Then, just like that, someone comes along and flips my world over again. Apparently, I hadn't just been wrong since high school, I had been wrong all my life. "It's not bull-faced lie," my friend tells me. "It's bold-faced lie."

"Not bald-faced lie, either?"

"Nope," she assures me, confidently. So, of course, I believed her. I thought the entire debacle was kind of funny, so decided to write a little story about it. Then, just moments ago when I started writing this, I thought I'd Google "bald-faced lie" to see if anyone else has ever had similar linguistic trouble. And if you hadn't guessed already, my world did another somersault.

Seems I was right all along. According to WikiAnswers...

The correct term is bald-faced, and refers to a face wihout whiskers. Beards were commonly worn by businessmen in the 18th and 19th century as an attempt to mask facial expressions when making business deals. Thus a bald-faced liar was a very good liar indeed, and was able to lie without the guilt showing on his face.

...though, apparently...

It's just the last 5 yrs or so that "bold" has come into usage. It refers to typeface. It is used metaphorically in speech. In the same way that a typesetter uses bold face type to highlight specific text and set it apart, a bold face lie stands out in such a way as to not be mistaken for the truth.

"Bull-faced lie" was only found on the Urban Dictionary, as an alternative to "bold-face lie."

To put all this lying business to rest, I did the old Google search result litmus test. Here are the results.

Bull-faced lie: 1,130 results.
Bold-faced lie: 79,500 results.
Bald-faced lie: 91,400 results.

We've got a winner. The way I was first taught was the right way, and everyone around me steered me wrong. I guess the moral of the story is: I'm smarter than everyone.

"I haven't eaten a mouse... yet": Part 2 of Day 1 at the nature center

noreply@blogger.com (Mark J. Lehman) — Sun, 18 Jan 2009 23:34:00 +0000

This is the story about my first day volunteering at the Effie Yeaw Nature Center in Carmichael, CA. You can read the first part here.

After the snake cages, we make a plate of food for Marcie the possum. “She’s been getting a little chunky lately, so we’ve put her on a diet.” Marcie’s diet actually looks pretty good, besides the portion of dog food. She’s got some eggs, some grapes, some blueberries and some apple, all in equal 1/5 of a plate portions. I don’t get to actually feed her, though. “One of our volunteers startled her once by accident and Marcie bit her hand. She was wearing a leather glove, but it was still pretty deep,” Neil explains.

Finally, it’s time to dry off the thawed rodents that we pulled out of the freezer earlier. Neil dumps the hot water out of the bucket, then dumps the animals onto a towel, and we each grab them one at a time to towel off individually. I look down at the baby mouse in my hand, rubbing his belly like he’s an old friend, and can’t help but feel a little sorry for him, knowing that in the next 20 minutes he’ll be making his new home in the belly of a large owl. After all, growing up with a pet guinea pig named Hobbes and a pet hamster named Spikette, I’ve always been much more of gerbil guy than a bird dude.

On our way to the raptor enclosures, Neil and I make some small talk. “So you’re married? You’re pretty young, was that recently?” I ask. “Yeah, about a year now. I wore an orange tuxedo to the wedding.” I choke for a second, and ask, “How’d she feel about that?” Without missing a beat, he tells me, “Oh, it was her idea. She suggested that when I told her I wanted to wear the T-shirt with the tuxedo painted on it.”

Naturally.

We went inside the cages, and Neil turns to me with a smile and says, “Check this out.” He walks up to a small white box attached near the top of the wall, whistles, and sings, “Hey Luuuuuunaaaaa....” Then he takes a small black mouse, waves it in front of the small entrance hole, and makes a few kissing noises. Suddenly, a flash of white, and the mouse is gone. All that is left are the sounds made by a barn owl’s beak crunching into mouse bones.

“Pretty awesome, huh?” Neil laughs.

We feed the other birds, and then I wait outside the screech owl’s cage because “she’s very territorial, and she’ll try to attack you as soon as you come in if you’re not careful.” Neil heads inside to give her food, and remarks, “she’s nesting right now, but she’s infertile, so anytime she has an egg we take it and use it for an exhibit or food for the possum.” He wrestles around in her nest for a second, then comes out with an egg about half the size of a chicken’s.

We took the egg back to the animal care area, and Neil says, “I’m going to hollow this out to use for education.” I’ve never seen someone hollow out an egg before, so that was an experience itself when I saw him poke a hole in each end of the egg and start blowing as hard as he can. “It doesn’t taste too bad, actually. I’ve tried most of the stuff here: crickets, kibble... I haven’t had mouse yet, though.” I look at him for a second to see if he’s joking, and when I realize he’s not, I don’t really know what to say except to mumble something like “oh ok.”

I watch him finish blowing egg out of the shell, then he says “Alright, well I think we’re done for the day. Think you might want to come back?”

With such a great story from just one day of work, how could I not?

Farting snakes and frozen mice make for a strange morning

noreply@blogger.com (Mark J. Lehman) — Fri, 16 Jan 2009 15:14:00 +0000

The first thing we do is defrost the mice. This involves pulling the Ziploc bags of frozen mice and birds out of the freezer, grabbing a couple handfuls, and tossing them in a bucket full of hot water, letting them float around and intermingle as they thaw.

It’s my first day as a volunteer at the Effie Yeaw Nature Center in Carmichael, CA, and I’m already using paper towels to rub the water off of dead rodents. Why do I have to dry off the mice? Apparently the birds of prey are picky and they don’t like their food wet. I can’t really blame them—I wouldn’t eat a wet mouse either.

The Effie Yeaw Nature Center is an environmental and cultural education center that houses a variety of rescue animals, from snakes to turles to owls to birds of prey. Every day there are groups of schoolchildren coming through on tour, learning about the animals and their place in nature, and coming to understand how to be better citizens of planet Earth.

That seems to be the goal, at least. What I remember taking away from my visit to the center as a small child was how awesome it was to watch a bird tear apart a mouse. Luckily, as I realized during my day volunteering, that feeling doesn’t go away.

After prepping the raptors’ food, we cleaned some of the snake cages. The first cage was missing its snake, who was out for a visit to one of the local schools. I got to clean this one, and I learned that cleaning a snake cage is no more exciting than cleaning anything else anywhere ever. The second cage needed a special treatment from the animal care specialist, Neil. So while he was cleaning, I would be picking up the 3.5 foot long king snake named Ringo and making friends.

“Are you afraid of snakes at all?” Neil asks me. “Only that ones that can kill you with one bite,” I respond casually.

I then learn that most snake bites, if in a somewhat timely manner, won’t kill you. In fact, rattlesnake bites often don’t even contain venom. They bite if they are surprised or threatened, and often just as a warning. “It’s the baby rattlesnakes you have to worry about,” Neil tells me. “They can’t control how to use their venom yet, so they get a hold and just pump everything they’ve got into you.”

Delightful. Maybe that’s why nobody coos over baby snakes like they do over baby everything else.

Apparently, Ringo is nesting right now, so Neil is fixing up her cage just the way she likes it so she’ll lay some eggs. “She’s infertile, but the eggs will make good exhibits when on display,” informs Neil. “In fact, let’s see if she’s got anything cooking.” He then proceeds to poke around her belly, squeezing here and there, until he wrinkles his nose and says “Aw, Ringo. Why would you do that?” I assume it’s some kind of fart, but Neil says it’s called “musking.” It’s a release of some kind of smelly liquid, “as a defense mechanism. They only do it when they feel threatened,” Neil assures me. Except that moments ago he told me they only bite when they feel threatened, and since this one is obviously threatened, it’s time to move on.

To be continued. Look for the next post about salamanders eating crickets, a bird ripping up a mouse and a man blowing owl egg out of its shell.

A bucket of tiny balls and one big mistake

noreply@blogger.com (Mark J. Lehman) — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 22:33:00 +0000

For late April, the stifling mist and general sogginess of the weather was somewhat uncharacteristic. So naturally, when my friend Asa asked if I wanted to go to the driving range, I said “Sure!”

Past golf experiences have not exactly motivated me to take up the sport again. However, Asa turns out to be the kind of friend who, when he decides he wants to do something, he does it, no matter what anyone says. As his friend and therefore accomplice on most of those activities, I was lucky that he was also the kind of friend who can make even the most mundane activities entertaining, such as hitting a tiny ball a hundred feet or more into a vast expanse of grass.

We roll into Royal Oaks Golf Course parking lot and head into the pro shop. Since we’re just high school students, neither very serious about the game, we don’t have clubs, but Royal Oaks has a nice little deal where you give them your driver’s license and they let you test drive up to three different clubs. The idea, I think, was that if you like the club you’re using, you come back and purchase it. We never liked that idea because we didn't have $200 to throw away on a stick of titanium.

Asa would go for the drivers and the woods, most likely because he has some kind of small man syndrome, always hitting as far as possible. That’s also probably why he has such a lousy short game, but that’s neither here nor there. I enjoyed grabbing random clubs and picking them by how cool their names were. Ping was a favorite. So was Cobra. We grabbed our respective favorites—he with three of the biggest drivers he could find, me with a wedge, 7-iron and 5-wood—and headed out to the open range.

Now I’m not exactly Tom Lehman out on the grassy knolls, so I’m usually asking a few questions about the best way to use the tiny stick to hit the tiny ball more than a tiny distance. First swing: 5-wood – swing – THWACK – Plop – right in the mud, 15 feet Northeast of my current position.

“Choke up a little bit on it,” Asa tells me, then hauls off and whacks one a mile and a half. “And don’t choke this time.”

“Don’t choke up on it?”

“Choke up on the club.”

“But you just said not to.”

“No, I said don’t choke.”

“That’s what I said you said.”

Hesitation, then a long sigh, then “Man, do I hate you.” Then – WHACK – another four miles.

I did a little stretching, a few windmills to loosen up, then I did some shoulder rolls, let my head do a few circles around my neck, put the club out in front, took a wider stance, did one last little shimmy shake, and went into deep focus mode. Since it mostly just involved closing my eyes, taking a couple deep breaths, and staring fiercely at the ball then at the 400 yard sign in the distance, deep focus mode didn’t really do anything other than delay the inevitable. But what the heck, I had time to kill.

After a lot of breathing and staring, I brought the 5-wood back, paused for just a moment, and then swung it mightily forward with the strength of ten Tigers.

And boy would that ball have launched out of there if I had hit it.

“Swing and a miss, strike two,” said the older gentleman to my right.

“Yeah, I’ll get it though,” I explained to him, as though he cared or believed me.

“Oh I know you will,” he said, grinning back, a knowing spark in his eye. I could tell he was one of those guys that if you prompted him, he would go on for hours with stories about golf, or war, or sales. The kind of guy you’ve met a million times and places before, with a million different faces. The kind of guy you wouldn’t mind meeting another million times. I had started to get a bit of a confidence boost from the friendly old guy, until—

“Except you won’t, because you suck.” Then – WHACK – and Asa’s ball was gone, halfway around the world in three seconds.

“Whatever dude, I’m gonna get a good one before the day is done,” I told Asa, defiantly. “Just watch.”

I got another ball from the bucket and teed it up. “This is it. This is the one. I can feel it.” I squared up to it, took a deep breath, and swung that club like I had something to prove.

“Daaaaammmmnnn!” I heard from Asa, and if my hands weren’t still vibrating with the club, I would have been swelling with pride. As it was, I could tell something went slightly awry, because my hands have never vibrated like this, and the club suddenly felt a lot lighter. I saw, not quite to the 100 yard sign, my ball coming down for a landing. Then, shortly after, a stumpy brown thing landed with a splash in the mud, about 120 yards out.

“Oh man, you are so busted! Do you know how much those things cost?” Asa was incredulous, but still laughing hysterically. All I could do was stare at the end of my club, where instead of a 5-wood there was a splintered shaft. “That was so awesome! The club went farther than the ball. Nice hit, bro!”

Seeing as how it was a fairly expensive club borrowed from the Royal Oaks Clubhouse, I wasn’t finding this funny just yet.

In between spurts of Asa’s laughter, I’m running through options in my head. I could just jet out of there; no, they have my driver’s license. Well, I could always get a new license; no, they take a couple weeks, and I’ve got to drive myself to school every day. I could blame Asa...

That’s a possibility.

I finally just decided to be a man and tell them what happened. Luckily, the attractive clubhouse girl smiled and said that this sort of thing “happens all the time.” Somehow I doubt that, but was too happy not to have to pay for the club to realize that she might have been flirting a bit. She sent out one of the groundskeepers in a caged cart to look for the club head, but after driving around for about 20 minutes, he came back with the conclusion that it had been lost in the mud, and they’d find it eventually.

After it was resolved and I had my license back, I took a seat behind Asa and watched him hit a couple more into the clouds.

“You’re not going to hit any more?” he asked.

“Well, it’s clear that I don’t know my own strength, so for the safety of myself and those around me, I don’t think it’s a good idea.”

He shook his head at me. “Please.” As always, in true Asa fashion, our mundane rainy April afternoon activity had turned into something quite a bit more exciting than it ever should have been.

Then – CRACK – and Asa’s last ball was headed out of the galaxy.

A simple pleasure dashed to the ground.

noreply@blogger.com (Mark J. Lehman) — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 22:29:00 +0000

They came last Spring, just as the girls were beginning to wear their Spanish-style skirts and pastel-colored clothing, and warm weather lust began to descend on everyone. I tore open the package with zest, as though the contents were the remedy to an incurable disease I possessed.

Glorious. If one had seen my face at that moment, one would know what happiness looks like.

I kicked off my sandals and slipped my new shoes on my feet. They were snug, but that was expected. I wore them the whole rest of the day, and even though they hurt my feet incredibly, I still felt like I was walking on sunshine, and even sang the song in my head most of the rest of the day.

Life continued thus for a fortnight or two.

Then, one hazy afternoon, I was shaken violently from my reverie. Strolling down my usual Wednesday path, I happened upon a fairly well-dressed young man. We both looked each other in the eye for a moment, then I glanced down at the flash of white coming from below his ankles. I felt his glance on my feet as well.

It can’t be. He had my shoes.

The coolest shoes I’d ever seen, both because they look sweet and because I had never seen anyone with them before, and now, just one week after receiving mine, this guy had them too. I looked back at his face just as his eyes moved from my feet to my face. I saw in his eyes the same emotion that was surely in mine: sadness, anger, and surprise. We both looked away, quickened our pace, and quietly hoped that the other would leave the country and never come back.

One thing we both knew for sure: we could never be friends.

Microsoft is definitely the devil.

noreply@blogger.com (Mark J. Lehman) — Mon, 05 Jan 2009 03:27:00 +0000

WARNING: The following contains some extreme nerdspeak. Proceed with caution.

I've moved steadily away from Microsoft products over the last few years because I've gotten fed up with their lack of ease, constant crashing, and general ineffectiveness at the tasks I like to accomplish. Yet, like a vindictive ex, Microsoft keeps finding ways to toy with me and make my life difficult.

Example 1
I don't do much video editing, but I've been doing a lot lately because of my Christmas present (which you can read about in another post). Having only really used iMovie to edit video before, and that came pre-installed on the Mac at work, I figured the pre-installed Windows Movie Maker would do just fine. Shyeah, and monkeys might fly out of my butt.

Not only is it incredibly slow (which I admit may be more my computer's fault than the program's), it freezes up every other time I use it, has very few options for titles and file types, and is just generally confusing in its layout and structure.

Example 2
Vista sucks. Mom got a new laptop, and since she knows how to check her e-mail and write something in Word and that's about it, I've been setting up her computer for her. I had heard people complain about Vista before, but I typically attribute people's complaints to the majority of people being whiny-complainy-pants and not to anything being wrong with whatever they're complaining about. However, in Vista's case, I'm joining the whiny-complainy-pants team.

Everything about it bothers me. They've changed the menus around enough to confuse, but not enough to actually add any functionality. They've created this annoying pop-up message that basically asks you anytime you do anything "Do you want to allow the program you are trying to access to run?" Yes, idiot computer, otherwise I would not have tried to access it.

Solutions
I've been trying over the past months to discontinue using illegally-downloaded software such as programs that rhyme with Schmotoshop and Schmoffice, and I've been pretty successful with GIMP and OpenOffice.org. Does anyone know of a free or open-source video editing software that works well? But as far as Vista is concerned, it's mom's computer so there's not much I can do other than stay the hell away. I should write an angry letter, as I am apt to do when feeling scorned, but I'll probably just take the passive-aggressive route and start using Linux instead. That Ubuntu program looks pretty suave.

What a sham.

noreply@blogger.com (Mark J. Lehman) — Sat, 03 Jan 2009 05:03:00 +0000

A long while back, I signed up for this website called InboxDollars. It offered $5 free just for signing up, said that you could earn money reading e-mails and completing surveys, and basically sounded like easy money for looking at advertising. At the time I was bored and didn't have many hobbies going on besides drinking and an occasional trip somewhere to drink in another city with different people.

Granted, I figured it would be a bit tedious, but I soon found out that the e-mails I had to read paid out about 1 cent each, the surveys were 50 cents to $1, and you couldn't request a check until you'd hit $30. Still, it took very little time so I figured "what the heck."

As you can probably guess, it did not go well. I tried doing a couple of surveys, usually got about 10 minutes into them only to have an error come back to me explaining "We're sorry, but you don't fit the demographic needed for this survey." After a few times I just gave up on the surveys, but kept punching in those e-mails and racking up the pennies.

Finally, nearly a year and a half later, I've made it to $30, so when I go to cash out, here's the message I get:

Two whole months. You MUST be kidding me. What a SHAM.

So, the moral of the story is "If you think someone will actually pay you decent money to read e-mails, then I guess you're as gullible as I was." (Yeah, I know, not very impactful, but true.)

I resolve to start updating this again.

noreply@blogger.com (Mark J. Lehman) — Thu, 01 Jan 2009 18:51:00 +0000

Happy New Year, folks. And happy holidays to those folks who didn't get an ecard.

I'm back in the U.S.A. It's been an incredibly smooth transition so far, especially since it's the holidays and I've been indulging myself on all the foods I've missed (sausage balls, rice krispie treats, etc.).

I haven't posted anything since I've gotten back partly because I was spending time with the fam, and partly because I've been playing with one of my Christmas presents: Diamond VC500 One Touch Video Capture Device. It's been a goal of mine for the past year or so to try to scan in the best of our old photos and upload old home videos to the web to create a living history of our family. And yes, I know, I'm a nerd. Deal with it.

I've already got a lot of our old pictures online. For example:

Now I'm working on videos. Here's a couple gems I've finished so far.

My brother's 5th birthday party with our extended family (the tiny round blond kid stumbling around is me).

Gymnastics lessons when I was 4. Yes, I did gymnastics and no, it wasn't my choice. Although I do recall they had a huge trampoline that was amazing. Something similar will be part of my dream home one day.

Hopefully everyone else is enjoying their presents as much as I am enjoying mine.

Lehman Family Christmas letter

noreply@blogger.com (Mark J. Lehman) — Sat, 20 Dec 2008 21:07:00 +0000

Originally written December 8.
Yesterday was a good day. Woke up when I felt like it; opened Christmas presents with my fiancée Ellen; lounged around all day munching candy, listening to Christmas carols and doing a puzzle; had the traditional Christmas dinner of spaghetti carbonara; made and ate an entire batch of chocolate chip cookies; and fell asleep watching “It’s a Wonderful Life.”
“But it’s not yet December 25!” you exclaim. “This is madness!”
Madness? THIS. IS. CHRISTMAS!
As you may have realized, I’ve been re-watching the movie “300” and enjoying the story of the ragtag band of Spartans taking on the hordes of Persians trying to conquer them. Though they ultimately lost the battle, it is the struggle against a seemingly insurmountable force that makes the combat so entertaining. That, and the seething badassedness of King Leonidas and his warriors. For the Lehmans, 2008 proved a similarly difficult task, but you’ll be happy to know we emerged victorious.

You may be wondering why I’m celebrating Christmas before Christmas. I could tell you it’s because I’ve been living in Germany from October until December 20, but then you’d just ask why I’m living in Germany, so let me explain by telling you about my year. I spent as much of ’08 as possible staying out of Los Angeles, my disdain for the traffic, the people, and even the constant sunshine getting the better of me. Through my job as a supervisor with SkyWest Airlines, it cost literally nothing to fly, so February I went to Orlando, March I went to Thailand, April was Phoenix, May I saw Vegas, July I outdid myself with Salt Lake City then Dallas then Des Moines, and August found me in Colorado for our family vacation (more on that later). So when October came, I decided it was time for a break, quit my job, and moved to Germany.

Okay, so it wasn’t that simple. Ellen got a Fulbright scholarship to teach English in a little town near the Swiss border called Meersburg, so I took the opportunity to live out here until the end of the year with almost no expenses and even fewer commitments. We’ve taken a couple short trips to Vienna and Slovakia, as well as day trips throughout southern Germany, but for the most part I’ve been working on independent writing and projects. For more on that, check out misusingecards.blogspot.com. But right before Germany, I flew up to Portland and asked Ellen to marry me, to which she of course said “Hell yes.” To victory!
To save up for my life abroad, Daniel let me crash on his couch for the summer, effectively cutting my cost of living by about a grand. Plus, it gave me the chance to see how the other half lives. He still works at WaMu, he’s still going to school for his Master in Psychology, and he’s still surfing, despite a small mishap where his board attacked him and gashed open his face. But he just shouted, “Nobody makes me bleed my own blood!” and got back on it. Some new things he’s doing: worrying about whether or not he’ll still be working at WaMu tomorrow; preparing to do his practicum for school, meaning actual psychology stuff like “it’s obvious you’re subconsciously in love with your dog and this love is manifesting itself in the brightly-colored ties you wear”; and accompanying me to the great state of Iowa for a visit with our old friend Becky, where we drank beer out of Das Boot and saw a Moose on the Loose (it’s exactly what you think it is, as long as you think it’s a store full of Midwestern doodads).
It wouldn’t be a year in the life of Daniel without some risky behavior, so in September, he and I drove up north to Whitney Portal, where we met up with Dave (dad), Roger (uncle) and Dennis Reibold (friend) and hiked all the way up to the 14,505 ft summit of Mt. Whitney, the tallest peak in the lower 48. It was breathtaking, truly. We could barely breathe. Then just a week later, Daniel took me hang gliding for my 24th birthday at Dockweiler Beach in LA, and we ran up and down hills with wings attached, trying desperately to fly. Each time Daniel gripped the glider, and each time something went slightly awry. Finally, the last attempt: his hands were steady, his aim—perfect! And by the end, we each caught at least 10 feet of air for at least 5 seconds.

By now you must be wondering: did Dave make it down off the mountain alive? Surprisingly, yes, and so did Roger and Dennis. For a few old fogies, they really held their own as mountain men, especially considering that only 1 out of every 3 people who attempt to climb to the top of Whitney don’t make it. (Don’t make it as in can’t get to the top, not as in die.) We each just put one foot in front of the other, trudging every step of the way, even when darkness came and we were still on the mountain. But it wasn’t fear that gripped us, only a heightened sense of things. And yes, I may have dropped in that statistic just to brag, but can you blame me?
Aside from several practice hikes, Dad spent the rest of ’08 in the usual manner: deaconing, real estate brokering, and music group singing with Michelle (mom). He took a few trips, including one with Michelle and I to Orlando for the annual Century 21 convention, and we enjoyed an air boat ride through an alligator infested swamp and a day at the Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow (or EPCOT, for you philistines out there). He also celebrated being cancer free for two years, and he took on a post as spiritual advisor for St. Vincent De Paul Council of Northern California. In his position, he is sure to usher in a future brighter than anything we can imagine.
With their traveling buddies, the Reibolds, Dave and Michelle went to Arizona in April to see our good friend Corry, and I tagged along for a couple days. We all went to see feathered dinosaurs at the Mesa Natural History museum, then I flew back for work and the rest of them did all the stuff I didn’t care about like botanical gardens and Sedona. A couple months later, Michelle met up with me in Salt Lake City because I had a free hotel room for a work conference, so she spent a couple days exploring and we enjoyed some good old fashioned Mormon culture. And because they have a million timeshares and had to use one up, Dave and Michelle just spent a week in San Francisco pretending they haven’t been there a bunch of times by riding cable cars, taking a Bay Cruise, and visiting Golden Gate Park, Fisherman’s Wharf, the Ferry Building, Pier 39, the Aquarium, China Town, Union Square, and St. Mary’s Cathedral.

Other than excessive travel, mom kept herself busy trying to stay afloat in the midst of real estate craziness, but with her “never retreat, never surrender” attitude and the help of His Holiness the Deacon Dave, she managed to close enough deals to keep putting food on the table. Since real estate wasn’t so busy, she also took the opportunity to get elected to the Board of Directors for the Sacramento Association of Realtors, as well as be reappointed to the Deacon Advisory Council for a second 3 year term. Who really knows what either of those do, but it’s important to note that she, too, is sure to usher in a future brighter than anything we can imagine.
Of course, what would a year be without a Lehman family vacation? Worthless, that’s what. Last December, just before Christmas, we all flew down to Cancun for a week full of ancient Mayan ruins and deadly ball games, aquatic zoos with pooping pumas (pictures available online), and a tour guide named Jesus that constantly reminded us to “trust in Jesus.”

But that was last year’s vacation that just didn’t make it into the newsletter before deadline. This year, we stayed closer to home by getting Rocky Mountain high in Breckenridge, Colorado. We drank some brews at the Coors factory in Golden and did a lot of hiking. Dave, Daniel and I drove out to Quandary Peak, where we did what we were trained to do, what we were bred to do, what we were born to do. Three hours and several meetings with mountain goats later, we reached the top, and enjoyed the view that only 14,265 ft can afford. I couldn’t get an entire week off, so I had to fly back early and missed the second hike of 12000 ft up to Black Powder Pass. I can’t imagine anything being fun that doesn’t involve the possibility of blacking out from lack of oxygen and falling thousands of feet to one’s death, but the pictures made it seem like Dave, Michelle and Daniel had a good time. So all in all, Colorado was good to us.

And that’s our story for 2008. We faced some challenges, but only the hard, only the strong may call themselves Lehmans, and we triumphed in the end. As for me, I’ll be headed home December 21 just in time to enjoy my second Christmas of the month, then the 25th I get to have a third. With three days of gifts and celebration, I feel like I’m three-eighths of the way to becoming a Jew. However many days of festivities you and your family have, we Lehmans hope they’re everything you wish for this season. And if there’s one piece of advice I can leave you with, it’s this: Prepare for glory!
Love,
Dave, Michelle, Daniel and Mark (me)
P.S. For Michelle’s website, visit www.fairoakshomes.net. Dave and Daniel can be reached via e-mail at deaconlehman@gmail.com and ddlehman@gmail.com, respectively. And we are such a high-tech family we can all be found on Facebook and LinkedIn.

Adios, Deutschland.

noreply@blogger.com (Mark J. Lehman) — Fri, 19 Dec 2008 21:08:00 +0000

Oops, I mean "Auf wiedersehen." I guess I learned nothing here.

Just kidding, I picked up a bit here and there.

I leave tomorrow morning early to take the bus to the train to the plane to Dublin, Ireland, where I stay until Sunday morning and fly out to San Francisco and get in just in time for Christmas with the Lehman extended family.

If I make it through this weekend alive and in one piece, I'll write observations on my final days in Germany.

A nice farewell from Europe

noreply@blogger.com (Mark J. Lehman) — Thu, 18 Dec 2008 08:37:00 +0000

My time here is almost up, as I leave on Saturday to head back home in time for Christmas, and it seems Europe has decided to say "good riddance" by making my money worth so much less. When I arrived three months ago, the exchange rate was around $1.25 = 1 euro, and it stayed pretty steadily there until last week, when it started rising. Since then, it's been going up by about 3 cents per day, and today it's at $1.44 = 1 euro.

Okay Europe, I get it, I'm not wanted here anymore. Geez.

For more on how much the dollar sucks right now, read Bloomberg.

Merry Christmas eCards!

noreply@blogger.com (Mark J. Lehman) — Tue, 16 Dec 2008 19:04:00 +0000

Okay, so maybe not so "merry," but funny, I think. Here's a sample from my other site, Misusing eCards:

And my personal favorite:

It hurts so good

noreply@blogger.com (Mark J. Lehman) — Mon, 15 Dec 2008 17:04:00 +0000

I just finished doing 51 straight pushups, and I’m only halfway to my goal.

When I arrived in Germany a couple months back, I was determined to improve on some areas of my life that had been lacking, one of which was exercise. So I started doing some pushups, doing my own routine and feeling good. Then I heard from my friend Mindy about this thing called the Hundred Pushups Challenge, and I knew it was my destiny.

I’ve just finished Week 5 of a 6-week program, and at the end of this week, I’m supposed to be able to do 100 pushups in a row. Somehow, I don’t see that happening, since it’s taken me 5 weeks to go from 25 pushups to 50. But if it takes another 5 or even 10 weeks, I’m going to hit that 100 goal.

My pushups goal might be easier now that I’ve stopped doing my other exercise: the stairs workout.

There are about 100 stairs total, right around the corner from our apartment here, and at one point I was going up and down those bad boys about 16 times in a 30-minute session. It was quite a workout, plus I got the added bonus of having all the German people using them to get from the bottom to the top or vice versa give me weird looks. Three months into my stay, though, I’m used to weird looks from Germans.

I took this little video the other day to further illustrate the magnitude of this task:

Sadly, since it’s been snowing and raining, the steps have iced over and are basically a death trap, so I’ve discontinued that part of my workout.

To sum up, when I get out of bed in the morning, something new hurts every time.

(The music in the video, if you're wondering, is a friend from high school, Eric, playing the theme song from the old Nintendo game "Mike Tyson's Punch Out." Download it at http://ericslittleshack.tripod.com/.)

A VERY lazy Sunday

noreply@blogger.com (Mark J. Lehman) — Sun, 14 Dec 2008 23:00:00 +0000

So much so that I pulled out my old Apple //e emulator and played some Oregon Trail. I decided to be a carpenter; being a banker afford way too much money and not enough difficulty, but the life of a farmer is harsh and often unsanitary. Me being an impatient man, I bought the maximum oxen I could (18) and was plugging along at 30 miles a day.

Just after crossing the first two rivers, a thief came in the night and stole 16 oxen. 16! How could all five of us in my party have missed the sounds of 16 oxen leaving camp?! Well, our pace slowed considerably and a few of us came down with some nasty diseases (Buddha got typhoid, Jesus got the measles). Then Ellen caused all kinds of problems when she broke her arm, then got lost for 4 days, then broke her leg, then got cholera, then got lost for another 5 days. You'll be happy to know, though, that we all made it alive and in fair health to the beautiful Willamette Valley.

Since I was in a nostalgic mood, I did a quick Google search and found another classic: Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego. I had a few missteps when first I caught up to the thief and had forgotten to issue a warrant, but got my groove back and was busting heads quick. However, something I noticed disturbed me. The detective (me, I guess) sleeps from 11pm until 9am. It seems the game makers were trying to teach kids that 10 hours of sleep is very important, even when on the hunt for a major criminal who just stole the elevator out of the Eiffel Tower (I’m not making this up).

Lesson learned. I, however, would rather put in the extra effort and guard the safety of all other famous monuments’ elevators.

It's like a drug.

noreply@blogger.com (Mark J. Lehman) — Sat, 13 Dec 2008 19:41:00 +0000

I don't even remember how I found this game, but every time I use the internet now I find myself on their site, playing it.

It's called Flood-It. Instructions from the site:

The object of the game is to flood the whole board with one color in less than 25 steps. You start from the top left corner and progress by selecting one of the colored balls on the left. When you change your current area color, every adjacent square with the same color also changes, that way you can flood other areas on the board.

Give it a try, see how addicting it is.

Frozen knees and the best Christmas present ever

noreply@blogger.com (Mark J. Lehman) — Fri, 12 Dec 2008 18:47:00 +0000

The snow continued to fall overnight, covering the landscape in another couple inches of fresh powder, and Ellen and I took advantage. But before I detail our adventures, let me relay a short story to you of a budding architect and a horrible (but also maybe brilliant) Christmas present.

When I was about 10 years old, I decided it was time that I started giving my extended family Christmas presents. Having no stable source of income other than a meager $3 a week allowance, I found the most economical place to shop would the the old 98 Cent Clearance Center, where everything was 98 cents. (I believe they’ve since been bought out by the dollar tree, where everything costs $1. Inflation is tough.)

The woman in the family all got lovely 98 cent earrings, and the men got anything from mugs to cassette tapes of awful music, and everyone feigned gratefulness. However, my two cousins I idolized, so I wanted to make something special for them.

One cousin, Todd, had been attending the US Military Academy at West Point, so I took a pioneer wagon that I had made out of popsicle sticks in cub scouts, painted it camouflage, and then led him on a treasure hunt to find it. When he finally did, he certainly had little idea of what to say, but acted like it was the best gift in the world and was able to fool me.

I felt bad, though, because I only had one popsicle stick creation and two cousins. So, for my cousin Jeff, I took the remaining popsicle sticks and made the best possible structure: a wall. Of course, even my 10-year-old mind knew a popsicle stick wall wasn’t much of a Christmas present unless it was marketed correctly, so I painted in large red letters on it “The Wall 2000.”

You can probably guess that he loved it; so much so, in fact, that he still talks about it as the best present he’s ever gotten. (A close second is another of my masterpieces: a beer can wrapped with a home-printed label saying “can of whupass.”)

So without further ado, I present “The Wall 3000.”

Sadly, because there were only about 5 inches of snow, we had to resort to trick photography. Here’s how high “The Wall 3000” is.

* * *

We also had another baby. Looks like our snowman has a new baby sister.

They grow up so fast, don’t they?

noreply@blogger.com (Mark J. Lehman) — Fri, 12 Dec 2008 00:21:00 +0000

A few weeks ago, Ellen and I had a baby.

A baby snowman, that is. Then the sun came out and our little tyke took off and headed someplace where it was colder so he could survive. Naturally, we were a bit sad.

Today, however, was a splendid day, because our little guy came back to us, full grown!

We only got to spend a short time with him, as he is heading off to France to strike out on his own and pursue the arts. Here he is dressed up in his French beret with proud dad:

When mom went to give him a hug goodbye, he actually got so choked up that he vomited on himself. Poor fella.

We wish him the best of luck, and next time we see him, he might even have a wife!