new fangled machinery

So a few months ago, The Deistette and I had the AC die at the house. What a nightmare. I don’t know how people lived here in Houston before air conditioning.

Well, we had a guy come out and he said the fan motor was dead. I was really hoping it would be something easy because I barely had the 60 bucks for the service call.

He said he could replace it for 750 bucks. I felt my butt pucker.

But…
(of course there’s a but)
But… although the fan motor would be new, more than likely as old as the entire unit was (26 years old) it was just a matter of time (a short amount of time) before other stuff on the unit would die. A relay here, a switch there, a thinga-ma-bob here, a whutzit there. He said when stuff started breaking down it would probably cost another good 700 or 800 bucks. Again my butt puckered. Had I been in prison I’d be the belle of the ball!

He said for just a little more money I could get a brand new unit. Well, like I said I barely had the 60 bucks for the service call so I told him I’d have to wait.

My mom got wind of my predicament (thanks to my brother) and so she came to the rescue. She doesn’t really have the money but she said she’d get by.

Mumma is awesome! Thanks be to Mumma!, she who is most awesome!  A pic of Mumma from a post last year.

We got our AC replaced, did a happy dance, sent her thank you card and let her know The Little Man would be happy not have heat rash anymore.

So fast forward to last night.

The service tech from the AC company came by unexpectedly and said he came by to replace a vent on the unit. I asked him about the heater and where the pilot light was on the new unit. We had wanted to turn on the heater once or twice lately but hadn’t been able to.

The nights and mornings have been unusually cool down here on the Gulf Coast Plains for those of us who grew up here and have thinned-out blood. For me 50 degrees was feeling pretty cold.

The guy looked at me like I was some kind of moron and said you don’t have a pilot light. He could see the look of confusion quite easily that I was trying to hide. He said, “well, you see this is a brand new unit. It has electronic ignition that fires up the gas for the heat exchanger.”

I felt like those old timers who say stuff like, “What! Whatdya mean you can put a card in this machine and get money out. It’s called a what?… an ATM?”

Or…

“What? Put paper in this machine and it will send a copy all the way across town? What’s this thing called?… a Fax machine?”

Yeah… in my head I was actually thinking, “What the hell are you talking about! It doesn’t have a pilot light?!? Electronic ignition!”

What the hell will they think of next.

[Deist heads out to lunch and thinks to himself, the next thing you know they'll be talking about cars that run on water or engines that run on perpetual motion and magnets. ]

unlearned behavior

I remember when Little Fawn (that’s my daughter’s nickname) was a baby she did something similar to what this kid does on this video. This one has been making the rounds on the internet so I’m sure by just seeing the pic you know it’s that little baby that starts dancing to Beyoncé’s video.

She’s not the only baby I’ve seen do this. I remember my ex-wife’s niece did this very same thing when she was just learning to stand. She crawled her way over to the coffee table and stood up to watch whatever music video was playing and began bouncing and moving her legs. I thought it was pretty amazing. I mean no one taught her this. No one showed her to move to music. She just did it.

I’m convinced that it’s something about being human. I think it’s part of what makes us human. When we hear music we move our body… even if it’s just a little tap of the toe, strumming our fingers or bobbing our head.

OR

what this guy and his buddy do at some poor girl’s quinceañera. Be advised do not have coffee or soda in your mouth when you click play. Your monitor will thank you later.

C’mon LB!!!… Feel the music honey! Dance!!
(my friend Lazy Buddhist claims she doesn’t like to dance but I know she’s tapping her toe a little as she watches this video)

Santa’s home to be underwater

I listen to AM talk radio every now and then and one thing I’ve noticed about the very conservative hosts is that when it comes to the environment… namely, global warming, they all claim it’s a scam, a fear tactic, and one guy here in Houston who has the afternoon drive time slot on one of the stations calls it, “silly.”

They say Al Gore made his “little movie” touting global warming but didn’t use real science in his claims. They’ll say the weather is cyclical and that a degree or two of variance is ridiculous to get alarmed over.

I don’t know man… I just don’t see how they can say things like that when you see stuff like in the video below. I can’t remember where I heard or saw this… maybe it was Al Gore’s movie, that global warming won’t mean the earth will get hot. Global warming will cause us to get cold.

I guess we’ll know for certain if the North Pole actually disappears during the summer one year, The Great Conveyor Belt just stops and things get a little chilly.

Tell me what you think. I think we’re screwed.

Happy Diwali y’all

From Wikipedia:

Diwali or Dīpāvali (Sanskrit: a row of lamps^[1]) is a significant festival in Hinduism, Buddhism, Sikhism, and Jainism, and an official holiday in India.^[2] Adherents of these religions celebrate Diwali as the Festival of Lights. They light diyas—cotton string wicks inserted in small clay pots filled with oil—to signify victory of good over the evil within an individual.

And now… a song celebrating Diwali.

about name changes

So in my last post I talked about how I changed my name about a year ago from my birth name to, how most of you know me here…. Julian Zamora. This post as you can see from the title is an expansion of the topic.

I brought The Little Man with me to work on Monday last week… Columbus Day. He had the day off from school as parents went in for parent-teacher conferences. By the way… he’s doing quite well in his first year of school.

On our drive to work he started talking to me about names. He started off telling me his brother’s last name was McKinley. I said, “no… that’s his third name (The Deistette and her ex gave the boys three names when they were born) his last name is the same as yours, just like your daddy… it’s Durham.”

So as the conversation went on he began asking me about his mom’s name and nicknames I have for her. Then he asked if my daughter had any nicknames. I said, “yes, I call her Little Fawn a lot of times.”

He asked why and all kinds of other questions…

Little Man: “does Papa have a nickname?”
Deist: “i don’t know… um, no.”
Little Man: “what about you?”
Deist: “Well, yeah… I’ve been called all kinds of things.”
Little Man: “like what.”
Deist: “Ummm… it really isn’t important. (my fraternity nickname is probably not one a five year old should hear.)
Little Man: “But what is it?”
Deist: “ok, well you know how my first name is Robert ?… well some people shorten it and call me Rob.” [his expression looks as though he doesn't believe that really qualifies as a nickname] I continue in an attempt to pull him away from me, “Hey… you know you have a nickname too?”
Little Man: What! (He says that a lot in response to things I say to him. It’s as if what I said is the most shocking thing he’s ever heard. Pretty funny sometimes. For instance… “hey… mommy and I have decided we’re gonna sell you to the gypsies.” WHAT!?!)

Anyway so The Little Man says “what” in his usual shocked way. And I tell him that he’s heard mommy call him his nickname lots of times and that my nickname for him is Little Man.

He sat there silent for a bit… mulling it over a little. He had his thousand-yard stare working then he announced he wanted to change his name.

Deist: “WHAT!?! (i guess it works both ways) What do you want to change it to?”
Little Man: “Mr. Dave.”
Deist: “Mr Dave? Mr Dave Durham?”
Little Man: “No… just Mr Dave.”

I don’t know why he chose Mr. Dave. Somehow, it doesn’t really fit if you ask me. I don’t think Mr.Dave works. Maybe I should come up with a different nickname for him if he’s already decided this early in life that he wants it changed.

Happy Friday everyone!

Here’s a song from a famous Mr. Dave. Hope y’all enjoy.
R.I.P. LeRoi
(sorry for the advertisement at the beginning. I liked the intro though and the song is worth it.)

honesty is the best policy

Blog peep o’ mine, Lazy Buddhist bestowed upon me the Honest Scrap Award. I am quite humbled that she would do this and, honestly (pun somewhat intended) a bit ashamed. I haven’t been completely forthcoming in my blog, particularly to a few who I feel a special blog-land connection to… one of them being LB.

When Emmie and I had the miscarriage last year in November, it was LB (as well as Amuirin) who emailed me and asked if I was ok and tried to give comfort. Thanks Am and LB. Thank you so much for all the kind words you’ve said via comments to me since we’ve met here in the ol’ blogosphere.

When you get the Honest Scrap award, you’re supposed to give up 10 honest things about yourself, and then pass on the award to other blog friends who write honestly and truly about themselves and events in their life.

So here goes…

1. I’m pretty embarrassed about this. I used to pee my bed. Some of you moms out there are probably saying well that’s nothing to be embarrassed about. Lots of kids do that especially little boys. Yeah… but until they’re nine? I don’t know why it took so long for my bladder to yield to being kept in check while I was sleeping. At least I wasn’t like The Little Man’s (he’s my step son) brother Tank, who this summer decided it would be cool to drop trou and just piss all over the damn bed. Crazy ass kids.

2. Speaking of peeing on furniture. I once peed in my chair at school. I was in junior high and had to go so bad but the teacher wouldn’t let me go. There was only about ten minutes left in class and it was the end of the day. Well, I just couldn’t hold it any longer and I pee’d myself. I then carefully placed my chair on my desk like we always did at the end of the day, pee and all. Amazingly none spilled on me as I put it up there. Didn’t really matter though ’cause I had piss all over my pants anyway.

3. I’m fortunate enough not to have an addictive personality. For a time in high school I hung around kids who smoked cigarettes and pot, in college the weird drama kids who did XTC, waiter and waitress co-workers who drank way too much and although I tried at least once some of those things I never got hooked. Something I am kind of hooked on though is being connected to my email and the internet. I have a blackberry that I can’t put down. I guess I need to work on putting the blackberry down. But heck if I put it down how will I keep getting my free daily porn picture.

4. Believe it or not, I actually have had a homosexual experience a couple of times in my lifetime. When I was in high school I used to be a courier for the law firm where my mom worked. One time when I was delivering to another firm at the Texas Commerce Tower I had a security guard hit on me. He made very suggestive remarks and gave me his phone number. I quickly threw it away and he laughed when I did that. Also when I was in high school, I had a college aged assistant manager give me a ride home from work. When we pulled into my drive he started talking to me and asked some sexually charged questions. He then reached over and touched my dick. I quickly exited the vehicle feeling like I needed a shower a la The Crying Game. There ya go… my homosexual encounter confession. How can I blame them though. I guess I’m what ya call man-pretty.

5. Speaking of being touched.

in the pulpit

This was supposed to go out last Friday. I got so nervous I forgot to post it. I’ll follow up, coincidentally with the Honest Scrap Award post in response to Lazy Buddhist, who bestowed it upon me.

~~~~~

I’m a little nervous about this weekend at church. Nervous because I’ll be giving the sermon. The title of it is: “The semantics of religious language”

The description of it reads like this in our newsletter:

You say tomato, I say tomahto… should we call the whole thing off? Of course not.

Although we may see the same thing, we might call it by different names. For instance, some languages such as Spanish use the word Dios for God, Arabic uses the word Allah for God and others to describe The Divine or Supreme Being might call it by another name.

Unfortunately it isn’t always as easy in one’s own language. It is our abstract concepts of faith and our attempt to attach words to describe them that can often times create tension, misunderstanding and dismissal of growth opportunities.

Join us as we delve into the different aspects of religious speak and how honing our ability to transcribe the faith language of others will help us grow as UUs.

I’ve given a few sermons before at my church so

a UU, Deist and Jew?… in Texas

No… it’s not the beginning of a joke about three guys going into a bar with one leading a donkey to a barstool.  : )

Last Sunday at my UU church our interim minister was preaching about Rosh Hashanah and teaching us about this important holy day of the Jewish faith. Judaism is part of his spiritual practice and it seemed like the first time that I’d seen him get really animated and passionate in the five or six times he’s preached on Sunday. (he’s a part time minister to our church and so only preaches once a month)

It was really cool to see him so… so… I don’t know, like I said, passionate. He even sang chants in Hebrew. very cool.

But the highlight of Sunday service for me was

Damn fancy book learnin’… who needs it

In my hometown of Katy, Tx, which is rather “white”, there were lots of letters to the editor and the Katy Ind. School District to not show the President’s speech at all.

Yeah, I’ll admit it, I voted for President Obama, but he is quickly becoming just another Washington turd in my eyes but to resist having the president tell your kids why he feels education is so important? WTF!?!

I am disgusted to the point of nausea of what I read coming from some of the citizens in Katy, Tx.

There was this little gem from Resident who compares the president to a nazi:

Resident wrote on Sep 3, 2009 9:29 PM:
“Didn’t Hitler start out his conquest by directly trying to influence children by speaking to them in their classrooms? “

Then there was this genius who said:

I think Jesus built my UU church

Yep… I said it. I believe with all my heart that Jesus built my UU church. And it’s in this place that Jesus built where I’ve been able to learn about sacrificial love, compassion for all living things and helping those weaker than me.

And a couple of weeks ago I told The Little Man I believed Jesus built our church as we were pulling into the parking lot.

I should back-track a little before going any further in why I think this. I mean it must seem odd for The Deist, especially one of a UU persuasion to be making such statements.

A few weeks ago The Little Man (for new visitors here, The Little Man is my wife’s son… my stepson) and The Deistette were going to check out another church… a Methodist church and so I felt obligated to tell him a little about what he might see there. So Emmie and I naturally began with Jesus. We told him there are some people who believe in a man named Jesus and that they believe he is God.

And he said, “well, what about the real God? Do they believe in God?”

“Well, yes… but they believe Jesus was His son and is God also.”

He couldn’t quite grasp the concept. I have to be honest it perplexes me, too.

So we told him that