Look...I have the photo of the day 8/25/2006

http://www.dcmag.co.uk/
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The horse bited my hand...

I took the little girls to Chase's football practice the other day to wait for a parent meeting. To pass the time, we were feeding two mules grass and maple leaves. After feeding them for about half an hour, I told the girls to come with me to try and find Chase. I walked about 20 yards and heard the 2-year old screaming. I turned around and the mule had her hand in its mouth and was pulling her arm through the chain-link fence. I thought it was chewing on her hand the way she was crying. I ran over and extracted her hand...luckily, the mule was just sucking on her hand, not chewing. She was so upset and kept saying, "The horsey bited my hand..." I told her that he didn't bite it, but was sucking on it. She said, "Yeah, the horsey sucked my hand..." We had to go wash off the stinky horse saliva, but otherwise, she seemed okay...

Check out my back to school posters...

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Monsters in the sky...

I was rocking my two-year-old before I put her to bed last night. She was telling me that she was scared of monsters. I told her there were no such things as monsters. She then said she was scared of the monsters in the sky. I told her there were no such things as monsters in the sky. She then asked, "Is that impossible?" and I assured her that it was...She seemed satisfied by this and agreed to go to sleep.

Where do little kids pick up words like impossible? and use them correctly in a sentence?

Shooting Star's Worst Nightmare...

New Job Opportunity...

Well, I received two calls today from psychologists with whom I had left messages. One said to email my resume and curriculum vita and they would call me back as they do "lots of testing." The second offered me $800-$1200 per assessment based on my skills and report-writing ability. That is at least $500 better per assessment than the other place I said I would be working previously. Apparently, there is no shortage of testing at this site and I think I am either going to have to tell the other guy something better came up, or see if he will offer me more money per assessment. If I can do just two assessments per week, that is $6,400 per month...That is serious cash...I just have to make sure it doesn't interfere with my dissertation...(my data analysis is almost done..I think...I have to review it with a statistician). No, I won't send you loan money so don't bother asking... :)

New Horror Movie "Snakes on Airplanes"

I have seen a lot of people putting out creative art inspired by the movie Snakes on Airplanes...Here is my contribution...

SCRITCH-SCRITCH-SCRITCH

I was thinking back to an experience I had when I was 19. My friend and I were visiting an elderly gentleman who was blind. We "watched" a video with him and discussed the message from it. As we were leaving, my friend was standing right in front of the guy and started digging a big booger out of his nose. It would have been funny if the man had super hearing and could hear the "SCRITCH-SCRITCH-SCRITCH" of his finger on the mucous lining. :)

What do you want for lunch?

I asked my 2-year-old what she wanted for lunch today...she responded, "A cookie sandwich!"

Daytime lightning...

The first shot of lightning I was able to capture in the daytime (sunset)...I like it...

Our Funny Friends...

We have two friends that we love to hang out with. D and J. We call them our "funny friends" because we laugh almost non-stop when we are with them. We can talk about just about anything with them and find amusement in very small things. For example, I used to buy a lot of books and sell them online. I sold a "Signing Sexual Behavior" book yesterday and before shipping it, we learned some of the American Sign Language (ASL) for different things. We were demonstrating some of the signs and seeing if they could guess what they were. Then we thought it would be funny if someone else in the room "spoke" ASL and I acted as if I was that person, "How disgusting! I am going to have to wash your hands off with soap!!!" They will laugh at corny things like this.

We also had this very attentive, but very pushy waitress. She tried to force us into ordering an appetizer, then tried to push dessert on us. We started joking after we had finished for a while and were just sitting talking, that she was going to come over and tell us it was time to leave and start jerking on our arms to make us go.

We also have similar situations. I married my wife when she had 4 kids and we have had 2 more together. D married J and he had 3 kids, she had 3 kids, and they have had one 1 together. They understand what it is like to deal with stepparenting issues, large family issues, etc. Also J and my wife are both redheads and that is something else we have in common.

I love photography, and sell some stuff on Ebay; but, D is a real photographer/photojournalist. He does good work...especially weddings...checkout his website.

Illegal fireworks...

My twin daughters went to a friend's house about a week ago and they were lighting off illegal fireworks. When we found out, my wife gave them a good tongue-licking and threatened that they had better never do it again.

Tonight, they were at the same house and around 10:20 we got a call from a police officer that they had been arrested for setting off fireworks. As soon as the officer informed Melissa, the phone went dead. Melissa immediately called dispatch to have the officer call her again. We were steaming for a few minutes, then the twins called and told her it was just a joke, that the girl's mother had called and pulled the prank. It actually was pretty funny...although we were both upset for a few minutes thinking our children had managed to get themselves into legal problems.

Found 2 jobs...maybe more...

I have been calling around several psychologists in the state of Utah and have received a couple job offers. One was from a former supervisor in southern Utah and I will go at least 2x a month to do testing and reports on troubled adolescents. I have another forensic psychologist who might give me some assessments to complete. I will probably start on-call work at my previous place of employment.

The surprising thing was how many people were interested in giving me a post-doctoral position when I complete my Ph.D. in December. I had at least 3-4 offers already. I thought that was pretty cool.

I have been working at cleaning up my dummy variables and it looks like my data problems are less severe than I initially thought, so that is good.

Things are looking up...

I love lightning storms...

There was an intense lightning storm over Salt Lake last night. I went out about 10:30 and stayed until about 12:30 and got over 20 shots with lightning in them. Only about 3-6 were really good though. This is one of my 3 favorites.

Do data problems ever end???

AS I am sitting here trying to get my dummy variables straight so I can use them to select and combine data, I am finding out that many of the parents did not answer the question on what sex they were....how irritating and frustrating...I can deduce which sex many of them are (for example maybe they did answer a question that said they are a mother or stepmother, etc., or the child might have answered questions on a mom, but not a dad (because dad is dead), but I am getting very frustrated with this entire data set. It is sloppy and unprofessionally put together. That will teach me to use someone else's data for a dissertation...at least if you do it yourself, you can do it right... :(

Unemployed...Seeking Psychologist Extern Position

Anyone know any Utah Psychologists that are looking for someone to help them with their work for somewhere between $14 and $25 per hour? I also work by the report...If the psychologist makes $500 for the testing, I take a small part of that (say $150-250) and the psychologist pockets the rest...It is very profitable to have a graduate student working for you. :)

I only lack my dissertation in my Clinical Psychology PhD Program...I will have that done by December, but need work for the next few months. Let me know if you have any leads...or know of any programs, homes, treatment centers that have a psychologist who could supervise my work.