Funny? Painfully close to home? I can't decide.

Thomas Paine quote

Government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil; in its worst state an intolerable one. - Thomas Paine

The Colonel

Arizona Pictures

Pictures from the trip to Arizona can be found here. I'll probably add to this over the next five or six days that I'm here.

A different view outside my office today

Leah came with me to work so that she could study for her Radiography exam tomorrow. When she's been here with me on the weekends in the past she's set up in the conference room however, due to meetings scheduled today, she's on one of the build benches outside my office.
It's been kind of cool to simply look up to check in on her to make sure she's not napping. :)

Holden's typical appearance when in the van

Holden with his bup (that's not a typo, it's Holdenspeak for "cup"). He's taken his Daddy's habit of having a drink within arms reach at any given moment and made it his own. A car ride that doesn't include a bup becomes unpleasant in short order.

Leah battles "a large creature"

So I get a call at work this afternoon. It's my wife. The conversation is fairly routine. She tells me about her day a little bit, I ask if I need to drop by the store to pick up milk or anything on my way home, etc. Nothing too exciting.
Until her tone suddenly changes and she begins talking much faster. The only thing I can really make out is "Lowell...(indecipherable)...large creature".
I am instantly amused so I hit the record button on my phone as I was encouraging her to take a picture of it with her cell phone to send to me. I now have a recording of the end of her battle against the large creature as well as an image of it saved for posterity.

My brave wife - click to play audio.

Thomas Jefferson quote

"I think we have more machinery of government than is necessary, too many parasites living on the labor of the industrious."
--Thomas Jefferson, letter to Thomas Cooper, 29 November 1802

Holden sleeps like his father...

Unfortunately, that means not well.  I was up five times between 1:00 a.m. and 5:30 a.m.  The reasons, in order of getting me up:

1. "Daddy, I pee peed" (Understandable on this one.  Happens to the best of us little man)
2. "I want Daddy" (I'll never, ever complain about hearing this.  Even if it's at 2 in the morning.)
3. "Daddy, acky kiki" (translation: Father, I find that my pacifier has an unacceptable taste and/or texture)
4. "I want Tuck" (translation: It is my wish that you give me my stuffed Tuck the Tutle from the Wonder Pets.  Note to Holden - you would have had it at bed time had you not puked on it which required me washing it and drying it before reissuing it to you)
5. "Daddy, I'm sleepy" (Seriously?  You woke me up to tell me you're sleepy?  That's fantastic.  Thanks son.)

A new year, a new look. Kind of.

You may have noticed that going to www.lowelldavis.net doesn't look the same as it used to. It looks a lot like the blog page did.

Long, long ago when I first put up a webpage at this domain I created everything using either Frontpage or good old notepad. Once I made or edited a page I'd then launch an ftp app or would upload it through a cmd prompt. Old school baby.

A few years ago I decided that it was a giant pain in the backside to do this when sites like blogger, wordpress, etc. made on the fly edits so much easier. I could just type and click publish! I could send updates from my phone!
For some reason though I didn't switch the index page to this website over to that then. I kept updating the $*@! thing manually. I'd actually publish a blog post then go and change the index page to reflect that there was a new blog available by clicking a link.

Dumb.

Anyway, the index page now goes directly here. The sidebar on the right has changed a little bit from the old blog page. I dropped a few things that I used to have on the index completely. In the coming days and weeks I'll probably change the design of this page but, in the interest of making this switch before 2009 began, I kept the old template since it was easier to hack up and and make the sidebar changes to.

New Year's Resolutions

I'm not much for New Year's resolutions. I'm not much for celebrating on December 31st in general. I find the thought that everything "starts fresh" just because the calendar turns a page to be pretty stupid actually. So while I'm not going to make a list of resolutions for the coming 12 months, I am going to do my best to keep this in mind every single day of the year. And the year after. And the year after that...

Christmas is almost upon us

We're done shopping. Yay!
Making Christmas candy tonight. Yay again.
The MLB channel debuts on January 1st. Triple Yay. (That has nothing to do with Christmas, but it needed a yay).

Welcome to Chicago

I'm expecting Joey Gathright to be a late inning defensive replacement/pinch hitter/pinch runner. Those are all nice titles but I prefer "dude who can jump over a parked car".

Happy Ramahanukwanzmas!

Emphasis helps

Bad news: You will go through hard times.
Good news: You will go through hard times.

My new favorite Thanksgiving memory

Thanksgiving Rick-roll baby!

Playing a game of 'Daddy pulls me in the cart by me hanging on to his scarf'.

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Yet another reason I'm glad Holden is a boy

The Worst Day Of Their Lives - Watch more Free Videos

One month until the Christmas Sweater

A couple of random Holden pictures

Holden watching a choo choo with Grandpa. It's amazing how content he is sitting in Grandpa's lap just watching trains. He certainly doesn't have an attention span problem in this area!

Holden hit his head a couple of nights ago. Daddy showed him that a Curious George band-aid makes everything better!