Nosepicking

I admit. Our family is pretty lax with the whole nose picking rule. We are a very firm "No eating the boogers" household however.

Supper tonight was a classic then...

                    Mom- "E, do you need a tissue?"

                    E- "No mom." Finger buried to the hilt.

                    I get up to get a Kleenex at my wife's asking to see E pulling out a booger and ready to put it in her mouth.

                    Me- "E, let me remind you the rule in the house. You can pick your nose, but you can't put them in your mouth."

                    E- "Okay Daddy." As I walk by...

                    Mom- "DON'T PICK YOUR NOSE WITH THE LETTUCE!!!"

                    E- "Why? That isn't a rule."

No, dear child, it is not...we'll be administering rule changes this evening though.

Preschool Potluck

A Stay At Home Dad musing...


We are now blessed to have a family of 4: Myself, wife, E and M. E is enjoying herself immensely in her second year at the Northeast Iowa Montessori School. She has been attending full days and we have just seen her mind continue to flourish in the Montessori environment. Every year that have two potlucks, beginning of the year introduction and end of the year goodbyes. Last night was the fall potluck.

These gatherings serve three great functions in my mind

• Allows the parents of the kids that play all day together to meet
• Gives parents the opportunity to have a meaningful conversation with another adult
• Gives parents the opportunity to have any conversation with another adult that isn't their S.O

Additionally, it is a chance to eat great food. After taking stock of our deep freeze careful consideration, my wife we decided to make Cheddar Corn Chowder. I found a recipe on the Food Network's site.

Now, although I cook nearly every meal in the house, I am notoriously bad at judging how much food a recipe will make. I am not naive though. If the recipe states it serves 4, I assume it serves 6-7. I will also run a recipe by my wife just to see what the quantity will be. This isn't necessarily the smartest thing to do as we are equal peers at food quantity judgement. Let's not forget that if you've ever made ANY soup, there is always lots of it left over.

This recipe will yield "10-12 Servings." Those servings must be feeding 10 teenage boys. Although I cooked it on the stove, I carrying it in a crock pot (6 qt) to serve at the potluck. This 6 quarts was but a quarter of soup that I made. On they way home, I mentioned that I'd give some to our neighbor. E began crying in the back seat. "What's wrong sweetie?"

"I don't want you to give the soup away. I reeeeaaaaaally like it."

2012 September 23, Polling

I fielded 3 calls this evening. The last one my wife saying, "Don't you take that call."

 For those of you that haven't received or haven't accepted one of these calls (which I highly recommend) they usually go along the lines of...

Are you a registered voter?
Do you work for a political party, candidate, newspaper, or media source?
What is the likely-hood of you voting in the November Presidential, State, and Local election? (options given)
Whom are you leaning towards and is that strongly or somewhat?
Have you heard of this politician? Do you have a positive or negative opinion? Somewhat or Strong?
Then they get into policy...What is the most important issue heading into this election (huge list read that it is hard to keep them all in mind when deciding that they really expect you to already have one in mind)
Questions about individual candidates
Demographic questions.
Thank you and have a good night.

A few points. Words and phrases mean everything. How these questions are phrased, you can near instantly know which ideology is conducting paying for (through a third party/research group) the poll. The questions are sometimes meant to push you in one direction or another. A recent example of this is a phone call I took about a week ago that was very insistent on using "ObamaCare" over and over through negative questions. Both sides do it, this is merely the most recent one I remember (besides today).

So on to the show:

1st call; It was focused mostly on the Iowa House race between Michael Klimesh and Roger Thomas. It took me a while to figure this out as the research caller did not pronounce Klimesh or Thomas (with a Th in "the") correctly. Once it got going though it was interesting and deceptively dirty. I was given statements about Thomas' voting and what that negative implications of his action is and then asked if I was more or less likely to vote for him. After the 4th statement, I asked a few questions of my own and found that these were merely "Hypothetical" statements to gauge the voter response. Awesome. Had I not asked any questions or been informed about Thomas' voting record, I can see how I could be easily swayed by such polling. Dirty, dirty, dirty move.
Both sides do it, just not the liberals this time. This poll was clearly payed for by a conservative group or Republican Party itself but run through Mountain West Research.

2nd call; Polling again done by Mountain West Research. This time it focused mostly on the 1st CD race between Ben Lange and Bruce Braley This was a pretty mild and straightforward poll. The most notable part of the phone call was the questions about agriculture. They wanted to know if you knew who Bill Northey is (the State Sec. of Ag). They asked what percentage of your household income was from agricultural work. It was also surprising that they wanted to know what the last thing you heard about both candidates. Mine being Braley was upset that Boehner sent Congress home without passing a farm bill and that Lange was recently endorsed by the Farm Bureau. Very odd for a poll.

3rd call; I was lucky enough to answer this one and it isn't a poll, but is political. I sat in and listened to Mitt Romney's call in Town Hall. For starters. This was pretty cool. Romney was on the phone answering questions. The first one I caught was from Doug in Dubuque. To paraphrase Doug, he said that there is a lot of Romney support but people want (and I presume need) the details to his plan for creating jobs, middle class taxes, and health care/insurance. It was a long, but good question to find out specifics. Romney's response was to direct Doug (and anyone else listening) to purchase his book online for the answers. This shows one of two things to me. Romney either is naive to think that people will actually spend the time to read his book 6 weeks before the election and has no real idea of what sort of media world we live in now in which information is expected near immediately. OR Romney knows people won't go and read it if they already haven't so he can "get away" with answering in this way in order to still not be specific, be vague and general. There were also questions about Social Security and Medicare but this first response is what I remembered most.

Alright, there you have it...will I keep this up? Perhaps. Will the DNC poll me again like they did Friday? Probably not. Let me know if I should keep this up though, dependent on the phone calls.

Political Polling? Me Likie

So, as I was informing how the political polling went today on Facebook, it occurred to me, "I have a blog...I should blog about this."

I love receiving phone calls. "Unknown number." Damn right I'm picking that thing up. I suppose it might have a little to do with my lack of adult conversation throughout the day. Most of it is spent talking to myself newborn son. The responses I get are good with coos, giggles, and happy gasps but not the at the intellectual level I'm hoping for.

Every four years, being from Iowa, my phone lights up. It usually stops in January but this time around, Iowa is in play and actually means a little electorally. I think these phone calls are great, personally, for a few reasons.

1. I like reading about a poll in the paper online and thinking to myself, "Hey, I'm one of those percentages."
2. Based on my responses, I can have an actual say in how these races are run. Once you go through one of these and realize what the pollsters are actually asking, you can influence them a little (minutely) if you choose.
3. Like I said before, I get to talk to a grownup, even if it is just question/answer format.
4. I like politics. This is a neat side of them.
5. Deep down, it makes me feel important to some extent.

As for me, I'm pretty forthcoming and honest with my answers. I have a hard time saying I'm "Positively going to vote" for someone or choose "1" or "10" on a scale of 1-10 my opinion of said political figure and/or situation. There are positives and negatives to every side/person/position.

If you care to go on this little ride, I'll let you join me with a mere 6 weeks until the phone calls stop for three years.