Wow, it is that time of year again. It seems like just yesterday I started my first attempt to write my 2011 Christmas letter. Maybe it was, or maybe that was three months ago. You see I have two kiddos now, so I’ve kind of lost track of time for anything less pressing than someone screaming right next to my ears at the top of their lungs for reasons sometimes totally unapparent to me. And now that includes several people besides myself.
So the first place to start is the birth of my second daughter, Samantha Rose Lutfey. Born May 24, 2011, Samantha came into this world with 25% more hair than I had that day. The surgical team had to rush her off to the neonatal barbershop before they would let Katherine hold her newborn child. As was the case with Isabel’s birth, I looked stunning in the white sterile body suit I wore during the birthing procedure. To be honest, I think my perfect figure was a bit of a distraction to some of the nurses. Either that or they were worried I was going to pass out and topple over some vital and expensive piece of medical equipment. Who can know for sure? And for the record I came close to passing out zero times that day, which is one less than my first time around.
The next thing I can remember is competing in the annual Kinetics race. Held at Longmont’s Union reservoir, my team was named “The Prime Contenders.” The craft was a slight modification from previous attempts with Styrofoam wheels connected to a bicycle frame. This year marked a personal milestone in that I actually finished the race. And I had the support of pretty much nobody in the crowd. About 79% of the crowd didn’t think my craft would even float in the water. The remaining crowd watched me in the water and thought my right front wheel (which, to be honest, was hanging on to the rest of the craft in a rather precarious manner) was going to fall off any second now. And, really, the highlight of the event is witnessing a hastily assembled craft half sink in the middle of the water section. So to all of those people who keep telling me that PVC pipe is not a good structural material for a kinetics craft, I can now proudly yell out “PVC pipe can be a MARGINALLY ACCEPTABLE structural material, PROVIDED that I don’t hit any unexpected rocks, AND that I don’t make any sudden movements out of the exact center of gravity of the vehicle, AND, WELL OF COURSE IT GOES WITHOUT SAYING that the Kinetics Wizard doesn’t cast any spells of random destruction on any part of my team.” Or, in short, “Bite me– I made it!”
So I either had a very strange dream and/or was visited by aliens a few weeks back. To the best of my recollection, here is what went down.
So I’m standing around in a field for no particular reason, and a traditionally shaped alien saucer ship lands nearby. Two green creatures get out and move towards me.
“Greetings Omar,” one of the aliens proclaims. “We have some information which could be immensely useful to your spices regarding the nature of what you understand to be the cosmos.”
“Hold on,” I replied, “Should I be writing this down or recording this all on video?”
“No need for that, our message will be brief.” the other visitor explained. “First of all, your scientific community still can’t decide on the nature of light. Is it a particle or is it a wave? Nobody has come up with a good explanation that is consistent with real world observations. So here is the answer: Light is a particle that travels in a corkscrew pattern. Technically it is spinning around four dimensions– electical, magnetic, one space dimension, and another dimension you haven’t quite discovered yet.”
“OK, I’ll get the word out.” I answered. “Anything else?”
“One more thing,” the first alien spoke. “Most people in your scientific community believe in the Big Bang theory based on red shift patterns observed from extra-terrastial light sources. Did you ever think that the particles are getting slowed down by all the dark matter in the universe instead of everything expanding in every direction?”
“So why are you telling me all this?” I asked, “There are plenty of other humans who would be better equipped to pass on this information. I’m just a UPS driver.”
“We know– won’t it be funny that you know the truth about the nature of the universe but nobody will believe you due to your chosen vocation?” the first alien explained. They both started laughing uncontrollably as they moved back into their spaceship and flew away.
Maybe this is what I get for watching the Simpsons’ “Tree House of Horror” and “How the Universe Was Made” right before going to bed.
So now that I think about it, I did get quite a bit done this year. So here is a list of things I didn’t finish:
Steet performance: Rounded to the nearest integer, I can safely say I achieved 0% of my goal to create a trumpet, baritone, and tuba comedy street performing group. Besides a lot of random ideas floating around in my head I still need to acquire all the musical instruments and at least two musically inclined individuals for my team. And, of course someone who can arrange music would be helpful. Maybe I’ll make more progress on this in the future.
My 2024 run for congress is another area in which I did not make much progress. The first step I’m going to take is to shoot Botox into one side of my forehead so that I can do that cool eyebrow raising thing just like Stephen Colbert on “The Colbert Report.” The next item on the list is to decide my stance on critical issues such as deceptive bacon packaging, Tupperware lid standardization, and, of course, synchronizing with the rest of the world by switching over to the metric system and possibly Esperanto.
So that is about it for 2011. I’ll leave you with the age old saying from my favorite novelty Christmas song: What Can You Get a Wookiee for Christmas (When He Already Owns a Comb)?
Wow, I was just looking back at my latest posts, and I realized that I haven’t posted any real updates about my personal life in a very long time. So here goes.
We recently added a +1 to our family: Samatha Rose Lutfey. So now we have a total of one husband, one wife, two kiddos, and one crazy dog. Pretty typical family lineup.
Having never done this before, I am very much learning how to be a father as I go. Of course pretty much everyone has to start out from scratch, so I’m not really special in my situation. The easiest way to categorize activities in this area is “things I was reasonably expecting to happen” and “what? did that really just happen? You must be kidding me!”
So in the first category I put things like changing diapers, feeding, and playing with my children. To a large degree I’ve had experience with this by having taken care of my dog Maury for several years now. The key here, as much as I understand things, is to understand the desire of the dog/child and things will go smoothly. If someone is making an unpleasant sound, or error code as I like to say, then resolving the situation is just a matter of finding the cause of the error code and fixing the underlying problem. To start out, babies generally have a small set of error codes– my diaper’s full, my stomach is empty, and someone isn’t giving me their full attention. So debugging small children is a pretty simple process.
The only situations to look out for are false positives and false negatives. For example, my oldest child Isabel doesn’t seem to mind running around with a diaper full of poop. And to make things more fun she likes to run and hide when we try and change her diaper. Don’t forget that kids can just start crying for no known reason. This is the most frustrating of all the error codes since there is no corresponding resolution action. The key to this situation is to identify it as a “Kobayashi Maru.” For anyone not intimately familiar with Star Trek terminology, this is a no win situation used to train Star Fleet officers. So just think, “What would Captain Kirk do?” And the correct answer isn’t “make more cheesy Priceline commercials.”
So now we come to the next group of activities. These are things that you will in no way be able to see coming. My personal favorite example of this is having Isabel on my chest fall asleep. Since I can’t really do anything else without waking up, I soon fell asleep myself. Then, for really no reason I could understand, Isabel emptied the entire contents of her stomach onto my face and chest. Very unpleasant I must say. But my point here is that I couldn’t have seen it coming.
So this is all I’ve learned in my two years or so of being a father. That, and if you want to get anything done on the computer your kids better be asleep or at grandmas for the weekend.
You may address me as number 2– the number one prime number. Behind me is number 3, the number 2 prime, and also with me is numbers 5 and 7, the third and fourth primes.
We represent the prime numbers– positive integers evenly divisible by only ourselves and one. We are tired of being treated as freaks and second hand citizens on the number line.
Welcome to prime time– when all numbers are treated equally. To make this dream a reality, we will now present our organizations prime directive:
We the primes, an infinite subset of the positive integers, are demanding equal rights to composite numbers. The time has come to elect one of our own to the position of prime minister.
Don’t forget that we prime numbers hold the keys to your most important encryption programs. And who do you think controls the prime rate? Remember this the next time your are in your house built on prime real estate while eating a wonderfully cooked piece of prime rib.
If our demands for equality are not met, we will not hesitate to call on one of our strongest military allies, optimus prime.