Amazing

I love those Japanese!

Congratulations to my Wife

Jen wanted to make her first post and announce to everyone some exciting news but she was a little busy and couldn't do it for a while. So if I may, I would like to congratulate my wonderful wife Jen for her amazing accomplishment.

Jennifer will be graduating from college in June with a degree in Dietetics. Unfortunately you really can't become a registered dietitian (R.D.) until you have completed an internship and pass the R.D. exam. Jennifer applied to two internships her first choice being Cal Poly Pomona and her second Los Angeles Veterans Hospital. Cal Poly only accepts 15 interns a year and usually none of those that are accepted are people who applied for the first time. Out of over a hundred applicants, even though I say thousands, Jennifer found out on Sunday that she is one of the 15 people invited to the Cal Poly Pomona program (and she made it her first time applying).

I am so proud of Jennifer. She has put in so much hard work and totally deserves this great opportunity. The only bad news to this is that this internship is not paid and it last for 9 months. However starting in June of 2009 it looks like we will be a real two income home!!!!!!! Well, until we have kids.

So if you have her phone number give her a call and congratulate her or leave a comment. She is such an amazing woman and I can't tell you how lucky I am to have her as my wife. I love you Jenny! This picture is for you.

I Like This Video

Even if the song is a little lame.

Happy Birthday!!!

I know that it is two days early, but I want to make sure that that I send my birthday shout out to Edna Parker who turns 115 this Sunday April 20th. Edna is the oldest person alive today and has been the oldest person since the death of Yone Minagawa in 2007. Edna is an American who lives in Indiana.

Jeanne Calment is the oldest person who has ever lived. She died in 1997 at age 122 years and 164 days. Interestingly enough, According to Wikipedia, Jeanne Calment smoked until she was 117, quit, and then picked up the habit again at 118 years old, stating: "Once you've lived as long as me, then you can tell me not to smoke."

Pet Peeves Day # 7

Finally this is the last day of pet peeves. It's hard to commit to write every day and particularily to have the same topic for all those days that you are writting. I'm glad that the pet peeves are over. It just seemed like I was being so nevative.

For todays pet peeve I decided to write about something that is near and dear to my heart. I am not sure if you have all experienced this but for those of you who have I think that you will know what I am talking about.

Have you ever called a company for a question and got a hold of the automated service system? Just today I called DIRECTV to find out why my service jumped $11.00 a month. Then this robotic voice comes on trying to seem like a real human being. This robot will say, "Hi, and thank you for calling Direct TV. How may I be of service to you today"? Then you have to speak to this automated woman. I really hate it when companies try and make it even more human by making it say something like, "Hold on a minute while I am processing your request" or "Let me think about that". This is seriously so annoying when companies do this.

Pet Peeves Day # 6

I have many many many pet peeves on the road. I will only talk about one today. For those who do not understand how a four way stop sign works or how to pass someone on a two way highway please click here to learn how these things are supposed to work. Today I will just talk about one thing and that is the "Eternal Blinker".

I would like to personally take this time to blame Mrs. Erin Marie Sorensen for this pet peeve. I can link her directly to my irritation for the eternal blinker. I really never noticed this or cared about the eternal blinker until one day I was driving with my friend, Erin, and she all of a sudden went crazy about someone who had on their turn signal for what seemed like an eternity. Ever since that moment I started to see this everywhere and I too now go a little crazy with the eternal blinker. I really want to be a courteous driver and so sometimes I will see someone who wants to change lanes in front of me so I will slow down to let them in. I'll think to myself, "They seen scared to make the change though! Why don't they move in"? So then I will wave my hand at them indicating to them that they are safe to make the change, yet they move not!!! "Why don't they just go? Clearly there is enough room!!! Oh, it is because they have on their eternal blinker." This is so obnoxious to me.

This is all thanks to Erin. You can find her and her husbands blog from this page under Adam and Erin.

Pet Peeves Day # 5

I never realized how dificult it would be to come up with seven pet peeves. I am starting to run out of ideas. There are some pet peeves that I do have that I am really silent about though because I don't want to offend people. So I really hope that I will be able to keep my commitment to give you the reading public seven consecutive days on my rants.

Todays pet peeve is one that I can totally understand. Really I do, but that does not change the fact that my hands turn to fists every time this happens. As many of you know I am an Angels fan, I have been one as long as I can remember. We have had season tickets for the longest time and I just love going to the games. As a matter of fact my first date with my wife was to an Angels game, although she had no idea that it was a date at that time.

What I hate is when you are at a game and the other team hits a homerun or scores or does something really good for them, and the fans in the stands go crazy rooting for the oposing team. Let me tell you I totally understand and would do the same thing if I were at a game the Angels were playing in at another stadium. I would love to walk in the Yankee Stadium wearing my Angels gear and cheering for all the great plays made by my team. This does not change the fact that it hurts and makes me so mad when people come into my house and disrespect me by cheering for the other team. I mean this is my house and I would hate to have someone come into my house disrespecting my family. This is the way I feel even though I would totally never hesitate to go into someone elses house and disrespect their families (aka the Yankee or Red Sox).

And for your information the Yankees and the Red Sox fans are the worst when it comes to this. Sometimes at the baseball games I think to myself or even out loud, "If they love these teams so much then why don't they move to where they play"? That's what the Brooklyn Dodgers fans did in the 50's. When the Dodgers moved to Los Angeles so did many of their fans for that reason.

Oh well I for one will always be an Angels fan.

Pet Peeves Day # 4

So I have been giving it a lot of thought about what should be day # 4. I knew that I was going to do this pet peeve but I wasn't sure when I should do it. Now seems to be as good of a time as any.

Todays pet peeve just happens to be something that I think all of us do. I am going to speak real specifically about this as to not offend anyone. Todays pet peeve is "one upping". Like I said I really think that all of us do one up's from time to time and I am not blogging about you today. Today I am talking about those who cannot allow someone else to say anything without coming up with a story of their own to top it.

For those of you who may not know what a "One Upper" is let me define. A person can be known as a one upper or can be caught one upping. Other ways of calling this out would be "One upped or one up". Have you ever told a story about something that happend to you or a friend and the person who you are telling this story to says something to the effect of, "Oh yeah, If you think that was crazy let me tell you about..." Well my friend you have been one upped.

Let me make this clarify this in a narrited story. This is a story about two friends named John and Frank. John and Frank were talking one day catching up since the last time they saw eachother. John was telling Frank about taking his children waterskiing.

John: So Frank, last week I took our family on a vacation to go waterskiing at Lake Meed.

Frank: Wow John that sounds like a lot of fun! It reminds me of when I took my family to the Bahamas for 10 days.

John: Uh yeah, so all of my children are doing really great. Kendra got up waterskiing for the first time and my boy Sean is really getting good on the wake board. He is begining to do some tricks while he is riding that make my back hurt just watching. He is really doing great at waterskiing too!

Frank: Cool. When we were in the Bahamas our hotel had a boat we could rent for $175 an hour! We paid for the boat for the entire day to go waterskiing and wakeboarding. Because we had a driver on the boat all of us got to waterski at the same time. My wife and son Teddy formed the base of a waterski pyramid while my other two sons Ken and Glen got on our shoulders to form the second row, and then we had our 10 year old daughter, Mercedes, get on top to finish the human pyramid. The whole beach was going crazy and applauding for us. It was so much fun!!!

John: Uh, wow Frank that was amazing. I think I have to go now.

You see John now hates Frank for one upping him several times in one conversation and will never talk to him again. We really all do one ups now and again. I think it is natural to do. But to make a point of constantly being on top is just plain rude.

There was a great SNL clip that I was unable to find with LeBron James at some charity event and a person in the crowd one upping everything said regardless of how outragious it was. Sorry I couldn't find it, it was pretty funny.

Pet Peeves Day # 3

Pet Peeves Day # 2

Ok now on to day two of my pet peeves. As a side note I was thinking about it this morning and I sure hope I will be able to fulfil my commitment to put down seven pet peeves that I have. I had a hard time remembering what I was going to put down for day two. That is not to say that I am any less bugged by the monstrosity that is the word verification.

I have been blogging now sense December 23rd and am trying my best to be a good blogger. I try to keep my blogs up do date and I try to read other peoples blogs as often as I can and make comments when I have the time to do so. I know that I have made at least 17 comments because of the word verifications that I have typed in the past. For some reason it keeps a log of all the words that you have typed in.

Word verification is the topic of my blog for today. Simply said I hate it. First of all these clearly are not words. Let me type all 17 "words" that I have been forced to type in just so I can leave a comment on one of my friends blogs. They are as followed: elsrxow, enuiyn, gtbtci, ikrtbeh, ivexeks, iweio, lbmaskq, mqerxcye, mtmobxz, nutlj, oaeayxvr, orzrtsdx, pwpktukr, rnmwoa, viasmkzw, wmppu, and zvscro. Are you serious?!!! Ticket Master does this same thing and I have always felt dumb for never knowing the meaning behind all of these words.

Argument# 1: These are not words. What if you were a foreigner using blogs to try to enhance your English skills and you had to type in words like these? Wouldn't you feel so frustrated that you would give up the language entirely because you know that you would never be able to figure out words like pwpktukr? Word verifications are stopping people from learning new languages.

Argument# 2: Why do they twist these words and make it sometimes impossible to read? Seriously, sometimes there are words where L's and I's look virtually the same and you do your best to try and type in the word letter by letter and you still get it wrong! Why do they twist up these "words" so you can't even tell what letters are in it?

Argument# 3: Ticket Master uses this too. What if you mess up on the word, because of argument# 2, and by the time you actually type it in right the concert is sold out?

Argument# 4: Who cares? What can be so important that you have to type in an impossible to read word just to put your comment up? Are bloggers just trying to keep visually impaired people from commenting on their blogs? Oh my gosh, there is argument# 5.

Argument# 5: What about the visually impaired?

Ok so I am going to keep my word verification setting on for the next week so you all can experience what I am talking about. And for all you bloggers out there, do everyone that takes time out of their day to read your blog and leave comments a favor by removing the word verification setting on your blog. Thanks.

P.S. Adam, since you are my "English friend", can you verify that I am not dumb by letting me know that these really are not words? My spell check says they are all misspelt! Thank you.

Pet Peeves Day # 1

I have decided that I am going to dedicate the next seven days of
blogs to seven of my pet peeves. Let me know how you feel about what I
hate. I am totally unsure of what I will be putting down for all seven
days so hopefully I have that many things to complain about. I do have
the first two or three down so here goes my first day of pet peeves.

I am watching American Idol for the first season. For the most part I
am kind of embarrassed to admit that I am quite entertained each week
and I have some of my favorites. It is entertaining to watch the
performances, successes, failures, and so on. I do agree with Simon
most of the time and think that he has a great sense of good and bad
singing.

There is one thing that absolutely drives me nuts about American Idol
and that is the retarded crowed in the pit. They can never clap on
beat and just don't know how to act at a show. But the worst of all is
the arm swaying. This is my pet peeve of the day. I absolutely hate
the arm sway. It happens every time there is a song that has a slower
tempo which wouldn't be appropriate for a little dancing, screaming
for the contestants, or singing along with the music. So what do these
little invalids do you ask? They stick their arms straight up in the
air and start swaying them side to side. They all do it too!!!! They
are bumping into each other because they all sway at different speeds
and they look like unsynchronized Temple of Doom Indians that piss you
off. I sometimes wish I had the laser from Congo that cuts through
everything so when they start swaying their arms I could cut them all
off for abusing the gift that God gave them. Seriously people, STOP
WITH THE ARM SWAYING!!!!!!!!!

Please check out this video of David Archuleta to see what in the world I am talking about.

April Fools

So I think that everyone should know that I had a great time yesterday with my April Fools joke to everyone. I am actually quite surprised that more people fell for it than those who called me out on it. Now a little story about the blog. I decided to write this at the end of my work day and then sent out the text to everyone to check it out. Jennifer knew nothing about this blog and I asked her to read it immediately so people wouldn't be calling her and congratulating her about the news she knew nothing about. She thought this joke was totally lame and she was kinda mad I did it. Eventually she really liked it after hearing many of your messages. Apparently Erin and Adam think that everyone will be totally mad at me and Skyler and Elise were not amused at all. So to you I am sorry for your lack of a sense of humor.

So to officially clear things up we are not pregnant, but I am sure that God with his awesome sense of humor might punish me for this April Fools joke. Not that becoming a parent would be a punishment, well I think you all know what I mean.

Chapman News

Well if you saw my last blog and don't understand it, maybe this will help. Jennifer and I found out two months ago that we are pregnant and are expecting to have a little addition to our family. I am extremely nervous about becoming a Dad but excited at the same time. Don't get mad for us not wanting to tell anyone right away. We needed some time to take in the news for ourselves.

Our doctor has given us an October 20th due date and of course we won't know if it is a boy or girl for a few months. So yipee for us!!!!!!! I will be giving you all updates as they come to us.

This is What I Think of Today