Ten Things That Have Prevented Me From Blogging

Nice. Where have you been? Guys, I'm so sorry that I've been a bad blogger the last couple of weeks. I have many excuses for what's been stopping me from putting fingers to keyboard and providing you all with a couple minutes of distraction. Here is what I've been doing:

1. The Movie - If Dad were a dog, he would turn 525 today and I tried to get the children to make a movie for his birthday. I took some video on my iPad and tried to get them to say "Happy 75th Birthday Granddad." Here is how it turned out:

So, clearly that wasn't going to work. I found an old video from three years ago of them singing Happy Birthday and spliced that together with the only decent current video of them and put in some titles and music in iMovie. I had no idea what I was doing, so it ended up being very amateur-ish:

This took me an absurdly long time, but I'm sure that I will win an Oscar, so it will all be worth it. Alternatively, Dad will enjoy it, so it will all be worth it.

Omens

I have been trying to read Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel. It's a fictional account of the life of Thomas Cromwell who was an advisor to Henry VIII during the time he was trying to ditch his first wife so that he could marry Anne Boleyn. It's slow going, especially because every so often I decide that I need to spend an hour on Wikipedia "researching" things like how many women foolishly agreed to marry Henry VIII (six), whether Anne Boleyn actually had six fingers (probably not), how Oliver Cromwell was related to Thomas Cromwell (great-great-great nephew), and why Elvis Costello wrote a song about Oliver Cromwell (it's about British imperialism). Oh, Wikipedia, why I can't quit you!

One thing I have found interesting in Wolf Hall is how in the Middle Ages, people saw omens in everything. I guess when you don't have a much scientific knowledge, you look for guidance wherever you can find it. Someone catches two big fish: An omen. A dead bird falls in a chimney: An omen. Thomas Cromwell didn't believe in omens, and I'm pretty sure I don't either, but if I did, yesterday was full of them: