{"id":6989,"date":"2011-11-26T06:41:39","date_gmt":"2011-11-26T12:41:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.andybox.com\/?p=6989"},"modified":"2011-11-26T06:41:39","modified_gmt":"2011-11-26T12:41:39","slug":"random-facts-about-me-november-2011-edition","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.andybox.com\/?p=6989","title":{"rendered":"Random Facts About Me &#8211; November 2011 Edition"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Hi, my name is Andy, and this is my blog. Yeah, it&#8217;s been a while. Been a busy but good week with three different Thanksgivings and various other stuff. I figure it&#8217;s about time to cook up some more random facts, so here goes:<\/p>\n<ol>\n<li>I&#8217;m a big fan of the Coen brothers&#8217; films, particularly No Country for Old Men and The Big Lebowski. I just watched their excellent remake of True Grit. I don&#8217;t quite have the right words to explain their films&#8217; appeal. They just feel like high-quality, well-made films. Their dialog in particular is always sharp. Somehow it&#8217;s much more interesting than the conversations you hear every day, yet it still sounds realistic.<\/li>\n<li>I worked a party as a DJ once. It was my sister&#8217;s birthday party, maybe age 12 or 13. I brought my home stereo, which had decent-sized speakers for home use but didn&#8217;t quite have the power for a dance party in a large room. One of her friends came over to warn me that one of my speakers was about to blow out.<\/li>\n<li>I went to Baylor as a conservative Republican with a very conservative take on Christianity. I graduated from Baylor as a fairly apolitical agnostic. Now I&#8217;m mostly a liberal Democrat with a progressive view of Christianity. Life is funny, isn&#8217;t it?<\/li>\n<li>I want to go see Lady Gaga in concert the next time she comes to town. My wife won&#8217;t go with me. Although she likes some of her music, she says Gaga is too odd for her.<\/li>\n<li>My bicycle crosstraining is working well. I ran seven miles on Thursday with no knee pain. I sure felt it afterward in my quads, though.<\/li>\n<li>It makes me self-conscious (more so than normal, I mean) to be with my kids around other people. My kids always divert my attention when I&#8217;m with them because I&#8217;m trying to think about what they need and want and how I should respond. If other people are around, I&#8217;m thinking about those things PLUS what the other people think about the situation &#8211; do they approve of what I&#8217;m doing? Am I being too strict? Too lenient? Am I teaching them good manners and handling disputes well and keeping them from hurting themselves or breaking other people&#8217;s stuff? I suspect most parents do this to some degree, although maybe not to the extent that I do. So if I seem stressed or distracted around you when I&#8217;m with my kids, it&#8217;s because I am. Now you know why. And it&#8217;s not your fault, so please don&#8217;t take it personally. <\/li>\n<li>I fiddled around with a guitar a while back. It was actually my mother-in-law\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s guitar because she\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s cool like that. I learned a few chords, including a modified version of the main one from the Black Crowes\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 \u00e2\u20ac\u0153She Talks to Angels\u00e2\u20ac\u009d. I realized quickly that I lacked the discipline and motivation to work hard enough to become a good guitar player. The experience gave me a deeper appreciation for the Slashes and Eddie Van Halens of the world who do work hard enough to play well.<\/li>\n<li>It still feels a bit weird to be the dad driving his wife and kids to see the family for Thanksgiving, especially when we go up 287 to Wichita Falls.<\/li>\n<li>I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve been interviewed on the local news twice. The first time was in 2002 or 2003 for a story about mail theft in apartment complexes. Our apartment put gigantic padlocks on the mailboxes as a deterrent. The second was in 2005 or 2006 for a story about the gas well down the street from our first house. Both times the reporter seemed to want me to be really concerned about the situation in question, but I wasn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t. It almost seemed like she was trying to invent a story. I didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t have good answers, but they aired my segment anyway. I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve pretty much decided that the next time a reporter asks if he\/she can ask me a few questions on camera, the answer will be no. <\/li>\n<li>If I had to go back to school for another degree, I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d probably get a bachelor\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s in either meteorology or economics.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Hi, my name is Andy, and this is my blog. Yeah, it&#8217;s been a while. Been a busy but good week with three different Thanksgivings and various other stuff. I figure it&#8217;s about time to cook up some more random &hellip; <a href=\"http:\/\/www.andybox.com\/?p=6989\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.andybox.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6989"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.andybox.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.andybox.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.andybox.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.andybox.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6989"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"http:\/\/www.andybox.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6989\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6996,"href":"http:\/\/www.andybox.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6989\/revisions\/6996"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.andybox.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6989"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.andybox.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6989"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.andybox.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6989"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}