What is eighteen pounds of intervention worth?

They say an ounce of intervention is worth a pound of cure. Well today I received 288 ounces of intervention in the mail. That is to say I received an 18 pound package containing Saxon Phonics Intervention. This is the program that Spider Droid and I are going to work through this school year. Now if an ounce of intervention is worth a pound of cure, then 288 ounces should be worth 4608 pounds of intervention. That's more than 2.3 tons of intervention. I'll let you know if it's enough.

Next Time: Time Travel or Ipods whichever comes first.

Giving Amy Access. Should I be Scared?

From time to time Amy serves as a guest blogger for me. I have decided to make it official by making her a contributor to this blog. There really should not be any cause for alarm in allowing your wife full access to your blog. But when your wife likes to write crazy things in your blog when she is "supposed" to be editing it, that's a different story. Remember last week when I wrote about Bob Newhart loving me? I had to write that in self defense.

In the previous post she had removed my little blurb about what was coming next and wrote "Next Time: Bob Newhart Loves Dave." Sure, I could have simply changed back to my blurb. But we would probably still be playing tug-of -blog. So I showed her! I just wrote a silly post to match her silly title.

So why oh why would I give her more license for craziness instead of suspending her license? To meld Mickey Mouse Club and Sally Field : Y? Because I like her, I really really like her. I am sure you will like her to.

Next Time: Ipod casts aspersions.

Introducing the three "C's": Coleman, Calhoun, Concert

We went to a concert at church last night. It was very good. The opening act was a guy named Ben Calhoun who used to attend the same church I used to attend so I got that going for me.

Calhoun makes a great impression. He has an excellent voice, boundless energy and showed a great deal of versatilty switching from guitar to piano on the following number, A little Billy Joel like ballad which I quite enjoyed.

Sure it's a little distracting that he looks like Jim Carrey in Ace Ventura Pet Detective, but he makes it work for him. After his set and a short intermission, Paul Colman took the stage. Colman, an Austrailian who spent 3 years with the Newsboys (The band not the paper deliverers,) has a unique blend of hillarity, passion and raw talent. Even those not familiar with his work would be familiar with his opening number.

Our whole family went to the concert and quite enjoyed it. The fact that both girls fell asleep during the concert, notwithstanding. Everyone was up at 6 a.m. for Amy's birthday breakfast so by 9:30 they were all pretty crashworthy.

One of my favorite parts of the concert was when Colman and Calhoun gigged together. Unfortunately, the batteries in my camera had gone out, so I have no footage to share.

While Paul Coleman and Ben Calhoun have not made it on my list of top three Christian artists (Allen Levi, Michael Card, and Randy Stonehill, if you had to ask, ) last night's concert gave them a both a step in the right direction. I would highly recommend their music. And I would highly recommend sugarless gum to my patients who chew gum. I would also recommend sugarless gum to my patients who did not chew gum, but hey, that's me.

Next time: I hope she doesn't make me regret it....

A Crazy birthday tradition from/for Mom

A few years ago Amy made up a song and a Roller birthday tradition called the almost birthday. Like the Unbirthday from Alice in Wonderland, it celebrates being born but not on your actual birthday. This one gets very close to the mark, by being held on the day before the actual birthday.

Usually the person is greeted in the morning to the song. Tomorrow is Amy's actual birthday and since she usually leaves before I'm fully awake, we did not sing the almost birthday song. We decided to film a version of the song and post it on facebook during our morning break. As we were filming it Amy called from work for the express purpose of lamenting that we did not sing for her in the morning.

We are sorry for that but we were certainly thinking of you Hon when we filmed this . . .

Happy Almost Birthday. We love you very much.

Bob Newhart loves Dave, a Lunatic's Memoir

Dave liked to spend his nights pondering the imponderable questions of life and eating orange slices, sometimes the candy, sometimes the fruit. He liked to mix things up like that. But most importantly, was the pondering of the imponderable. Such as, what the best thing before sliced bread was. He would bring himself back in time around the table, where a family was eating unsliced bread. A family down the street would knock on their door and say, "Hey, you gotta see this!" They would pull out a bag of bread they just got at the store and everyone would gasp because it was already sliced. But once discovered, what would they say that's the best thing since...

The ice truck? The horse and carriage? Movable type? What would it be??

These are things Dave would ponder.

He also would ponder if famous people were fans of normal people since normal people were fans of famous people. For instance, Dave loved Bob Newhart. But did Bob Newhart love Dave? Would Bob Newhart think, "Hey that Dave is great." He makes radio shows in his car. He spends time with his family. He returns money if he is undercharged. Dave felt that any day now he would get a request for a signed picture of himself from Bob Newhart, so Dave just sent him one.

Next Time: Summer Reading Results