Author: Karel Kerezman

  • To coin a phrase

    So we’re drifting slowly down I-5 on our way to check out some dishwashers, okay? Traffic is bad, the sun is baking everything and everyone. (Come to think on it, that might explain this episode.) The wife and I are up front, the kids are on the back-back bench seat. The A/C is cranked.

    We approach the Portland temple. Mormon, that is. “Hey, kids, it’s the temple.” No sooner are the words out of my mouth than we pull up alongside a massive tractor-trailer rig. “Oooo, it’s so big and white!” Giggles from the back seat. Silly grin from the driver. “I didn’t know it was so huge, it fills the entire view all the way up to the sky!” Laughter fills the mini-van.

    Traffic shifts, and now we’re alongside the tractor instead of the trailer. “Hey, wow, now it’s PURPLE!” More delight. “I wonder what you call a purple temple. The Purple Tabernacle?”

    Attempts to say “purple tabernacle” three times fast fail. To be honest, attempts to say it once fail often, and attempts to say it twice simply cause more laughter. As the laughter dies down and Alex sips water to deal with his hiccups, I jot down two words on my Kyocera so I’ll remember to write up a journal entry…

    This is how I keep my family amused. The family that laughs together, stays together.

  • Happy Birthday, Alexander.

    At 10:30am, 15 August 1992 our son Alexander Frederick Kerezman came into the world.

    Ten years later, Alex (a.k.a. “the Spud”) is a healthy, smart little computer gamer and budding golf enthusiast with a clever wit and good manners. Well, sometimes “wit” and “manners” clash just a little, but nobody’s perfect. If we can get him to relax a bit more and learn to truly enjoy life, I think he’ll grow up to be one heck of a neat person.

    Happy Birthday, son. I love you.

  • The Polygeek Test. Not just for Polly anymore.

    According to the Thudfactor Polygeek Test,

    You are 44% geek
    You are a geek liaison, which means you go both ways. You can hang out with normal people or you can hang out with geeks which means you often have geeks as friends and/or have a job where you have to mediate between geeks and normal people. This is an important role and one of which you should be proud. In fact, you can make a good deal of money as a translator.


    Normal: Tell our geek we need him to work this weekend.


    You [to Geek]: We need more than that, Scotty. You’ll have to stay until you can squeeze more outta them engines!


    Geek [to You]: I’m givin’ her all she’s got, Captain, but we need more dilithium crystals!


    You [to Normal]: He wants to know if he gets overtime.

    Take the Polygeek Quiz at Thudfactor.com


    No, actually, I don’t look anything like David Duchovney. Thanks, though.

  • Simpsons Trivia Quiz

    Proving once and for all that interns do have a useful purpose, Sean sent me the Simpsons Trivia Quiz for Idiots. Let’s see how well you score, hmm?

  • I want to stay at work

    I like my job, yes, but that’s not the reason I want to stay at work for the next few days. You see, Portland’s experiencing something of a one-week heatwave, and I want no part of it. I absolutely wilt in 90+ temperatures. Our house becomes a kind of sauna, or perhaps the term is ‘blast furnace.’ From mid-afternoon all the way until well past midnight, our abode is unbearable.

    My office, on the other hand, is tiny but it has air conditioning. Mmmm. I love being cool and comfy. Too bad I don’t have a stockpile of food or a nice place to sleep.

    Oh well. I should just suck it up and be miserable with the rest of my family. It wouldn’t be fair to them anyway, now would it?

  • Driving Miss Friday Five

    It’s the “on the road again” version of the Friday Five:

    • Do you have a car? If so, what kind of car is it? – Oddly enough, I have a little late-80’s Subaru four-door. There, I answered two questions with one sentence.
    • Do you drive very often? – I’ve driven twice in my entire life. Three times if you count the time I took over the wheel of the Beetle (or was it the Scout?) from Mom as we were driving down the canyon from Grandma’s place.
    • What’s your dream car? – Seeing as how I don’t actually drive, I don’t think I’m qualified to answer this question. Many attractive cars exist in the world, but so do many attractive women. Doesn’t mean I could single one out for any particular reason as my “dream.”
    • Have you ever received a ticket? – I used to get free tickets all the time. I really loved the time when I got a pair of tickets to the Genesis concert in Tacoma, and my old best friend Steve got tickets to the concert down at Dodger Stadium, and we road-tripped two concerts in three days. And then the next year I got tickets to Peter Gabriel’s concert in Tacoma, but Steve couldn’t make that one so I went with Jason… oh. Wait. No, I’ve never gotten that kind of ticket. Sorry.
    • Have you ever been in an accident? – More often than I want to think about. Mom had a weird knack for getting her cars whacked into. She almost never caused these accidents, but they happened anyway. Two that come vividly to mind are the time we got rear-ended in Vancouver (guy was reading his map instead of watching the road!) and the time my step-dad’s Chevelle got nearly T-boned (with us kids in the back seat!) because it had stalled on the highway as we were turning into the driveway and the stupid woman driving the blue car a mile away down an arrow-straight stretch of the Bridgeport Bar couldn’t be bothered to slow down or avoid us in any way. That was just freakin’ weird. Some people are just too stupid for words.