The big performance was tonight. I'm exhausted from spending the evening toe shoes and leg warmers. Also, the after party went on and on into the night.

OK, fine. It was one five-minute dance followed by ice cream at Arctic Circle. But still, putting the kids to bed was a pretty rough fight and I think they won.

A full report with pictures and video will come tomorrow.

This video sums it all up. There's not a finer example of the Utah accent anywhere on the web. You also get to see, in its natural habitat, an honest-to-blog Utah swear word.

The girl in the video even says at the end that she can't post it on her blog because she swore.

Don't worry. I'll post it on mine.

The love for my children is infinite. It knows no bounds.

I know. Vomit.

I've never found the limits of my love for them... but I can see the edge from here.

This reminds me of my week on the river. I'm sure wherever he is, Claire is blaming me for breaking the shitter.

Remember in the 1980's when everything was "gag me with a spoon" and "gag me with a chainsaw" and "gag me with speculum". Or how about the 1990's when we were all oh-so-funny with our clever following of everything you say with a resounding "NOT!" Oh my God, we were funny... NOT!

Get it? See what I did just there?

Well, the new generation seems to have fallen victim to their own Mad-Libs style catch phrase. It goes like this. Someone says something like, "It is really cold." and then my kids pipe up with, "Your MOM is really cold."

It's Friday night before a three-day holiday weekend. I plan on sneaking some booze into the new Indiana Jones tonight then drunkenly groping Donna as we leave the theater.

What are you drinking this weekend? What's your favorite drink? Share your favorite libation recipes and drinking games. Don't forget to come back later and comment when you're drunk too.

"The three greatest words spoken. Bush stimulus package."

"Without a guy named Bush in the White House, what are you going to do to make penis jokes about the President?"

"It depends on who wins."

Like everyone else, I have an aneurysm in the part of my brain that keeps track of my checking account balance every time I fill my gas tank. If the reports are true, a gallon of gasoline will soon cost us upwards of four dollars. And I have a bit of nostalgia for the days in my teens when I could scrounge change my friends had dropped in the back seat of my car and put enough in the tank to drive home from college to have my mother do my laundry.

But have become a bit of an environmentalist lately. Or a conservationalist. Well... I give a crap in some way or another about the state of energy usage these days. I don't like using foreign oil. I hate burning so much carbon fuel. I hate Salt Lake's shitty public transportation system. And on and on...

So as much as I'd love to see a price break at the pump I'm a realist. For one thing, the price of gas has never gone down and it never will in the future. For another thing, and this is the really important part, in order for people to be motivated to explore alternative energy and dramatically reduce their consumption, the price of fossil fuels will have to rise to unaffordable prices.

As I closed the bathroom door and turned out the last light in the house, I couldn't help but remind myself that I don't believe in the supernatural.

"The girl said you have to close your eyes, say 'Bloody Mary' nine times then turn around three times. Then you look in the mirror and you see Bloody Mary's face."

The kids at the bus stop had convinced Beth that this sort of thing was totally true and that she could do it and see for herself. We had spent the entire evening convincing her that it was bullshit. And now, here we were, Mom, Dad, and all four kids crammed into the bathroom making ourselves dizzy in the dark.

I put off taking anti-depressants for years. I was ashamed to admit I needed them. I was afraid of going to the doctor. I was afraid I would become someone else. I was afraid of losing my sex drive.

Now that I've been on them for a month I can't imaging a time when I won't want to take them. My mood has dramatically improved and, frankly, I haven't missed my sex drive. In fact, now it's Donna who lays wondering why I went to bed so early with nary a thought about performing the marital act while I sleep like a cat in a patch of sun. Content and happy.

Now I just know some of you are going to get all up in my face about how much I bitched about Donna and her lack of libido back in the day. And how I used to go on and on about how much it kept me up at night. All I can say is, I think I understand a little better what it's like not to want it all the time. Or to pretty much never have it occur to you.

So after all that trouble to have a contest and sort through the entries and counting the votes. The winner is...

Donna

The voting was very close. Within one vote, actually. But we checked for hanging chads, double-checked with the Supreme Court and the results are certified.

Alrighty, folks here are your final five.

1) Dawn Dunn

...read the rest...

I was a last-minute guest on the Couchcast again yesterday. I think this broadcast went a lot better than the last time. Thanks to Robert for having me on.

Go check it out

Also, it's not too late to enter The Contest to rename my wife.. Here's a hint to winning: think of a name you would actually change your own name to and suggest that.

There's a new fast food place opening near our house. It's nothing special, just a chain burger place. But something about this place has caught the girls' fancy. They are transfixed and completely caught up in the excitement of a big-time fast food opening.

This is more than a little strange. A few years ago, we took a day-after-Christmas road trip to visit my brother in Seattle. On New Year's Day we watched the Morgan Spurlock documentary "Super Size Me". The girls swore off fast food forever.

You have no idea how much fast food you really eat until you have a fourteen hour drive where your children make vomit noises every time they hear you planning a quick stop at the golden arches. Very convincing dry-heave noises.

When I started blogging on Fiddley Gomme, I was writing about all kinds of things I figured would piss my wife off. So I wanted to make sure she didn't accidentally stumble across the site. Because I'm a chicken-shit.

To keep my anonymity, I invented an alias. Pete Dunn. I also came up with one in order to keep hers. Donna Dunn. This worked out great. I wrote about whatever I wanted and she was none-the-wiser.

Somewhere along the way, I felt like we had gotten to a place where I could share my thoughts and feelings with her without fear of castration. So I shared this blog with her. And except for a few minor bumps, it's gone very well.

Being brought up Mormon left me naive about important things like the difference between an americano and a latte. Or proper beer bong technique. But my upbringing on the fringes of American religion did teach me some valuable lessons.

For example; if the charismatic, bearded leader of your congregation on an isolated ranch in {fill in the name of a western state here} claims that he is the resurrected Jesus. Or even if he claims to get text messages from Jesus. There's a good chance he's trying to have sex with your under-age daughter.

But don't take my word for it. It happens all the time. Seriously. All the time. So much.

Kelly over there to the Mocha Momma blog
tagged me with a meme.

Normally, I'm not a big fan of meme tagging but I guess I'm just not in the mood to be anti-social. Maybe I'm just feeling the love from the blogosphere and I wanna give a little back. Get I get an amen?

Try as I might I couldn't get Dave Fletcher to admit to randomly deleting Chris Buttars' email. Though, towards the end of the interview, after finally lulling him with my witty repartee, he did admit to once having been a bigot.

Listen to The Couchcast

Every morning I get an email from Google with a daily agenda from my online personal calendar.

From: Google Calendar

...read the rest...

So, this morning was awesome. I was a dad-machine. The little girls were out of bed, dressed, fed and sent towards the bus stop, completed homework in hand... err... backpack.

I was out the door on time. ON. TIME. Oh, and I was shaved, showered and managed to match my socks to my underwear. I had kicked the morning's ass. Solo, bitches.

I even remembered that I needed to swap cars with my sister-in-law so she could help out and cover the carpool with our van. This I remembered until I replaced that remembering with the rememory that I needed to take The Bitch to the sitter's. Then, somehow the remembering about the van left my brain. I still drove the van. It's just that I drove it all the way to work.