J. Jason Lazarus Blog

Most of you know that I’m extremely interested in the consistent local rumor mill concerning the constant commercial expansion of our fair town of … Fairbanks…and some of you may know that I keep a forum to talk about all the current rumors. What makes this summer more interesting than previous ones is that there isn’t too many people actually in the know as to what is actually coming - and quite a bit of construction going on:

Wilbur Street and Airport Way corner construction - more than just a repaving project, something’s going in on the corner and it’s always been rumored this location was going to be the first location of Arby’s in Fairbanks since the 1980’s.

Lot next to Old Navy in “Los Anchorage” Johansen district - purported to be the site of The Gap, Best Buy and Target - it’s too small for the last two - at least the current construction is - this last weekend they bulldozed all the trees between Old Navy and College Road - more than enough room for at least one major box store. Also, according to monster.com, Toys-r-us / Baby’s-r-us is opening a location in Fairbanks… hmmm…

North of Johansen, next to new McDonalds - older rumors speculate that this may be anything from a promised gasoline station to either a Applebee’s or TGIFriday’s (can’t remember which one the Newsminer quoted as coming to town).

Bobby’s Downtown has finally opened recently after two years of rumors - Magic Carpet has reopened after “retiring” - Super Wal-mart is one day from its Grand Opening and going to 24-hour status (we haven’t had a 24-hour boxstore since K-mart left in .. what, 2000? 2001?) - Castle is opening an adult megastore on the Old Steese - even a slightly confirmed presence of a Hampton Inn soon in town - as well as several others - tons of things opening, tons of rumors - interesting stuff to see Fairbanks blossom into a metro - and what’s more - it pisses off those people in Goldstream

Apparently my attempts to save electricity is, in fact, working!  My bill has not only tapered off but also my average kw/h has done a pretty substantial downturn - an 8% decrease in one month.  Although I’m certain I can’t do too much to limit myself much more (at 472kwh/month, I’m almost sitting at half the national average), I have started using prefold diapers to limit how many times a week we do diaper washes and we’ve both been more diligent in unplugging all the electronics not currently in use.  I’m even considering buying some mini solar panels to start charging our handheld devices (Cell Phones, iPods and handheld game consoles) - at about $80 for one, seeing that it’ll provide charging on camping trips without a car battery being drained, I think they’ll pay for themselves in at least usefulness pretty quickly.

And, this last month we managed to squeak through three weeks of driving on one tank of gas per vehicle - a feat we haven’t ever come close to in recent memory - usually every two weeks we’re buying gas, so this was a welcome change.  Unfortunately, after that tank our van went into the shop and we went down to one vehicle which drained my aspirations of repeating it - and then, of coarse, that car had to go into the shop as well.  Now we’re going around in a loaner from my parents until the vehicles get fixed - man when it rains, it pours!  Ah well, all is good.

Having the last month and a half with Aidan home alone (I can’t believe it’s been that long!) has been outstanding. Watching the little man go from being so small, relatively silent, devoid of any expressions - to smiling uncontrollably at anyone (though, especially Deanna and I), cooing up a storm, rolling onto his side, grabbing his own toes with his hands, grabbing for toys and actively figuring them out - man - it’s been a whirlwind.

I’d be lying if I didn’t say that some of these days have been trying - there are days where his normal perky attitude does slip and he does fuss quite a bit - there are days where no matter what I do, it’s seemingly wrong. But with each passing day, those days turn into mere hours and now only a couple minutes here or there. The worst ones to deal with were the ones that had no idea what I was doing wrong - being dry, fed, loved, cuddled and warm just somehow wasn’t enough - and those are very hard to not take to bed as an attack on your own beliefs of how good a parent you are. It’s been rough realizing that there will be times that all I can do is my best and that won’t be enough - being the perfectionist that I am at times, this one was the hardest one to deal with. But these slight frustrations are always outweighed by the utter joy of being a parent - and I think my greatest joy is that every morning that I wake up to his squirming, I’ll go into his room, look into his crib and get the biggest smile in the world from my Son - that in of itself lets me know I’m doing things right, that he his happy, loved and growing each day toward being a wonderful boy. Although it’s been apparent to many around us, it’s only been recently - with those daily morning smiles - that I know that he actually does need ME - not just someone else with a pair of hands and a bottle - me.

He’s been cooing for about the last month but this last week he *really* started cooing - he’s reached the point where he’s using it as a way to entertain himself and not just another noise than crying that his vocal cords will make.

I have no idea how big he is now - last time we went to the doc’s - about three weeks ago or so, he was 13lbs 11oz. All I know is that I don’t need a gym membership with all the carrying that I do

He’s holding his head up without any wobbling - a feat he started doing even before the first month was up - but now without the wobbles. He’s even starting to try to make himself sit up - if you place him at an angle - about 45 degrees from the complete sitting position - he knows how to use his body to get completely up.

As always, he’s sleeping well during the night - sleeping about 4-5 hours between feedings/changings. Now he sleeps pretty soundly from 10pm-9am. He’s been taking 2 5oz bottles for some time now while mom’s at work and still feeds well with mom while she’s at home - still completely breast fed.

Been using Gripe Water for about 2-3 weeks now - needs about 2-3 half doses a day - rather than the six full doses that are recommended. He is most definitely one farty feller - but lately he seems to need it less for gas and more just to calm down into sleeping.

Still using cloth diapers - been using primarily Kissaluvs with the snaps for the first three months - with an additional “Bummi” cover to keep the saturation on the diaper and not on the clothes. Lately, though, I’m trying to push the water bill down a bit so I’ve been using prefolds with the Snappi type connectors - no need for pins and we got all the prefolds for free! We’ve got about 10 or so around the house here and I know my mother has quite a bit - Deanna’s still weary on using them - especially during the night because they aren’t nearly as absorbant as the Kissaluvs, but they do work pretty well during the day - and they stretch out our need to do diapers by a couple more days rather than every two days with the 24 kissaluvs we have.

And oh man - the smiles - they melt my heart.  It seems every day that they get bigger - I have no idea what is going to happen next - I’m sure laughing but I tell you, it is an adventure every day with my little man.  Obviously, I’ve got a lot of new pictures within the last month online of him - I’ve got tons more to put up soon enough, just gotta stop being lazy and find the time.

I’m pretty certain that the telltale sign of the impending downfall of the human race isn’t the melting glaciers or the skyrocketing price of oil - oh no, it’s riding on the unsuspecting worn soles of our oblivious feet. For thousands of years we’ve used foot apparel as a means to a completely direct end - to protect our feet from the cold, wet or other climes - or to insure that our tired feet can tread longer across this rocky earth. The history of the shoe is surely to show hundreds, if not thousands, of nuances throughout the eras that incrementally thrusted shoe science to another level of scientific complexity. I’d like to think that even more experimental designs of shoes have in fact, like the Nikes and Reeboks of yesteryear that used an air pump to slightly form fit the shoe, helped the evolution in shoes - no matter how quickly they were left behind - they were always forging forward - never backward - until now.

Heelys - the bane of man’s existence on this world. The intention of these contraptions seem to be shrouded in utter mystery and glitzy propaganda and advertisements. One suspects that the idea is that Heelys allow you to *get somewhere faster* yet in fact they seem to make already lethargic children amble even more aimless than previously. Where traditionally walking isn’t much more than an almost involuntary task, Heelys make the children who wear them think that skating around at high speeds requires the same amount of attention than traditional walking - obviously not so by the continuous run-ins with the walls, the consistent stumbling as they hit a crack in the floor or the all-too occasional tumble into their own friends. In fact, I’m pretty certain that just like precision-concerned pasttimes like motorcycles, rock climbing, sky diving and the like, tiny little wheels on the bottom of your shoes that produce significant linear motion with minimal effort should be left to only the most articulate adults. I know that children have been adorning rollerskates for decades as a past-time but it’s exactly that - a past-time, not a means to an end, traditionally - you’re not going to roller-skate to the mall or to work (it’s not the 80’s anymore, at least) - this isn’t something you do when you’re walking, talking, shopping, chewing gum and not watching where you’re going - so why in the hell are Heely’s becoming that? I’ll have to admit that I have this sick pleasure of a smirk that graces my face whenever I see a kid trip and almost biff themselves into the pavement when wearing these - and I do have to admit that I applaud any store that is actively banning them. They serve no purpose except to make our children so lazy they create a world full of escalators and those flat escalators that only the best airports have - a la Hanna-Barbara’s Jetsons. Anyone else see the Harvey Birdman episode where they parodied the Jetsons in a world without escalators? That’s what we’re becoming and this will be regarded in history as the first downward step into the de-evolution of man!  These contraptions are far from an evolutionary step forward in footware and, just like the velcro shoe before them, they continue to force children to look stupid and be lazy.  I have yet to see a child wearing Heely’s without a blank, submissive dull stare accompanying their choice in footware.

Crocs, on the other hand, go against the other tenant of modern footware - they look absolutely atrocious.  A major advancement in the past few centuries is that footware has become more than a purely utilitarian piece of your ensemble - from ragged coverings of linen, our tastes in fashionable footwear have pretty much advanced at the same speed that our desire for more comfortable footware has come into being.  Crocs break that basic tenant that has become a prerequisite for footwear over the most recent century - that they actually have to look attractive to justify a purchase.  In fact, many people ignore completely the comfortability of a shoe in lieu of its apparent attractiveness - consider the stiletto!  Who can honestly say those are comfortable?

But the Crocs brand forces those that purchase them to consistantly argue their purchase in the first place!  I have never seen someone wear something that has caused them so much inner turmoil that they must justify its purchase at every chance they have - how many times have you pointed out a friend’s crocs just to have their comfortability thrown back in your face as rational for the purchase?  How can comfortability overrule the fact that you are basically wearing a pair of oversized, outlandishly colorized, swiss cheesed, plastic packing material on your feet?  The things are seriously UGLY - there is no reason, even for comfort’s sake, to look this ridiculous!  It’s, once again, an de-evolution!  These shoes defeat rationale - they have holes in them the size of quarters so they don’t have any weatherproofing - they are so oversized and clunky that you cannot run, jog or do anything in them other than look appallingly idiotic and clown-footed - they’re so bright that they resemble neon signs that only advert attention away from the rest of your ensemble and pronounce loudly, over a megaphone, that you are indeed wearing the most atrocious pieces of footware ever made - easily trumping any dancefloor disco shoe of the ’70s.

Why, America, WHY?

If you’ve talked to me within the last year or so, you’ve probably heard me on one of my rants about Al Gore and how hypocryphal his “inconvenient” message really is. Gore continuously spouts off about global warming and how truly real it is - especially how crucially important that it is that we deal with this issue now rather than leaving it with some future generation. According to some numbers released at some point last year, apparently Gore believes that it’s the poor masses of the world that should concern themselves with saving the planet while the elite rich like him can hog all the remaining fossil fuels for their own gluttonous use:

This even is more impacting when you consider that my own meager beginnings at energy conserving has netted me a monthly kwh use of 525kwh - assuming that I don’t do anything to limit that further, Al Gore consumes on average 35 times more electricity than me.

Not only can I not take his message seriously with such glaring hypocritic overtones but I have a hard time believing his entire sensationalistic message in the first place. I understand that the world is currently in a warming trend but I doubt many scientists are actually considering the potential of the earth to self-correct. I also am well aware that it has been documented that a cold trend, known as the “Little Ice Age” occurred during the middle ages and renaissance - couldn’t one logically suggest that seeing that we only started warming from this in the late 18th century that this warming trend is still occurring?

This doesn’t mean that I think that we should ignore all the warning signs and continue to burn through all our fossil reserves but I think an alarmist approach is only going to end up polarizing the country into radial action or non-action - rather than actually maturing our society we’ll force those without money or power to change and continue to allow those like Al Gore to buy carbon credits in the veiled attempt to make them seem responsible. Why can we not impose restrictive taxes on major corporations that don’t recycle a percentage of their waste - continuously increasing the percentage as the years go by? How can we expect that the average Joe will recycle when the driving forces of our capitalistic democracy - the big businesses - won’t do it? If large corporations contribute to local recycling projects by dumping massive amounts of raw materials for recycling on their doorstep these small startup efforts of municipalities could actually blossom into full-fledged programs that don’t rely heavily on a strong Green population around them - rather than building up from the average Joe, you build it and wait for him to come. Until large trucking companies, moving companies and transportation companies like Greyhound, Holland America and (locally) Princess, start greening up their fleets, Joe won’t buy that hybrid or take the bus. Whitewash the proverbial fence with a fleet of a thousand country-spanning 18 wheelers that run on bio-diesel rather than crossing your fingers that a splash of paint here or there by the average Joe and his hybrid will make a profound change and clean up the act of an entire oil-hungry nation.

These ideas aren’t too nuts, are they?

The simple question that I pose is that why is Global Warming the average Joe’s fault and not the entire country’s fault or big businesses’ fault? Why can we not expect that large corporations that have the ability to influence millions do a bit more than purchasing a single panel of solar power or a single wind turbine from their carbon credits? Why can’t we expect that those that preach the talk do, indeed, walk the walk?