Well, it’s that time again – it’s bloggin’ time.
I’ve looked at jobs today in the hopes of moving on to bigger and better things – there’s one or two that I’ll be pushing resume’s and cover letters out to.
I’m supposed to go paintballing on the 19th – I’m looking forward to it. Hopefully if I get weekends off I’ll be paintballing more often 🙂 I’d really like a more active lifestyle, overall.
Which reminds me, I have tons of homework I’ve been neglecting. Huzzah! It’s due tonight!
Well, surprises always come at me when my mind is not running at 100%.
After getting only 4 or 5 hours of sleep, for instance – like when you’ve stayed up too late with your wife, watching Sex and the City.
About that later … maybe.
Anyway, so I get up, I’ve got time to kill, a little bit, so I actually eat some breakfast. Mmmmm, breakfast. It’s a bowl of whatever Malt-O-Meal passes for Apple Jacks – it’s almost the same, except perhaps more chewy and with a bad aftertaste. I still kinda had a bad headache from the night before, and was going to eat and then dose it away with some Tylenol. So I’m sitting in the kitchen, the rest of the house is dark, and in comes Lucas.
Man, it kind shocked me for a second. He just strolls in and sits down and talks for a few minutes, then asks if I am going to work. I say, yeah, I’m not really used to people being up when I go. He asks for some cereal and milk so I hook him up and we’re just eating breakfast. I gave him maybe too much, but he ate it all anyway. Anyway, he’s always asking me about when he was a baby and stuff I did when I was his age. It was only 19 years ago, so I guess I remember pretty well.
I told him about how I’d wake up really early so I could play on the Nintendo (especially if we’d rented a game), or watch cartoons. That got me thinking about stuff. I’m always telling Amy that my best memories growing up were spending time with my brothers, playing video games, or when they’d teach me to play them. They were probably just as proud as I get when Lucas grasps a concept, especially a video game, and just runs with it. Last week at my parents he was begging for us to let him try to play Karaoke Revolution, but he’d tried just the week before and couldn’t really do it that well, so it took a while for us to cave in to his wants.
When he actually tried to sing a line or two, we were all kind of shocked. I think he’s picking up the idea of learning songs, too, because he’s been listening more intently to lyrics and singing them. Case in point: Amy’s new Garden State soundtrack CD – he likes this song ‘Waiting Line’, and he’s been singing a few lines from it every now and then – and he’s only heard it maybe a few times!
So anyway, we had a few minutes and I had everything ready to go to work, so I asked him if he wanted me to get his ATV game going on the PS2. He said he was bored with it. We bought him a new Nick Jr ‘zine last night at the B-Buster, and he’s been pouring over it since, so I offered him to read it instead, and he jumped at the chance.
That got me thinking – if you give a kid cool reading materials and cool video games – sometimes he picks the reading materials … take THAT, anti-Video-Game activists … and a special STFU goes out to Joseph Lieberman, oppressor of the free-thinking peoples.
Back to Garden State – Sukie wanted to see it based on a recommendation by Bert Ferkner of The Journeyman Project. It has Zach Braff (of Scrubs fame) and Natalie Portman (of … Natalie Portman fame) … oh, and Ian Holm (BILBO!)
Goddamn that was a good flic. It made me feel good, but didn’t feel like a feel good flick. There’s stuff in there that other feel good flicks would have tried to resolve, but it doesn’t. In a lot of ways, there are just genius touches that lend a realistic and beleivable hand to the movie – subtle things that you wouldn’t normally get in a movie – real things. It’s hard to describe, the most noticeable time is when they’re in a darkish bar and they get hit with a ton of light, at once, and they don’t flinch or wig out because that’s what happens in a bar/pool hall – somebody opens the door and a lot of light comes in and it’s too damn bright.
Anyway, the movie is just kick-ass. I think it’s gone now, so you might have to see it later.
Oh, and on to business. I think we’re BBQing tomorrow. That, and there was talk of climbing something. I’m down, I’d like to see my buff legs get put to work (lately I pondered the question, why are my legs so damn buff – we’ll have to see if climbing is what I can do – though I’m sure I’ll need upper body strength. 🙂 )
Anyway, yeah, I want to cook up some good Dogs and Burgers and serve ’em up. I’d also like to cook MarshMallows afterwards, if it’s not too presumptuous. Maybe tonight I can move around some furniture in my living room.
New blog layout – well, it borrows heavily from the old layout. I’ve stolen the size of theorb77’s blog, the rest is the same size.
Ok, so it looks like we’ll be hitting Lagoon up on Labor Day. I know that I’d like to BBQ at least once this weekend – who wants to come? I can get that fire so hot it’ll cook for hours 🙂
Oh and I want to have Marshmallows – so we can roast them over the coals! Who’s in?
Last night I had a mind-blowing experience. I have TiVo to thank for it. Well, TiVo, and America’s Test Kitchen.
You see, we got a TiVo back in April or so, and signed up and we love it. It’s been worth every penny. TiVo has been kind enough to grap stuff off of public TV (it does so using a smart heuristics engine) and it grabbed the afformentioned cooking show. We watch this show BECAUSE TiVo recommended it, and it was a good watch, so we keep watching it. These guys TEST stuff that you use to cook, and explore the different methods – they are GENIUSES.
So, when they threatened to grill steak on a BBQ grill, I was interested. When they used a charcoal grill, I was well pleased (for I use one myself.)
When they pulled out some silvery contraption to heat up the coals I was in awe. Such a device seems like such a brilliant invention – I can’t beleive how fricking awesome it is.
That, and they used hardwood chips instead of black briquettes.
So yesterday we went through WalMart and I saw one of those chimney things and I had to get it. We had decided we were going to get hot dogs for dinner anyway, and so we got briquettes and 88 cent dogs and went about it.
I was just giddy to use my new toy, so I loaded up my new chimney with about 3 lbs of coal and followed the directions and fired it up. It’s supposed to take about 20 minutes so I stuck around and waited to see if there would be problems – now, when you light paper and send it up through a chimney like we just did, and have the flames licking at charcoal, there’s a lot of smoke.
It was cool looking, at least 🙂
Anyway, so it looked good to go and I left it for like 5 minutes and when I came back there was no smoke. There were no hot briquettes, either. It occurs to me that I didn’t put enough paper under the briquettes so I put what was left under there, lit up an incense stick (which was doubling as my lighting medium for the day) and poked it at the papers. It took a second but when it took off it TOOK OFF.
I was giddy and let my hot new friend dance in front of me for a while. Then I went inside, washed my hands and checked up on the wife and son. When I BBQ, I usually run such a relay – check on family, check in, go run, check on the grill. Well, kids, I had run this once or twice, let my chimney have it’s chance to get hot, and to my surprise when I checked next it looked like there was MORE smoke. Curious I peaked down the chimney and it appeared as though the bottom coals were getting HOT.
As more coals ignited, the heat only went up – when the top coals were white enough (the entire process taking about 20 minutes) I turned on the backyard hose (in case I needed to douse something quickly) and went for the chimney.
The chimney itself wasn’t hot to touch (the handle), but the metal appeared to have been tempered by the process. Anyway, I poured the coals out and they were RED HOT. RED RED HOT. Wow!
I’ve never had it so hot before! w00t! I ran inside and grabbed the hot dogs and threw all 8 on the grill. I watched them for a second and ran inside to get a plate (to put the dogs on.) When I went back out, I expected the dogs to have appeared to cook under the heat. They didn’t look like they had moved at all. I turned over the dog I put down first and it was already charred. It occurs to me that the fire was soooooooo hot that it was cooking the dogs very quickly 🙂
That was at about 7pm. When I went to bed at midnight, there were still hot coals in there. So, I spend about 10 bucks on coal and a chimney, and 88 cents on the hot dogs I cooked. Next time: steaks and polish dogs.
Oh, and I need a stronger grill brush.
Oh, and Sukie fixed my PS2 woes. I can’t hook up to the ‘net without a memory card though. I’m super excited 🙂
“Why don’t you just get an X-Box?”
I’m telling you, after hearing that question every day for the last 2 and a half weeks, I was getting pretty annoyed. I seemed like Microsoft had the edge and I was trying to swim against the current.
I persisted, knowing how superior Sony’s PlayStation2 actually was. I was eager to receive it – I waited. Finally, on Friday, it seemed as though it would arrive soon. I waited thoughout the workday for a courier to relay my precious package from our downtown office to the backwoods call center location I work at.
It never came.
So I went home, dejected, but still salivating with anticipation. My boss called me about 20 minutes after I got home to let me know that it had arrived and that I could get it the next day.
So, after I had finished my homework, I went back to my work to pick it up, where, again, my PS2 eluded me. It seems that I would have to wait a bit longer.
The next day I finally got my PS2 and a game. Huzzah! I brought it home on my lunch break, and although I didn’t get to play with it, I was satisfied that it was at home and that I’d get to play it eventually.
When I got home, Sukie had tons of activities planned for us. Grrrrreat. So, it wasn’t until 9pm that I unpacked my PS2, hooked it up, powered it up, and tried to open the DVD slot.
Poof – NOTHING. Click click grind grind.
Sony needs the Bill of Sale to do anything – which I don’t have, so it goes back up through my work, and we’ll see how that shit goes.
Fanfreakingtastic.
Well, week 2 of school and I’m feeling pretty good today. This shirt I’m wearring smells like laundry detergent … and I’m sure people are going to notice. I’ve been wearring it all morning wondering, where is that clean laundry smell coming from, and I’ve just placed it.
How silly of me.
theorb77 and Antigone are supposed to come down this weekend, but it sounds like they’ll be camping even further south, so we won’t see them much 🙁
Well, August draws to a close next Tuesday.
I’ve spent much of the last two days doing homework and I’m bitter about it. Usually that time gets spend writing code, or playing a game, but it’s clear that my days off are the most opportune time to get homework done.
Blah, what a boring and stupid post.
Ok, after a 16 day blogging strike it’s time for me to come back.
Well kids, I honestly don’t feel like blogging lately.
Oh sure, there’s lots of stuff to blog about. My parent’s dog died yesterday. I feel sad, I was there when we picked her up from the pet shop. I feel bad because of what the dog represented.
Realistically, we got two larger dogs to fill a void left by a much smaller dog, and that one of those larger dogs is gone somehow reveals that void, I guess.
I gave my own dog, Kona, a bath last night. Usually Sukie does that stuff. Honestly, Sukie does all the stuff that needs doing, and I feel bad about that, too.
Like I told my mom on the phone last night, this August has been the stuff of a good country song. While I can’t bring myself to write something moving about the experience, I think it’s important to note what we’ve gained from what we’ve lost.
I feel, for the most part, a renewed desire to live. This whole month has gotten me focussed, and I daresay fixated, upon the fact of my mortality. I know that sounds morbid, but in a way this has been a morbid month (note, when I typed this first through, I had written ‘morbid morbid’, which I think is perhaps a more accurate description.)
The other day we were all sitting around at my parents checking our blood pressure (ok, we need a gamesystem in the living room or something! what a LAME activity) and my blood pressure is a little high – which is to be expected because I’m a little fat. Last night, when we ate Pho (pronounced FUH) at Cafe Terrace I heard Tom Brokaw announce a new finding that one out of every 3 Americans suffers from high blood pressure – because we’re all so fat.
Great, Tom. Well, I’ve decided I need to make time to go work out. Hey, I could even go run at the gym on the weekdays while the boy is in school. I remember from my Extreme Makeover viewing that the best way to burn fat is to run for a really really really long time – this gets the heartrate up and starts to tell the body to burn fat. Even after the workout your body burns fat for a few hours.
Which reminds me, it’s time for me to get an iPod or somesuch digital music player. Music is essential to working out 😛
Ok so now talking about working out and imagining my slimmer self has made me feel good again. Huzzah, a negative post that ends on a positive note! Huzzah, I say!
I guess I’m one of the last people to write about what’s gone on over the last few days.
It’s been a rollercoaster – someone died, someone got injured, and somebody lived.
Sadly, that last sentence plays down the tragedy of it all.
I was in a pissy mood at work when I heard, I snapped very rudely at a few people and I finally told my boss I had to leave for the day. We went to Antigone’s parent’s house (I really don’t know what nicknames they might have) and were met by some people who weren’t from the Ward (well, they asked us if we were from the Ward, so I assume they weren’t) and delivered some very beautiful flowers and offered our condolences. We were informed that Antigone’s family were all at Primary Children’s hospital, with Kristianne, who was also in the accident.
We were shocked, as this was news to us.
Well, we had to go – I was, and still am, pretty shocked by all this. We stayed for as long as we could, and then came back later.
Well, I had planned to go over the rest, especially how I hope the very best for Kristianne, but I’m getting down going through it again.
I feel like my mind keeps getting ground up in a blender and handed back to me. I just can’t imagine that there’s not much else I can do to help. We’re going back to visit Kristianne tomorrow to see what else we can do for her.
Antigone’s family has been supremely nice to Sukie and I, especially her parents, and my heart goes out to the entire family, elsepcially Kristianne.
Ok, so I went on strike for 10 days. I’m back.
Ok, first, I’d like to say something about power, from my point of view.
They say ‘There is no knowledge that is not power.’ I guess I could also say, ‘Absolute Power Corrupts Absolutely’.
That’s really all I want to say for now.
