I’ve selected a winner to the caption contest.
Darla: Jared, can we please go now?
Jared: NO DARLA! Can’t you see we’re having fun!!!!!!
Thanks to Amy for her great caption!
You can read all the contest entries here.
Darla and I got home from vacation this afternoon. It’s easy to forget how hot it gets here when you’ve been relaxing in 75 degree weather.
The last time we went on vacation, we left our A/C running to make sure our house stayed cool. However, when we came back from that vacation, our A/C had broken and almost burned our house down. We learned a valuable lesson from that and this time we left our A/C off.
When we came home today, the temperature in our house was over 95 degrees. I don’t know the exact temperature, since our thermostat only measures temperatures up to 95 after which it displays “OL”, which I can only imagine means “over limit”. It was “OL” for about an hour, even now while I type this it reads 94 degrees.
We hurried around the house unpacking and cleaning up, while the dogs followed us around panting and trying to trip us wherever we walked. I finished unloading the contents of a suitcase and rolled it into the spare bedroom. It was much cooler than the other rooms.
“It’s so much cooler in Cole’s room,” my mind told me.
My mouth almost echoed those words before I realized how completely wrong I was. This wasn’t Cole’s room. It would have been Cole’s room, but it wasn’t anymore.
I passed Darla as I walked out of the hall and told her what had just transpired. She consoled me and asked if everything was alright. I reassured her that it was.
But it really wasn’t alright. I had just taken myself two steps backward in a long road to emotional recovery. I had a temporary lapse in memory and had failed to realize that Cole – my son born almost 16 months ago – was dead.
I couldn’t stop thinking about this. I walked out to the kitchen, unable to shake these thoughts. I put away some medicine from our trip and sneezed. The sneeze forced a couple tears out that I had been holding back. I blinked quickly to get them away before Darla walked in.
I walked back down the hallway and took one last look in the spare bedroom. It was time for me to close the door again to Cole’s room.
Welcome to the first official Mellentine.com caption contest. To enter, write your best caption for the following photo in the comments section. I’ll choose the winner, probably with some help from Darla.
The scene is: Darla and Jared at a San Diego Padres game.
Darla and I went to San Diego for one main reason – to help our friend prepare for proposing to his girlfriend. When the moment came, Darla and I were right in the middle of it. I thought it would be a fantastic idea to take pictures. It was a great time, but very, very awkward. The photo below is not staged.
Anyone have any awkward moments that they want to share?
Furious D, Sunni, Darla and Jared at the pool on the fourth floor (pool level) of our hotel. Behind us, you can see Petco Park, home of the San Diego Padres.
I came across this set of photos from our trip to Flagstaff in June 2006. Some of them are hilarious.
Read the rest of this entry »
I know. But what you don’t know is that I couldn’t really say anything about what’s been happening to me lately.
I was serving on a jury for a capital murder case. The case was interesting, to say the least.
I’m in the process of writing everything, but I’ve published a few days so far.
Check it out at jurorsix.com.
Check out our newest ultrasound pictures of the baby, taken at 12 weeks. Click the photo for the whole set.
I was going over my Firefox extensions and realized something. It’s really easy to get carried away with extensions. I had about 25 installed and running – some that I had never used. Ridiculous, you say? I agree.
So I did a bit of cleanup and I’m happy to report the results. Seeing how March Madness is still going on, I’m proud to present my Elite 8 Firefox Extensions – in no particular order other than alphabetical.
Bookmark Sync and Sort is a Mozilla Firefox extension that lets you connect to an FTP/WebDAV server and synchronize your bookmarks that are stored in an XML file.
With ColorZilla you can get a color reading from any point in your browser, quickly adjust this color and paste it into another program. You can Zoom the page you are viewing and measure distances between any two points on the page. The built-in palette browser allows choosing colors from pre-defined color sets and saving the most used colors in custom palettes. DOM spying features allow getting various information about DOM elements quickly and easily.
DownThemAll is all you can desire from a download manager: it features an advanced accelerator that increases speed up to 400% and it allows you to pause and resume downloads at any time!
DownThemAll is fast, reliable and easy-to-use! It lets you download all the links or images contained in a webpage and much more: you can refine your downloads by fully customizable criteria to get only what you really want!
Firebug integrates with Firefox to put a wealth of web development tools at your fingertips while you browse. You can edit, debug, and monitor CSS, HTML, and JavaScript live in any web page.
Get international weather forecasts from AccuWeather.com, and display it in any toolbar or statusbar with this highly customizable and unobtrusive extension.
Draw out a ruler to get the pixel width and height of any elements on a webpage.
Tab Groups is a firefox extension that lets a user organize tabs into groups, those groups in turn can be switched between through their own tab bar. This extension is aimed at power users who have many tabs open on different subjects at once so that organizing these tabs coherently can become difficult. Windows are cumbersome to work with and tab placement is likewise less than ideal when the number of tabs makes their titles hard to distinguish. Currently supports FireFox version 2.0+.
Tab Groups is currently labeled pre-alpha and is at version 0.02, so no guarantees are made on it working properly however no “major” bugs are known of.
Adds a menu and a toolbar with various web developer tools.
I know everyone has their favorites and I may have left off someone’s favorite. Are there other extensions that you guys use?
I love my job. Today, I was given tickets by my work to go and enjoy a baseball game in the middle of the day. Sometime after the first inning, however, it started to rain. It was my first time experiencing a rain delay at a game. In fact, a couple years ago I went to a game that rained the whole way through and they didn’t call it. Anyhow, I sat through the rain delay.
“This can’t last more than 15 minutes,” I said.
And it didn’t. Well, the rain didn’t. It took a good 20 minutes after the rain stopped to de-tarp the field and prep it for play again.
Arizonans are so weird when it comes to rain. At the slightest sprinkle they go running for cover. A lady sitting close to me said that there were a bunch of “wicked witches of the West” (actually, I think she said “wicked witch of the Wests”).
It started raining again in the 4th inning and they stopped the game again mid-batter. I told the guy I was with that we were probably done, so we headed to the car. Before we even got out of the park, it was pouring. We walked/jogged as fast as we could to my car, but by the time we got there we were soaked. We would have been drier jumping into a pool fully-clothed.
As we were driving away, the clouds went away and out came the sun. Hilarious how the weather works sometimes.
Sometimes it’s difficult for me to remember where I was a week or month ago. I do remember, however, where I was a year ago today…
Five days after discovering that our unborn child had died, Darla and I gave birth to him at Banner Desert Medical Center. I don’t even know how to put into words what hell we went through over the course of those 5 days. We didn’t know what to do with ourselves. Everything felt wrong. We tried everything to get into the hospital to get done what needed to be done. We kept telling ourselves that God had a plan for what was going on. Sometimes it was difficult to say it with any conviction. We shed a lot of tears and talked bitterly about the rapid hope loss.
On March 10th, we were finally admitted. We had made enough of a noise for them to finally get us in to deliver our son. We spent the first night anxiously waiting as Darla was pumped full of fluids and was given medicine to help induce labor. After our visitors left for the evening, we tried to get some sleep. Darla was given two doses of sleep medication, which turned out to only give her hallucinations. I, on the other hand, fell asleep quickly, but woke several times throughout the night when the nurse came to check on Darla.
Early in the morning, Darla started having contractions. I tried to comfort her as much as possible. You remember sitcoms where the husband’s hand hurts from his wife squeezing it to relieve the pain of the contractions? That’s exactly how it is.
At 9:02 a.m., our son was born. Our doctor didn’t make the birth because it all happened so quickly. Apparently, delivering a 1lb, 2oz baby is much easier that delivering a full-term baby.
God has a funny way of getting your attention sometimes. The nurse that delivered our baby was named Hope. After a week of talking about how our lives would change and how we couldn’t find any hope in the situation, God gave us Hope.
We spent the next few minutes with our son. I can’t even describe how difficult it was to hold him. I cut the umbilical cord – something I swore I couldn’t do. It was the epitome of bittersweet. Here I was holding my firstborn son, but I would never be able to see him smile. I could never rock him to sleep or teach him how to play baseball.
Darla held him as I walked out to bring in family to see him. I walked out and it was cold as ice in the front lobby. It had been raining all morning. It was the first time since we found out Darla was expecting (5 months earlier) that it had rained. Yeah, it’s kinda corny to say that it was like God was crying for us. But at the same time, I knew that His heart aches for His children. Somehow, I took comfort in that.
As our son was introduced to our closest family, his name – which we had planned to keep a secret until he was born – was revealed.
“Cole Michael”, Darla and I would say proudly.
I’ll never forget watching my dad burst into tears when he heard Cole’s name. A pillar of strength for our family, he melted because he knew Cole’s middle name was for him.
I watched my father-in-law tenderly kiss Cole’s forehead. It was a precious moment for all of us.
After a while, our family left to allow us time alone with Cole. Darla and I just started talking to him. We told him how much we loved him. It may seem strange, but to us it seemed natural. He was our son. It was our only time to talk to him face-to-face.
We took lots of photos of us holding Cole. In the end, we spent about 8 hours with him before we needed to let him go. 8 hours. It seemed like an instant. He was supposed to outlive us.
We’re doing surprisingly well with what has happened over the past year. We went to a few of the support groups and found that we were handling things better than people that had lost children years earlier. We know that our faith has helped us grow stronger together. We still think about Cole all the time. We still miss him. We always will.
Darla and I are expecting again. We know that what happens isn’t in our hands. God has a plan regardless of what happens. It doesn’t help the general nervousness, but it does give us hope.
We finished a major project at work this past week – one that’s been a few years in the making. It would be nice to have some downtime now, but it’s just nonstop. I’ll probably be burning some vacation soon before I go crazy.
So what better way to finish a long week than with a long weekend? Darla and I spent Friday night with some friends at the new group hangout. We spent all afternoon on Saturday at softball practice. After a quick dinner, we headed to a park to play a couple hours of volleyball. Then we capped the night with a mental workout – Trivial Pursuit, Genii Edition (circa 1984). It’s tough answering questions about game show hosts from the 50’s and Soviet Russia.
Today was a recovery day. Church, family lunch, lots of recorded NBA All Star weekend TV… The real question is whether I’ll get a wakeup call from work tomorrow morning. I received two unwelcome calls last week, and I don’t want to repeat the pattern.
I miss e-mail from friends. Someone e-mail me and tell me what’s going on in your life. Or go on MySpace and leave me a comment. Or just leave a comment here. I could use some electronic interaction.
I’m getting old. Or at least I’m acting old. I keep calling people by their wrong names. It’s not just that I mix up names, I mishear them and can’t remember to fix it the next time I say it. So I’m deaf and senile.
In other news, I almost broke someone’s kneecap at softball on Friday. He was pitching and I hit a rocket back at him. He didn’t have time to even put his glove on the ball and it smacked directly into his knee. He didn’t seem interested in my apology – probably in too much pain. I felt pretty bad though. I should probably practice my bunting.
I was in Las Vegas, Nevada (not to be confused with Las Vegas, Kansas) for the past few days. I was there on business, meeting people from corporate and our affiliates. The meetings were great, but there was a lot of fun “after hours”.
When I checked in to Treasure Island on Sunday, I was told that I had two reservations. I told the guy something like, “I’m only one person, so you could probably cancel one of those.” But apparently he felt obligated to upgrade my room to a panoramic room – two walls had windows – overlooking the strip on the 19th floor. I distinctly remember telling him that I would prefer a lower floor, but whatever. Anyway, the upgrade sounded great until about 9 p.m. the first night. There’s some pirate show that was very loud that was 19 floors beneath my window. The pirate show, I was told, was just a bit of clothing away from a porn show. I can’t remember the name of the show… something about sirens. Anyway, I didn’t go see the show but I did hear it while I was working in my room. I just reminded myself of a Modest Mouse song, but I’ll spare you.
Monday night, after our meetings, we were treated to a great six course Italian meal at Canaletto’s restaurant at the Venetian. After the meal, we went as a group to see the Blue Man Group. I sat in the fourth row – about 10 feet from the stage – and it was amazing. I won’t go into all the details, but it was one of the best shows I’ve seen. Darla and I are seeing them in Phoenix in February. After the show, we came across one of the performers in the lobby and I had my picture taken with him.
After the show, one of the corporate project managers bought a few of us gelato and we walked around for a while. We went back to our hotel’s casino and I watched people lose – and sometimes win – their money.
My greatest accomplishment on the trip is that I didn’t gamble one bit. For those of you that know me, you know that it was not an easy task.
I spent my plane ride back talking with a nice gentleman about life. We talked the entire time sharing experiences, etc. It was a great trip, but I’m so glad to be back.
I’ve really been wanting to play some music lately. I was thinking about recording some songs that I never recorded, or playing some live music. I even thought a little karaoke tonight. I didn’t do it, of course, because I don’t sing well. But that’s the point of karaoke, isn’t it? You can sing like crap and no one else can say anything because they sing like crap too.
Lately I’ve been making a mental list of songs that I would like to perform live with a band. So far I only have two songs, but they epitomize the idea of this list.
“En Macherus” by My Epic
I’m think I’m ready to go,
(Why am I left in this place?)
though I can’t grasp yet,
(Of all the miracles known…)
With all the power you hold,
(When did my diligence fade?)
isn’t this desertion?These prison walls are far from golden streets and desert paths where kingdoms preached repentance’s call, but now you’ve ceased to speak in me the mysteries. Forgive the doubt of baffled eyes. I thought that you would save my life. I pray in chains but no reply. Could this be where the ending lies? If you can claim the skies and calm the seas, give sight to lifeless eyes, and set the captives free, I know that you can raise the dead to life and comfort me. If Heaven’s son can bear the weight of every shame and die for grace, then Abba, I, I too will find the courage not to sway beneath the blade. This will be the end of me, and I will see your glory.
“My Heart” by Paramore
I am finding out that maybe I was wrong
That I’ve fallen down and I can’t do this aloneStay with me, this is what I need, please?
Sing us a song and we’ll sing it back to you
We could sing our own but what would it be without you?I am nothing now and it’s been so long
Since I’ve heard the sound, the sound of my only hopeThis time I will be listening.
Sing us a song and we’ll sing it back to you
We could sing our own but what would it be without you?This heart, it beats, beats for only you
This heart, it beats, beats for only youThis heart, it beats, beats for only you
My heart is yoursThis heart, it beats, beats for only you
My heart is yours
(My heart, it beats for you)This heart, it beats, beats for only you (It beats, beats for only you)
My heart is yours (My heart is yours)This heart, it beats, beats for only you (Please don’t go now, please don’t fade away)
My heart, my heart is yours (Please don’t go now, please don’t fade away)(Please don’t go now, please don’t fade away) My heart is yours
(Please don’t go now, please don’t fade away) My heart is yours
(Please don’t go, please don’t fade away)
(Please don’t go now, please don’t fade away) My heart is…
Darla and I were watching the AFC Championship game when the following transpired.
Jared, after Indianapolis stopped New England on third down: “YES!!”
Darla: “Why are you cheering for them? I thought you were going for the Colts.”
Jared: “I am going for the Colts. That’s why I’m cheering for Indianapolis.”
Darla: “Oh.”
I’m not gonna lie. The last year has been really tough. Maybe that’s an understatement.
I’m not going to tell the story again. Maybe later, but not now. Most people don’t know what to say, so they respond out of habit with “I’m so sorry”. Others know that they don’t know what to say, so they don’t say anything. I’d rather hear something than nothing, but it seems like there are much better words that can be said. Then there’s this minority of people that know just what to say and how to say it. It’s funny because usually the right thing isn’t an “I’m sorry” aloe, it’s something that stirs emotions even more. The last thing I want is for people to feel sorry for me.
“So,” you ask the question, “are you going to mope around like this forever.” Yes. But you probably won’t know it. One of these days, you’ll see me and you won’t remember that this happened. Then you’ll say something that will bring it all back and you’ll feel horrible, but I’ll be fine because I’ve given myself the chance to grieve properly. Let me save you the trouble. Don’t walk on eggshells around me. If you say something that brings up the past, it brings up the past. Sure it will sting for a bit, but I can handle it. I’d rather feel pain from the past than forget it altogether.
Darla taught Daisy to high-five in about 5 minutes. The results were hilarious.
The outtakes were even better.
Talk about a higher cost of living: The Value of a New York Dollar is apparently worth less than a Canadian dollar. It gets even worse when you have to support your family on only $10/hour. I don’t know about you, but I’m feeling like a rich man.
I wonder if politicians get as excited about filibusters as the kids in the Sandlot did about the pickle. I can imagine politicians running in their suits yelling “FILIBUSTER!!!”
Hilarious.
Good thing someone could profit from the price hike in fuel. I thought that everyone was suffering…
Remember that time you got stung by a jellyfish and peed on it to make it feel better? Well, turns out that was just a myth to make you do something stupid. Read more here: 10 Useless or Even Dangerous First Aid Myths.
Lily, our new white lab, has arrived. And she’s making her presence known by shredding everything in her path. She’s so cute, but I think she has a heart of pure evil. I can’t really tell.
The old Mellentine.com – you know, the one with the trees – is gone like my shoes that Lily destroyed. In its place, a new blogging system called Wordpress. Yes, you technical nerds know exactly what I’m talking about. Since most of you aren’t technical nerds, you’re going to have to pretend to get excited.
Daisy decided to shred a newspaper that we had on the table. There were no survivors.
[14:36] jaredmellentine: You could ask the church to pray that your teeth will miraculously get better.
[14:43] Furious D: I think I might do it.
[14:44] jaredmellentine: Ask for teeth prayer?
[14:44] Furious D: yea… do you think you could pray for that for me?
[14:44] jaredmellentine: Not without laughing
Two idiots are talking about how much Coheed and Cambria suck. I’m laughing inside.
Darla and I took a walk around a lake on Easter.
I’m forcing myself to write something. I need to.
Has everyone seen my cool weekly music chart? Thanks to last.fm I can track my listening habits and display them however I see fit. It’s kinda like a music recommendation system on steroids. You get all these listening stats from users and then you can get suggested music based on what other people listen to. It has some cool Web 2.0 features built-in too.
I was just getting links for Furious and Gordy’s last.fm pages and I saw Gordy’s recent track listing. Hilarious.
Work has been exceedingly busy. I’m not sure why it’s like this all of a sudden. As soon as I got some help, I got swamped. Of course, I was gone for two weeks too and work piled up. But I’m caught up from that.
I haven’t been getting a lot of sleep lately. Well, good sleep anyway. I slept 10 hours last night, but most of that was tossing and turning. Maybe I’ll start taking sleeping pills. Maybe I’ll start working out. Maybe I’ll just drink warm milk and pray for sleep.
A scar is something that most people wouldn’t be proud of. In fact, scars are almost seen as a deformity in our culture. People have medical procedures to increase or reduce some part of their body and the big selling point is that there will be no scars. People strive for perfection in their body, but they are selling themselves short.
Scars remind us of where we’ve been.
I can look at a scar and remember the time that I was assaulted by furniture while helping Jon Brecke move. I’ll always look at that scar and remember the time that I got to spend with him and his family before he moved to Blythe Buckeye.
Scars remind us that life is precious.
A risk of skin cancer runs in my family. I guess it could theoretically run in every family, but a high risk runs in ours. About 5 years ago, my doctor became concerned about a mole on my back. The doctor ordered a biopsy and had most of the mole removed. They tested it and it came back that it wasn’t cancerous, but it could have become so. They decided to go back in and take the rest of the mole out of there. By no means was this a life-threatening experience, but to a 19 year old, “biopsy” and “cancer” are scary words.
Scars remind us of mistakes.
For some reason, I couldn’t get a picture of this scar. I think it’s starting to go away as my behavior starts to settle down. I used to help the high schoolers at my church with their worship practices. I’d show up and help them through their set, help them stay focused, and provide some suggestions. One night after practice, we were a little crazy. One of the high schoolers sprinted out of the room and I chased after him. I grabbed his arm just as he ran around an open door. My arm caught a sharp piece of metal on the door and sliced a 4-inch gash into my forearm. It instantly swelled and turned purple – and was bleeding, of course.
For a leader to be behaving so erratically is ridiculous. I had no good excuse to be running around chasing people, but I was. And I paid the price. This scar wasn’t only physical. Although I probably wouldn’t hurt myself by running around foolishly again, I might hurt my reputation. It’s not worth the risk.
Scars make us unique.
I have other scars that I don’t even remember where they came from. I have a scar on my knee that must have been from riding my bike when I was younger. I have a scar on my forehead that I’ve been told was from hitting my head when I was really little. It doesn’t matter what the scars are from. I know that no one else in the world has scars like mine. That makes me unique.
Scars are more than just physical deformities. They’re not meant to be covered or removed. They are there to be visual reminders of how we’ve lived.
[18:32] * jaredmellentine slaps Furious D with a slightly moist halibut
[18:34] * Furious D clogs jaredmellentine with a room temperature salmon
[18:35] * jaredmellentine puts on his Admiral Ackbar mask and headbutts Furious D
