Nick informs me this is the Tattletron 2000 from Pilkey’s wildly popular Captain Underpants series. Alicia and I still don’t know what to make of them. They are disgustingly silly, but the boys read through them like crazy. These books are chuck full of silliness. Just a quick list of the characters makes this obvious. There’s “The Bionic Booger Boy”, “Sulu the Bionic Hamster”, “Professor Poopy Pants”, “The Wicked Wedge Woman”, “Doctor Diaper”, “The Turbo Toilet 2000″, “The Dandelion of Doom” and many more. [Nick correcting my spelling of "booger" and "wedge".]

The main characters are a couple of rowdy boys named George and Harold who always get in trouble by Mr. Krupp. George and Harold actually created Captain Underpants during detention or something. Ben and Nick, and the other neighborhood boys, spontaneously discuss plot lines. “I haven’t read about The Dandelion of Doom yet. That must be in book 3,” Ben will say. “Yes, that is correct,” says Nick

Thousand Hands is Nick’s own creation, but obviously influenced by Yu-Gi-Oh. I asked Nick why Thousand Hands is frowning. “No, that’s his jaws,” he replied.

Alicia came down to find Nick busy, as he often is, creating things on paper. He must have learned this measurements breakdown at school. It’s a cool way to visualize something most of us can never remember. If only we could fit the number of tablespoons and teaspoons in that little C somehow. This reminds me. I happened on Google’s measuments conversion by accident. Go to Google and search for something like “60cc in cups”. The conversions calculator give you the results. Great for quick lookups.

Not unlike my beloved Mother, I do a lot of daily reflection and mental note-taking. I enjoy capturing thoughts in print. Blogging really scratches that itch of mine since it is so painless and accessible.

However, as my wife would quickly remind me, my thought dumps are frequently irrelevant and uninteresting to many. So, for mostly selfish reasons, I went ahead and added a seperate Rob blog linked from the top of this www.muhlestein.net page. Anyone is welcome to take a semi-private peek into what I’m up to in there. I certainly will be posting very frequently. But, be warned. You read at your own risk. My blog will contain a lot of incorrect spelling and grammer, bad poetry, momentary insanity, moodiness, work-related gibberish, and gobs of stodgy intellectualism. I don’t fear flames, so feel free to let me have it in the comments if you’d like.

Today Ben was really excited for his visit to Colossal Cave, which he calls “Collosical Cave”. Later that day he told me all the “facts” about how a drapery stalagtite (or is it -mite) is formed. His favorite part was the story about the robbers and possible buried gold still in the cave somewhere. Did you know Colossal Cave is the driest cave in the world? I didn’t. Ben is so full of curiosity (and commentary) about everything. No wonder kids are a part of that all great eternal plan, without them adults would forget (and do) all the wonder in the world. Thanks Ben for being such a good kid, and teacher. [Now if we could just sometimes turn the volume down a tad.]

Getting in shape and tracking your eating habits can be a real pain. A while back I discovered a free service that helps a lot: FitDay.com. It takes a little work to get setup, but once your commonly eaten foods are there, it is a snap. I even put a few days of Nick’s eating to help figure out why he is always so tired lately. Turns out he’s not eating nearly enough. One side effect of tracking your food in fitday is that you tend to eat less because you know you’ll have to write it down. I also use fitday to keep track of exercise and workouts. Don’t have a lot of time to mess around with this stuff, so having something that is quick helps immensly. [BTW, this pic is from Hagg Lake Olympic Triathlon, two years ago, let's just say it's a good motivator.]

Eyes, soft swept now closing, free,

Find peace from days duress;

Solice on night’s pillow now

To comfort Mother’s stress.

Days on end she toils true

Fighting back the pain

Of lifetimes traded up and down

To give her boys their Names.

No thought for self, at least not heard,

She teaches them from birth

To follow gentle paths less trod,

Make good their time on Earth.

I marvel at my luck divine

To find her _here_ somehow,

And know she sleeps without a care

At least, I trust, for now.

Sleep, peaceful beauty given

From God’s own throne above

To us to have, to hold, to trust

And answer, “What is love?”

[I wrote this a couple years ago while in a very small apartment and missing Alicia immensely. It really relates to all Mom's though. Happy Mother's Day.]