A Nostalgic Look At The Future

HAPPY BIRTHDAY HONEY!!!


Yep, it's that time of year again ... my blushing beautiful bride Martha is beginning her next orbit around the sun! (I won't tell you the exact year, but I will hint it's a multiple of three.) Not that -- as far as I know -- Martha's especially vain about her age (for that matter, neither am I) but there are some things you just DON'T mention yourself and walk out on both legs!


But that's ok, I know I have a spare one.


Take today's title. I got that from a poster for the 1974 film Sleeper starring Woody Allen and Diane Keaton (also co-written and directed by Allen) and saw that poster with a few hundred others in a book I just finished today. Film Posters of the 70s (ISBN 9783822845318; edited by Tony Nourmand and Graham Marsh) just amazed me with some of their artwork from America and Europe.


I just wish every one had been full page.


This morning Martha got the book The Power of A Positive Mom from Sarah and Jeffrey along with their card, and she got my card along with a Point of Grace CD from me. Her breakfast made by the kids -- ok, I helped a little -- included cereal, Sunny Delight, water, and two pieces of peanut butter toast. She enjoyed it, and her co-workers had caramel rolls for (and with) her at work today.


I know, I stopped in to see her before coming to the office today.


Happy Birthday Facebook. You are twelve years old today going on ... really, I don't know. With just under 1.6 billion monthly active users and of those just over one billion daily users (and I got those numbers as of January 27 from a report on the Expanded Ramblings website, article "200+ Amazing Facebook Statistics"), you've got access to about one in every FIVE people on Earth!


I'd post the link directly here, but it tends to make the blog go wonky.


Certainly the knowledge, and certainly if you leverage it right the power. But wisdom? I think of the line from The City of Gold and Lead, "It is no good to make a rabbit pie unless you can first catch your rabbit." But then comes the next line to my head, "And they [the aliens that took over the world in John Christopher's Tripods trilogy] did it with the ancients' own marvel: the distance-pictures."


Insert thoughtful statement and hopeful digression here.


And tonight after work I'm meeting Martha and the kids where we'll go to Martha's choice for her birthday dinner (which she gets free there), Paradiso! Ought to be fun, and I'm especially concerned for my kids' sake that they see me -- or will have once they leave home -- as their father who loved them and was there for them, and not against them.


The Perfect Parent.


That's going to be a future Ensign title, I am sure of it. The gist of it being how none of us this side of heaven can be the perfect parents for our children, sometimes we just have to back away when they're being jerks to one another. I almost don't break up Sarah and Jeffrey's fights in the morning anymore because seeing them gets me as nasty as they can be. Please pray I get that gone from me, please.


Thank you,

David