I have stated in this space before that my number one Fourth of July pet peeve is the insistent playing of Tchaikovsky's "1812 Overture" during fireworks shows. It's the most patriotic time of year, when we all gather together to celebrate our country and its greatness, and we listen to a performance of Russian music that celebrates Russia's victory over Napoleon, complete with excerpts of the French national anthem "La Marseillaise" and Russia's former national anthem "God Save the Czar." I mean, really. Just because it has cannonfire doesn't mean you have to do it while other things are going boom.

I was just discussing this with Shelly, and decided it was time to get to the source of the problem. Shelly asked the astute question: "Whose idea was it to start playing the '1812 Overture' with fireworks on the Fourth of July?" We kind of understand why the decision was made (Boom! Ha ha! Boom!), but who is the culprit?

Google led me to a very enlightening article from July 4, 2003 in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.

Your culprit, ladies and gentlemen: Legendary Boston Pops conductor Arthur Fiedler.

Apparently on July 4, 1974, Fiedler took it upon himself to perform the "1812 Overture" on the Esplanade, and the idea stuck. He sorta looks like the kind of guy who would betray America's values in the thick of the Cold War, doesn't he? I mean, that mustache is pretty slick, even for the '70s.

So while the article argues that Tchaikovsky's work is now "as American as apple pie," I still find its very literal elements of Russian vs. French warfare quite unamerican.

On Sunday I felt kind of under the weather. Throughout the day I was sneezing and my face was itching and my nose was running. It was kind of not a pleasant experience all day long. And every time I sneezed in front of Ellie, she said, "Daddy, are you sick?" I would be obliged to say, "Yes, Ellie. I'm a little sick today." She responded, "Oh, Daddy! I don't want you to be sick!" She was a little upset by the distressing prospect of having a sick daddy (and who can blame her?).

So when we gathered for prayers that night, Ellie said the prayer, and she asked Heavenly Father to bless me to not be sick. It was really sweet. Then, I'm not sure why, but Shelly encouraged Ellie to say another prayer for her sick daddy after we had said goodnight and left the room. As we were leaving, we saw Ellie sitting up in her bed to do just that. I, too, went straight to bed (which is unheard of for me at that hour), kind of expecting to take my first full sick day in almost four years of employment at my current job.

But, despite a kind of rough night, I finally awoke in the morning surprised to find that I didn't feel that bad. In fact, as I sat up in bed, I realized I could breathe through my nose just fine, and my head felt pretty normal. It was a bittersweet moment, because I realized I would have to go to work after all.

But when Ellie got up, I asked her if she had said another prayer for me. She said yes. "Daddy, are you still sick?" I told her I felt good now. Her reaction was priceless. "Oh Daddy! I'm so glad you're not sick anymore!" she cried, jumping up and down. I made sure to point out to her that Heavenly Father had answered her prayer. Hopefully this experience will help build her little testimony. It's helped mine a bit - I didn't have much faith that I would feel better in the morning, but I guess the faith of a three-year-old trumps whatever lack of faith I had. If we truly believe as a little child, God can work wonders.

Some good friends recently moved to Arizona (for reasons we'll never understand), and on their way out they sold us their big outdoor propane grill for $30. This was great, because I've been wanting a grill for some time, but have never made the effort to try to sell Shelly on the idea. So our new grill isn't exactly new, but it's great.

Yesterday for lunch, I decided I would grill up some hot dogs on the new machine. It would be only the second meal we'd made on it. But I understood how it all worked and invited Ellie out onto the deck with me to light it up. Although at the time, I thought I was doing everything right, I now realize I wasn't. I left the propane on too long before trying to light it up, and it didn't light on my first couple of tries, and a few other things weren't exactly right. Then on maybe my third or fourth try, it lit. As there was a cloud of propane gas hovering over the grill, a huge ball of fire appeared and raced toward my head.

Ellie screamed. I jumped back. In less than a second, the fireball was gone and the grill was simmering just like it should. But Ellie was inconsolable. "Fire! Fire!" she cried. And boy, did she cry. She ran back inside and refused to go back out. It took both me and Shelly holding her for several minutes before she calmed down. Frankly, I don't blame her. The fireball was big enough that for that split second, all I could see was the color orange. I felt the whooshing of warm (but not really hot) air on the left side of my face. Ellie wasn't nearly as close to it, but she saw the fire near her daddy's face, and that can upset a three-year-old.

I joked to Shelly, "Do I still have an eyebrow?" and fingering it, found that I did. After getting Ellie calmed down, I went back onto the deck to put the hot dogs on. For some reason, I put my hand on top of my head, and that's when I noticed it: I had singed a good portion of my hair.

I looked in the glass sliding door like a mirror, and saw tiny curls of charred hair like the flocking of a tacky Christmas tree, all over the left side of my head. I rubbed my hand briskly on the area, and little burnt pieces fell off. I showed Shelly and we had a good laugh, but then I realized how serious this could have been. The fireball wasn't even so hot it was even a tiny bit painful, but it had gotten me nevertheless. Before leaving for church, Shelly had to give me a little bit of a trim, to eliminate those few singed hairs that didn't fall off when I rubbed them. I'm no worse for wear, and you can't tell the difference now, but I'll certainly be more careful in the future when I play with fire.

And who knows if Ellie will ever agree to eat a hot dog again.

I fail to blog for a while and big things happen. Like a week-long vacation at Myrtle Beach. And Ellie announcing to the world that Shelly is pregnant. Both events are well-chronicled over at Shelly's blog, which is updated far more faithfully than mine these days. But yeah, we're due to have another kid on January 8. It's an exciting time - we're about to be a family of five. We're trying to decide if it's better to try to get the doctor to schedule the C-section in December. Ellie is very happy, and keeps asking me if the baby is still in Mama's tummy. I think she doesn't want Mama to lose the baby and forget where she put it.

Now that I've broken the ice of the blogging hiatus, hopefully I can post more frequently about things that aren't as momentous as a new member of the family.

I just learned that the LDS chapel in Cambridge, where I attended for the year and a half immediately before I got married, burned down yesterday due to an electrical fire during Stake Conference.

I have a memory - or, rather, a series of memories - from my childhood. Whenever my mom and I would go shopping for new clothes for me (usually around the back-to-school season), we would look around for clothes that fit me, and we would discover that, in general, stores tended not to carry clothes in precisely my size. They would have clothes a little too big for me, and a little too small for me, but rarely just right. It was like there was a hole in the range of sizes, and that hole was exactly my size. Worse, as I grew, the hole moved with me, so that even over the course of several years as my size changed, it was always difficult to find clothes that fit.

Upon reaching teenager-hood and then adulthood, I finally grew out of the hole, and was able to generally find what I wanted in the size I wanted it. I didn't think much about my clothes sizes.

For the past several years, I've been wearing pants with a waist size of 36. I used to be skinnier, but I figured as I aged I was slowly starting to expand. But then, over the past year or so, I lost some weight. I correspondingly also lost some girth. Now not all of my size 36 pants fit so well anymore. I still wear them, but I have to cinch up my belt a little bit, and I'd rather not do that. I've discovered that size 34 is still too tight, but size 36 is just a bit too big. So I'm a 35. That's a fairly middle-of-the-road waist size: not too tiny, not too fat. You'd think it would be easy to find pants in that size.

You would be wrong. Last night I went out looking for a new pair of jeans with a 35 waist. I covered Old Navy and Sears (including the Lands' End section, since I love them so much), and I must have seen a few hundred pairs of jeans. Only one of them had a 35 waist, and it had an inseam of 38 (I take a 32) (plus it was an ugly color). It appears that with my recent weight loss, the "hole" of my childhood has caught up with me again, and clothing manufacturers are conspiring against me and refusing to make apparel that fits my particular size. My kingdom for a size 35 pair of pants!

It's been tough being a minority - one of those rare people who don't grow or shrink in two-inch increments - my entire life. I feel the discrimination and hatred, but my plight is generally unnoticed.

My only options appear to be: 1) buy a 36 and cinch up my belt, 2) pig out on Mothers' Day cheesecake and get back to where a 36 is comfortable, 3) continue losing weight (an unsure proposition) until a 34 fits, or 4) go to landsend.com and buy a pair of 35 jeans that are available only online. I went with option 4.

Not to brag or anything, but my wife is pretty cool. Check out this video that came out yesterday (on Mothers' Day).

In an effort to get back into the blogging thing a little bit, today I address a very unimportant subject. The other day the Lands' End mens catalog arrived in the mail. I flipped through it and was able to come to only one conclusion - a conclusion I have come to several times when looking at the Lands' End catalog: I need about a thousand dollars to spend at Lands' End and I'll be wardrobed for life. I just have a lot of good feelings about Lands' End, from their coats (which I own and love) to their T-shirts (which I own and love) to their shoes (which I used to own and still love, but I wore them out and now they don't make that model anymore, which was one of the most tragic pieces of news I've ever heard, but fortunately L.L. Bean, which is otherwise not quite as good as Lands' End, makes the same shoe so I own two pairs of those and love them). Of course I'm not spending any money there anytime soon (probably). But if you want to get me a gift I'll absolutely love, you can do a lot worse than a Lands' End gift card.

Oh phooey.

The NCAA Mens Basketball Championship Game starts in less than an hour. It's an important time for me right now because I still have the potential to beat Shelly in our annual family bracket pool. We've each filled out a bracket every year of our marriage, and Shelly so far is 5-0. This year I tried not to pick so many upsets as I usually do (that's Shelly's primary strategy for filling out her bracket), and I think I've done better than I usually do. As things stand right now, I'm 10 points ahead of her.

But the interesting thing is that I picked Michigan State to win it all. She picked North Carolina. Those two teams will be stepping onto the court in a few minutes for all the marbles. Little do the players know that in the Astle household, this game is for all the marbles as well. How unlikely is that?

Go Spartans!