The Proffitt Family Blog » Personal

My Pride Is Showing

Spencer — Tue, 18 Aug 2009 18:00:01 +0000

Over the weekend, I did a few projects. I had to add a valve in the front yard, and I put up a fence and gate to keep the dogs from further destroying our side yard. Now I do a lot of projects–it’s part of having a wife with a neverending honeydew list. But this is the first time I’ve built something substantial from scratch, so I’m going to show off. Here’s the fence and gate:

Lumber by home depot, hardware by Ace, Miter Saw by my father-in-law (Thanks Dennis)

More Website Troubles

Spencer — Sat, 11 Jul 2009 16:03:10 +0000

For those that don’t know, my website was hacked a few weeks ago. Someone inserted a malicious link that hid in the code waiting for unsuspecting visitors. My site host and I had to wipe everything out and restore it from backup. (you may have noticed the new look / layout).

The unfortunate result of that is that all the “controversial” posts from before I went to law school were back up, and I overlooked it. Imagine my embarrassment when a potential employer asked me about the post that concluded with the words “Cops Suck.” Fortunately, he didn’t ask me about the one that questioned U.S. immigration policy.

The moral of this story is to always be thorough. When you restore from backup, you have to go back and weed the garden. Ah, well. Hopefully it won’t hurt me too much.

Zephyr Loves the Barenaked Ladies

Spencer — Sun, 01 Mar 2009 15:16:15 +0000

Here’s the first of a couple videos:

It’s a video of Zephyr singing Barenaked Ladies. There are a couple of Barenaked Ladies songs that I have sung to Zephyr at bedtime since he was very little. One of the is “When I Fall.” When I decided to dust off and tune the guitar because I haven’t played it in ages (be kind, I’m a bit rusty), I decided to play that one so Zephyr could sing along. As you can see, he had a blast. Now I need to learn how to play “Light up My Life.”

Enjoy!

Winter Wonderland

Spencer — Wed, 31 Dec 2008 21:01:04 +0000

Hi all. We just got back from a trip to Minnesota over my Winter Break. It was phenomenal. Brie says she felt like she had gone home for a time. The weather was around -10 degrees when we got there, and fluctuated between 20 below and 40 above while we were there. The “bitter cold” really wasn’t all that bad unless the wind was blowing. Even with wind, it wasn’t so bad with a leather jacket or something else to cut the wind. Honestly, all you folks who have moved from Minnesota to this brown desert because it is “too cold” up there are a bunch of whiners. When the air is still, -20 there feels like 40 here.

They say the heat here is a “dry heat,” I think the cold here is a “dry cold”. Brie and the boys are able to cope much better with below freezing temperatures there than the overnight chills here. It’s just a matter of layers. I think the Minnesota natives that move here are just too lazy to shovel their driveway every couple weeks. It has nothing to do with the cold.

Plus, the boys had a blast playing in the snow. In the Summers here, you can either stay indoors or go swimming. In the Winters there, you can stay indoors, have a snowball fight, build a snow man or a snow fort, go for a walk (as long as you remember your layers), or walk to the nearest fishing hole (no more than 20 minutes walk in the land of 10,000 lakes). We had a really great time. We’re looking forward to Jenny’s wedding in June, but we also hope we can make Winter or Fall visits a semi-regular occurrence. The boundless life of spring and and a hot, lazy summer will no longer feel the same without a frosty, winter-wonderland with which to compare it.

We had a really hard time coming home, although no small part of that was due to the boundless hospitality of Uncle Charlie and Aunt Pat (and the rest of the Roth and Darnauer clans). We love you all and hope to see you soon.

Below are a couple videos. There is also a picture gallery if you click on “Pictures” to your left (or click here if you are reading this on a RSS feed). Enjoy!

Spencer

update Brie just told me (while warming her hands by sticking them in my shirt, “I think I need to go back to Minnesota to defrost.” What did I tell you about a “dry cold”?

O Winter! ruler of the inverted year, . . . I crown thee king of intimate delights, Fireside enjoyments, home-born happiness, And all the comforts that the lowly roof Of undisturb’d Retirement, and the hours Of long uninterrupted evening, know.
–William Cowper (1731 – 1800), Task (bk. IV, l. 120)

Allie’s Wedding

Spencer — Sun, 20 Apr 2008 15:13:50 +0000

On Monday, April 7, my sister in law, Allison, married her true love, Bruce Preston. The wedding was a lot of fun, if a bit warm. Connor had his first sip of champagne, and I really wish I’d taken a picture of the look of disgust on his face when he did. Zephyr simply could not be dragged off the dance floor, and made everyone smile. Below is a video clip of Zephyr dancing with the beautiful bride, and another one of him cutting a rug by himself. There are also several pictures available here.

Bruce, we’re glad you were feeling better for the honeymoon.
Allison, you truly were the most beautiful bride since Brie’s wedding
Here’s hoping your days are filled with happiness, and your nights are . . . well . . . filled.

STP & Family

Pod Children

Spencer — Sun, 05 Aug 2007 04:15:22 +0000

This post is a response to all those people who keep saying that as Zephyr gets older, he looks less and less like Connor. Now I’ll grant that they’re personalities are quite different, but they still look really similar. Below are pictures of them both at about 10 months. Zephyr is the one with the hair. Plus his pictures are clearer because we didn’t have a digital camera when Connor was a baby (thanks, Daniel!). The two right on top of each other (if yours looks like mine) where Connor is in the tub, is especially eerie Enjoy!!



More Trouble
Spencer — Wed, 09 May 2007 11:41:52 +0000
Ahhhhhhhh, cars.  I remember now why I like to buy new cars: You start out with a warranty, and you know how well it’s been maintained for its entire life.  As I mentioned a few posts ago, I bought a used car to replace the dear late Bessie (the Hyundai Accent we’ve had since before we were married).  We bought a Plymouth Breeze that had fewer miles on her, and we knew the previous owner.  On top of that, we dropped an extra $850 in repairs on her to make sure she kept running for awhile.
Anyways the battery died.  I couldn’t find the damn thing for the life of me, and I hadn’t gotten an owner’s manual with the car.  So I looked online and apparently the battery is in the wheel well.  Yeah, that’s not a typo–you have to take off the tire and remove a panel to get the most-often-replaced part ever (at least in the desert) out of the damn car. If that weren’t bad enough, when Ijacked it up and removed the tire cover, I found thattwo of the lugnuts were stripped and I couldn’t get the damn tire off.  So I picked up a portable jumper and drove it a couple times to try to get me through finals until I had a chance to get it to a mechanic or Discount tire to replace the stripped lugnuts or something.
After my final last Tuesday the engine light came on.  I wanted to take a baseball bat to the demonspawn, but couldn’t bring myself to do it after all the cash I had already dropped on it.  My student loans are wearing quite thin at this point.



Freaks with wings
Spencer — Wed, 09 May 2007 11:32:16 +0000
So a little upate on the job front–Zephyr has decided to grow wings:

His shoulders do that everytime his arms go above his shoulders.   Our pediatrician said he hadn’t seen anythimg like it in his 30+ years of practice.  Anyhow, we’re not sure what, if any, treatment is going to be required, and since we lose our nice insurance if I earn too much money (I know, bass-ackwards ain’t it), I’ve kind of put the job hunt on hold.  I’m trying to get a part-time externship for now.  I can’t afford to pay for school credit for it, but the experience would be good, and it might help me get something better in the fall.  Anyhow, this kind of explains why a guy in the top 5% of his law school class couldn’t find a job–I needed to remain unemployed for my boy.  I can accept that.  I guess things do happen for a reason .  .  .



Freedom!
Spencer — Wed, 09 May 2007 11:23:11 +0000
I finished my last final yesterday.  I am officially done with my first year of law school.  Don’t ask me how I did, because I will have no idea until at least mid-July.  The best I can hope for is an idea of my final grade in Legal Writing and a hint of how I did in Law in the Regulatory State.  Anyhow, no more classes, no more books, no more Clinton’s dirty looks.  That makes me a happy man.
So I’ve decided to try this stop smoking program my mom sent me now that I’m done with finals.  I don’t know how wise that is since I’m going to be trying to write on to ASU Law Journal this weekend, but hey–it’s worth a shot.  That would be why I’m up at 3:30 in the morning; any regular smoker who has tried to quit knows exactly what I’m talking about here.  The program has a lot of hogwash about fresh vegetables, cinnamon mouthwash (which is nearly imppossible to find) and grapefruit juice.  It’s supposed to help reduce cravings, but it doesn’t work at all.  The most effective part of the program so far is writing and signing a “declaration of independence” from smoking where you promise your family and friends that you are strong enough to quit smoking.  I haven’t broken my word in over 7 years, and I don’t particularly want to break that record.  Normally, I wouldn’t make a promise I couldn’t keep, but now that I have I don’t want to break it.
Another helpful part is the signs.  They tell you to put signs up everywhere to remind you that you’ve quit (like the mad cravings every 4 minutes don’t remind you   ).  Brie and Connor made a bunch of creative signs for me and hung them everywhere; there is even on on my laptop right now.  So now if I smoke, all that hard work will have been in vain.  The guilt helps (maybe the Catholics are on to something).
We’ll see tomorrow how the “no coffee, tea or alcohol” requirement will go.  I get the logic behind it, but I’m not looking forward to the morning with no coffee, especially since I’ve been wide awake since 2:30.  I think I may have to cheat and have some “Detox Tea” to help get the nicotine out of my system a little faster.  I don’t drink it often enough for there to be a conditioned response to crave a cigarette, like there woul be with my coffee.
Anyhow, wish me luck!



New Pictures
Spence — Sat, 27 Jan 2007 17:16:10 +0000
Hey all.  There’s a couple new spreads in my pictures section.  I put up a few  from our summer trip to California, and a whole bunch from our trip to Disneyland.  You can click on the pictures link in the navbar to your left or just click the link above.