Eryn Writes a Story

So, after my diatribe about verse, I'm going to offer something many of you might find almost as abusive - stories by kids (well, a story, by a kid). You'll cope. And note that I left myself an out by stating that it's very easy to avoid poetry in blogs if you're careful. If you read my blog regularly, you know that you can avoid cutesy kid prose by just a glance at the post title. If you read further, your masochism is your own affair, I'm absolved of the sado- prefix.

Ongabeeba Goes to the Fair, by Eryn
(Subtitled by Scooter: Why My Daddy Sued the Carnie)

Ongabeeba went to the State Fair. She went on a ride. She went on the big slide. She yelled all the way down it. She went twice. Once with her mommy, and once with her daddy. They yelled too. Once, she went by herself, because she was eight and she thought that was old enough to go by herself.

Ongabeeba went on the big slide again by herself. Yes, she did. Then she went on the fun slide. She had tickets, but she was old enough to go by herself. The eight was covered up on the fun slide sign, so she went by herself.

Then Ongabeeba went on the twirling monkeys. They went really fast. Ongabeeba likes going really fast. She liked the monkeys. She thought she was going "100", because she knew that was a big number.

Ongabeeba was on the twirling monkeys. But the steps didn't close. She didn't fall off. She still didn't fall off. But she fell off and got hurt that time. Then she cried. Yeah. She stopped crying. One of the people who talked through the microphone came to help her. They gave her a bandaid where she got hurt, on her pinkie.

Frightening Words

I think one of the phrases I hate to hear most, out of all the many phrases I ever hear, is when somone starts out like this, from MPR, "So and so, a listener from this-place, avidly followed our story on this-thing or this-place, and had a comment/some insight..." That, in and of itself, is not bad. I like commentary. If I didn't like commentary, I wouldn't read blogs. However, the next bit is the bit that always causes me to immediately hit the channel switch, "...that he set to verse."

Oh dude, f you. F you and f the MPR/NPR content director who felt you deserved air time. It's one thing to stick your lyrical crap about the Woodrow Wilson Bridge, or whatever other daily news item you're momentarily waxing poetic about, out onto your little blog fiefdom where it can at least be lost in the chaff and/or judged unworthy and studiously avoided by adding -poetry to Google searches. It's entirely another to force me to consider whether I'd rather hit a truck or turn the dial because I'm driving a stickshift in town with a soda in my non-dial-turning hand.

There are MFA programs where you can assault people with your poetry and they won't even know they're being abused. Please leave your versification there.

Ballgame

Funniest thing I overheard in the suite at the Twins game tonight (we lost 3-4 vs. the Royals if you're concerned): VP/Chief Architect pulls out his old Blackberry-esque machine, demonstraing, somewhat proudly, the size and ancientness of the technology he's saddled with. Co-worker next to him, "My, you're just like Paris Hilton."

On the way home on the transit system there was an advertisement for girlatlaw.com. That's just a fun domain to own if you're a lawyer. And she has a spunky logo. I like it that I can get a family law question answered for $39.95. I think that makes more sense than group legal through work, as I pay for group legal (if I so choose) whether I have a question during the year or not. Maybe this is the sort of service She Says should be providing while she's unemployed. Might not pay the rent, but it could foot the bill for some online shopping.

Decaf

I've been away from work for two days. One day planned, vacation at the State Fair. One day unplanned, Eryn home sick. To top it off, I'm out of beans. So I've spent almost three days without an appreciable amount of caffeine. I can tell - I thought I was going to fall asleep on Eryn this morning while serving up stories, DVDs and pancakes. On a positive note, that means I can scale way back at work tomorrow and switch to my small cup and a less aggressive caffeine schedule, which will probably increase my cheerfulness (which is already unbearable). I wonder what I'll think of my coworkers without as much medication.

2006 State Fair

Yesterday, Pooteewheet, Eryn, Kyle, Grandpa John and I all went to the 2006 State Fair together. While disappointed that it was raining, we were sort of hoping that the moisture would drive off other fair goers. Based on the lines at the Kidway when I was there, it was working, though not so well that I didn't bump into my ex-cube neighbor (there's starting to be a lot of those, so maybe that's not so strange), Brian. But as soon as the rain disappeared, the lines expanded exponentially and, as you can see in this picture, there was no shortage of people.


Before I get started, if you want to see lots of Fair pictures, MNSpeak has links to a dozen dumps, including this instant classic about a cow with a problem.

Pooteewheet doesn't own a rain jacket (and I wouldn't give her mine), so she bought a three dollar "Got Milk?" poncho at extortionist prices. I joked to Kyle that we should buy a black marker and cross out her K and replace it with an F, just to be seriously juvenile. Not that her outfit wasn't already ludicrous. With a couple of eye holes she'd have looked like a female klansman. The joke about reselling it a garage sale for two-fitty was met with disapproval, particularly after she'd poked a whole in the chest with her glasses.


A note for Kyle concerning our discussion in the dairy area about how fun it would be to have a butter head in your fridge just so you could make guests go to the fridge and get their butter off the head, apparently at least one Princess Kay has taken her butter head home with her, "Stephanie Dickey of Leonard, the 1985 Princess Kay, took her statue home with her. It went on display in the cheese store in the mall in Bemidji where Stephanie works." (from a really long article about butter sculpturing by the MN historical society).

Eryn was old enough to take pictures this year. This is one of her masterpieces, taken by the JackFM booth where we take her picture every year. I can't tell if the cutout actually hangs the same way I normally do. If not, I hope it doesn't ruin the realism.


The big slide was closed the first time we walked by, due to the rain. But after throwing teenagers against it until it was dry, and then following up with a guy who seemed to be sporting a small block of wax, it was reopened so Grandpa and Eryn could take a ride. We were going to make a second run, but everyone had figured out it was open again, so the line was just too daunting. Eryn had a great time, especially as she'd spent her last nine Kidway tickets riding a shorter version of the same damn ride. Eryn says, looking at this picture, "We were yelling all the way down it. We had to, because it's a really big slide."


There are some cutouts you can stick your head through next to the slide. This is Eryn wondering what it would be like to have breasts. It frightens me.


But not as much as Grandpa with breasts....


Cookie Queen didn't tell us she was at the fair. Neither did her husband, Dan'l. Perhaps that's because he was a bit embarrassed that his wife was spreading lotion on every Tom, Dick, and Kyle who came through the U of MN area. Apparently this was an experiment to show just how unclean most hands still were even after washing. CQ, as you can see below, was anything but embarrassed.


Kyle's hands, shown here, are proof of the problems with washing. Who the hell knows what he was doing before he got his hands near CQ. I shudder to think we could have ended up sharing a bag of Tiny Tim donuts. Eryn's not so lucky, she ate one out of his bag. However, after one bite, she tried to hand it back, so whatever that is on the back of his hands must taste bad. Of course, Pooteewheet ate the rest of Eryn's donut. Kyle's joke about the water being dirty was lost on CQ's booth partner who tried to justify the amount of water each participant was allowed.

Eryn wants to co-blog here, she says, "Why was he picking his nose?"


Fortunately for Kyle, I don't think what's on your hands matters too much if you're having the hotdish on a stick. Nasty. I thought it would be hotdish just mashed onto a stick and fried, but Kyle assured me that they took some care to layer the ingredients, tater tots closer to the bottom.


Apparently, as revealed in close up, the creamy mushroom sauce makes all the difference.


Kyle and Grandpa John were fascinated by the no-electricity animal fountains. I think they were primarily bored waiting for the bathroom visits to finish, but still, they spent a lot of time checking them all out.


Finally, who is this? I see her statue near the back side of the fair each year, but I'm not sure who she is. Famous Minnesota suffragette? First blue ribbon in tomato sauce? Patron of the Fair? First woman to die riding the skyway? Anyone know?

Bonk

I missed including this touching photo from Giraffe day at the zoo. Eryn walked into the playground near the Meerkat area and I zoomed in for a fun picture of her coming out the other side. Instead she came right back out the side she went in as though she'd rebounded off something. Apparently she had, the wall.

Appropriate Licking

I was trying to remember what I'd done on Saturday and having no luck, and I realize it's because I was doing whatever the hell I damn well pleased...sort of. I did have to spend some time at work, but after that I mosied over to Best Buy to work on high speed DSL (lot of haggling about when I could ditch MSN if I still wanted a free DSL modem and a gift card) and then went to lunch at Panera and wrote eight pages or so on a book I've been working on. It was all very peaceful.

Yesterday, we took Grandpa John to the park and Pooteewheet filmed this video of Eryn just hanging around.

She was sure by the end of the park visit she was stronger.

We hurried over to the Zoo as well as I'd heard that you could actually pet a live giraffe, something we'd missed the last time. It cost an extra $5, but that seemed a small price as it was per family, not per member. Of course, if you were the lady in front of us pretending her grandkid was related to the children of the family at the front of the line, even though they weren't, and snuck your grandkid in without paying the $5, I guess it was even cheaper. It wasn't that we didn't call her out - we didn't even realize it was happening until the zoo folk were a little miffed.

So, here's Eryn being licked by a giraffe. She was not impressed. She was actually pretty grossed out about the whole tongue thing and wouldn't stick around for pictures, but RAN for the sink with the soap. No amount of convincing was going to get her near that tongue again.

Pooteewheet, on the other hand, was not only excited about petting the giraffe, but let a second one lick her neck in some sort of sick giraffe menage a trois. She has always had a thing for tall guys.

And me. No inappropriate touching in this case. I was assured that inappropriate touching in the case of a giraffe meant touching them anywhere on the face, and I was also told that would make them angry. I don't know what an angry giraffe would do to someone, but being slapped around with that tongue would seem to be the least painful, and that still sounds extremely bad.

30 Questions

For lack of anything better to do this morning (and because my SOA book is difficult to read while Mickey Mouse Playhouse is in the background), I'm going to steal She Say's 30 questions. It's been a while since I did anything meme-y.

1. In two words, explain what ended your last relationship?
I've been married for so long, it's difficult to remember relationships before my wife, so I'm going to embrace the wider picture and assume this refers to all interpersonal relationships that might have been terminated. So...on the surface, an argument about a non-existent board game (bolded not for emphasis, but because those are the two applicable words).

2. When was the last time you shaved?
Back or face? Yesterday morning - face.

3. What were you doing this morning at 8 a.m.?
That was only fifteen minutes ago. Making coffee and cleaning the kitchen while the aggregator loaded feeds for me to read via dial up.

4. What were you doing 15 minutes ago?
See question number 3.

5. Are you any good at math?
Yes, and if it's the sort of math that involves logic, I'm even better. I scored a perfect on my GRE for logic(al analysis) - presumably that's why I make a good programmer and have yet to write a book.

6. What did you do on your prom night?
Danced with the Swedish foreign exchange student whose date stood her up. Perhaps didn't dance enough with my date. Went to prom with my next door neighbor (as close as it comes where I used to live) who made her own prom dress and who might still hold records for the breast stroke at a college level.

7. Do you have any famous ancestors?
I believe we might be related to Nathan Hale. I think we also have an ancestor who might have walked back from Russian to Sweden after the Battle of Poltava. I'm related to Sacagawea via Charbonneau (whose children were adopted by Clark, of Lewis and Clark). I've never seen proof of that one, however. And if you look back in my posts, you'll find I'm related to famous racists.

8. Have you ever taken out a loan to pay for school?
To pay for Pooteewheet's graduate degree in Social Work. However, I paid it back in full within the year while paying off my car 2 years early and collecting enough for 10% down on a new house at the same time, so I don't deserve any sympathy. I was working as a contractor then and doing about 150%+ billed hourly (60 hour weeks were almost the norm) , 3-4 technical interviews a night (on a per-interview payment schedule) for affiliates nation wide, contractor managing between 6 and 10 contractors, and recruiting contractors in-bulk as one of my prior companies had gone out of business, all while living in a $600 a month duplex. My income has still never caught up to those days, though sometimes my time at work seems to be catching up to that 60 hour a week mark.

9. Do you know the words to the song on your myspace profile?
I don't have a song, and I only have a MySpace account so I can search for people I know and music by my friends (the original intent of MySpace - and I do have friends with music posted out there).

10. Last thing received in the mail?
A copy of Bicycling magazine, a letter from the DNC, an offer for car insurance, and some flyers for social work conferences, one of which was about reestablishing intimacy in your marriage/relationship, regarding which I made a snide/rude comment to Pooteewheet.

11. How many different beverages have you drank today?
Coffee. Coffee. Coffee. But each cup is different, so I'm sure they all count.

12. Do you ever leave messages on people's answering machines?
Sure, but not as often as I used to as it's easier just to try their other phone. I do leave messages on voice mail at work all the time. Same thing.

13. Who did you lose your concert virginity to?
This is so freaking embarassing - Olivia Newton John. I did go to see Bozo the Clown live as a kid - can I claim that supercedes?

14. Do you draw your name in the sand when you go to the beach?
No, but when Eryn and I went to Mexico last year I taught her to use small pointy shells as "sand pencils" and drew 100 numbers in the sand for her to follow by counting.

15. What's the most painful dental procedure you've had?
Between the extra tooth below the gumline that created more toothy bits (dentist used an citrus punch and left a bruise on my chest yanking it) and the root canal that I waited for a few months before having (while imbibing constant Advil and Tylennol - when they drilled and it geysered goop, the dental assistant turned a little green), you'd think one of them would have hurt, but for the most part they were pain free. But I hated my childhood dentist, so I'll go with "six month checkup".

16. What is out your back door?
Opportunity. No no...there's no opportunity, I joke. A quarter acre of weeds. Hey...in a sick sort of way, that's an opportunity to mow, fertilize, and de-weed.

17. Any plans for Friday night?
That was last night, and I did have plans. Dad was in town and we went to MF Snakes on a Plane!

18. Do you like what the ocean does to your hair?
It's sparkly and smells like the ocean afterwards, what's not to like?

19. Have you ever received one of those big tins of 3 different kinds of popcorn?
Yes. Ick. I'll eat caramel corn, but cheesy corn makes me ill.

20. Have you ever been to a planetarium?
Many times, for star shows and Pink Floyd laser shows, though not since I've been married. My parents used to take me to the planetarium in Minneapolis and afterwards, when we walked through the black light area, we could appreciate my Dad glowing where the bacteria he picked up overseas (Nam, but not really - he was on a sub) lives under his skin.

21. Do you re-use towels after you shower?
Sometimes. I hate wasting water and energy. But it's on a towel by towel basis and partially determined by ambient humidity.

22. Some things you are excited about?
A bike ride, new programming languages and technology (seriously), the possibility of a good breakfast (hashbrowns), a new board game, my daughter getting old enough to go biking and hiking (without the Burley).

23. What is your favorite flavor of JELLO?
I don't really eat Jello. But I bet they have a grape flavor, and I really like artificial grape flavor (like in purple popsicles), so if I'd eat anything, I'd eat that.

24. Are any of your great-grandparents still alive?
No. But my daughter still has great-grandparents alive.

25. Describe your key chain.
Salvation Army, Northern Division in brass with the motto "Blood and Fire". A relic of my days working for the nurses.

26. Where do you keep your change?
Big plastic tupperware container and in my cast iron bank collection. Recently I bundled it all up so Eryn could use it to pay for Dance Dance Revolution.

27. When was the last time you spoke in front of a large group of people?
2004 I gave a presentation on MS SQL Server Reporting Services to one group and Biztalk 2004 to another. I did make a toast for my friends', Dan and Katie's, wedding. That was the last group larger than 40.

28. What kind of winter coat do you have?
I have a few. I used to wear a traditional ski-type coat to work, but weather in Minnesota has been mild lately, so I'm more likely to wear a leather jacket or sometimes (if I'm feeling dapper) my trench coat.

29. What was the weather like on your high school graduation day?
I think it was raining. I was giving the valedictorian address, so I was one of the few people directly aligned with the gymnasium doors, which I think were open...which would imply it was raining, so they were cooling it off - but I also think we walked in from outside, so that would be at odds with the raining theory. Maybe it was somewhere inbetween.

30. Do you sleep with the door to your room open or closed?
Closed, otherwise the damn cat sneaks in and crawls into the bed.

Smear

Pooteewheet is painting and plastering around the house at the moment. One of the places she plastered was a six inch wide spot near the kitchen counter (and hence, the laptop) that was never finished before we bought the house. She used that pink spackling compound, DryDex DAP, that goes on pink, and dries white, so you know it's done setting. But I learned that if you squash a small centipede on it, it goes from white back to pink. Apparently centipedes have a high moisture content.

Premiere

I was at that mother f-ing movie, Snakes on a Plane, and before it started there was a preview for Toby Keith's movie "Broken Bridges". The preview left me excited as it noted that the premiere included never before seen footage.

F-ing brilliant.

Where Do You Think?

I was talking to a developer I didn't know on the phone today and at one point she started mumbling as though she wasn't quite talking to me. I said, "Excuse me?"

"Oh," she said. "Usually I think in my head."

The Five Dysfunctions of a Team

My VP at work handed out free copies of The Five Dysfunctions of a Team (a leadership fable) to everyone in our department. I found time to read it right away, and the author recommends that I actively criticize various aspects of my teammates. I assume this also applies to his book.

Overall...interesting. I'm not sure I personally needed the first 200 pages of "leadership fable" that were summed up in the last 20 pages, but they were amusing, and I know they served to flush out the points and make them more memorable. I was also pleased that although the developer was cast as the villain in the beginning, he redeemed himself early on and became a team player. We're annoying, but we learn quick.

I'm not so certain about the allusion to the fact that sharing personal information with your colleagues encourages more, unintended, sharing as everyone relaxes, like a snowball, or some dung beetle of truthiness. I'm even less convinced that alcohol as a lubricant for executive team- building offsites is wise. For those of you who've read the book, yet might not remember that part, I quote, "Kathryn made a mental note not to have beer brought with dinner next time. But she couldn't deny being glad that things were coming to the surface." (p. 56).

I'm also deeply touched by the section on page 98 where an executive talks about how he doesn't hold other executives accountable, yet when it comes to direct reports, "I seem to hold them accountable most of the time, even when it's a sticky issue." I had a difficult time deciding if this was a direct acknowledgement that lower-level direct reports are held to a different level of accountability, a more stringent one, and that there's a little scale that measures accountabilty against power against the severity of the result/condemnation (for failure). Don't get me wrong, that doesn't surprise me, it's just interesting to see it glossed over rather than more directly stated in a management book. Maybe it's just such a given that it's not worth remarking on other than in passing. I only have to look as far as corporate job descriptions to understand the truth of that, because the higher the job description, the more esoteric the job metrics. There are specific, concrete, items you are evaluated for at each level. The further up those levels you travel (and my traveling has been local, but I've traveled) the more fluffy the language to describe the responsibilities. It becomes much more difficult to evaluate someone who is supposed to "keep abreast of technology" versus someone who "must finish assigned bug fixes using the project's primary language" (I paraphrase).

Page 145 showed a similar disconnect when a number of engineers were simply reassigned from development to assisting "sales reps with product demonstrations." I'm pretty sure being told that I was shifting from coding to sales demos, with additional traveling away from my family, and a sales rep collecting the comissions rather than me because I was only handling all the technological presentation issues, not the presentation itself, even though the rest of the job was identical, would annoy the crap out of me. I hope the author meant that they were offering this option to engineers, and that those that were so skilled might be compensated for sales without the aid of a sales rep, and that pay increases would be offered for extended traveling that wasn't in the original job description. But I get the impression that it's more like the engineers are just playing pieces on a game board.

And on page 159, there's a power struggle where an exec walks away with three months severence, all stock options vested, and a statement that she resigned on her own. That has so little to do with how my position functions that any tension there's supposed to be is instead somewhat humorous.

I also found the joke that "Engineers don't golf" as an instance of an executive "lightening the moment with humor" (141) to just be a reason not to joke with your superiors. Engineers do golf. They just golf on the public course.

Then again - the book is aimed at executives and not engineers, and I do recognize my VP's good intentions and what she got out of this book and what she's hoping we walk away with as regards a good team. But the disconnect between the executive level and my level leaves me hoping that the real benefit is that my execs are reading this book and benefiting from it as good teamwork on their level has, in my experience, a visible impact on the morale at my level. I prefer to think of it as "we're trying to implement this positive pyramid of team building" rather than "we think you need to work on this positive pyramid of team building." There aren't trust issues on my project team, and as far as sharing personal information, they know how to find my blog and it has a little more than which child I am (1) and what my significant childhood challenge was (tying my shoe). And while they don't have blogs, I know considerably more than that about them as well. I know we're on the same page, and that we have a functional team with perhaps a slight wavering around "fear of conflict", though even there we know enough about each other to recognize our conflicts with each other and accept them as surmountable.

But mostly I just like quoting from it when I recognize a behavior, because that's sort of annoying. I trust they already know that about me.

The World is a Very Weird Place

I saw this on Wired. It's a "hug shirt". Basically, your blue tooth-enabled phone transmits a hug from your friend/whatever to your shirt - i.e. "your mobile receives the data (hug pressure, skin temperature, heartbeat rate, time you are hugging for, and the name of the person you want to hug) and delivers it to the other person."

I'm not sure that orange circle thing is attractive, especially on the guy. They look like rejects from Logan's Run.

Once again, I am intrigued by the possibilities that haven't been considered. Can I use this to encourage productivity in my group. Some team members - namely me - would be nauseated, but others might feel comforted getting a group hug if they've done something particularly well. And why not an ambient hug shirt? Application producing more errors? A bigger hug....and bigger...until it's no longer a pleasant snug feeling, but a suffocating feeling, as though the very walls of your cube were hugging you.

Can you put them on orphans during the early stages to mimic parental touch and squeezing? Maybe give cell phones to a few thousand volunteer teenagers with text messaging issues and make them feel it's not all pointless thumb twiddling?

When will they make the underpants version?

Nowthen Threshing Show

Yesterday, Kyle took the Scooter clan to the 2006 Nowthen Threshing Show, conveniently located in Nowthen, Minnesota. He plied us with a delicious, free, all-we-could-eat breakfast of pancakes, sausage and bacon, so there was really no resisting. Kyle will be startled to learn that one of my teammates at work, Monica, was actually married in Nowthen, though she did not have her reception at the rundown bar. Kyle was introduced to the show by his coworkers, some of whom live within biking distance. We even ran into two of them at the show.

Here's the button for the threshing show. You may recognize the Oliver 99 on the button, manufactured by Oliver (formerly Hart-Parr). Then again, if you're like me, you might have never even heard of the brand if your grandfather was more of a John Deere sort of guy. What's even more confusing is that my father buys the grandkids, all of them, John Deere toys and things when he could at least be buying my nephew Oliver toy tractors that actually say Oliver. He doesn't have the same excuse as me...he grew up on a farm.


So, what's at the Nowthen Threshing Show? For starters, the Parade of Power! It's not a white pride march, though if you had parked next to the truck with the confederate flag you might have thought so (there was also a truck with an I voted for Kerry sticker nearby, so there were all sorts). Rather, it was a parade of several hundred tractors! Do I mean 300? No...I definitely mean many many more. Early on, a tractor went by that had the number 800-something on its little banner. I figured that meant they were giving out signs up to 1000 by some random distribution. An hour and twenty minutes later, I was fairly certain we were going to actually see 800-plus tractors. There were tractors with treads, tractors with wheels, tractors with steam engines, tractors with gas engines, tractors with kerosene engines, and even a tractor with an engine that had no fuel whatsoever...which is why it stalled and had to be pushed off the parade route, much to the chagrin of the owner.

Eryn loved the parade. She was also a fan of the square dancing, the free, endless, rides on the small train that did a several hundred yard loop, the 36 inch corn dogs, the horse-drawn wagon (also free), the animal barn (where she was conveniently urged to look at the little horses while the donkeys played leapfrog), the loud steam whistles on the tractors, the hand pump for playing at dish-washing (damn, we have been missing an opportunity), the guy carving bears out of logs with a chainsaw, the sawmill (run by a tractor), and the penny candy at the general store.


There were also thousands of things for sale at the threshing show mass garage sale. Unlike most garage sales, there were an inordinate number of tools for sale, as well as your usual junk. While Eryn was primarily interested in the cut-rate McDonald's furbies, Kyle disturbed us by buying a car door (un)lock(ing) kit, a blow dart gun with stunning darts, callipers, and a filet knife. A pair of gloves and some tape (both available) and we would have pegged him as a serial killer. He also spent an unusual amount of time trying to find cheap batteries for our digital camera, which had sucked up all its available power. Surprisingly, $1 battery sets leave a little to be desired, and tended to produce one picture per every four batteries.

I did find some treasures of my own, including these spray nozzles with brass fittings for about $5 (that's right...I'm showing you pictures of spray nozzles, I'm very proud of finding them so cheap as I still have a broken one lying in the back yard against the house)...


These cast iron banks. Albeit, the one of Boss Tweed is a reproduction, and I'm uncertain about the Humpty Dumpty, although I'm fairly certain it's a reproduction as well, but they're still pretty cool.


And this. This is a candlestick I bought for $1 for Dan'l. Surprisingly heavy in a Clue sort of way. You might remember that I just bought him a new video game and think this is unnecessary as a token of our lasting friendship, but you would be wrong. There were some other options. A decanter for syrup ($4). Three variations of a crappy little "I love you this much" statue (total $0.75). A farmer/hick t-shirt with a guy riding a pig. But this was the one I came back to. Cookie Queen will be able to appreciate it every time she goes into his computer room.

Sphincter Sunday

According to PBS Dragon Tales, this is a knuckerhole.



Then, this morning, there was an advertisement for The Doodlebops where Moe is in a gift box that has a big hole in the front. It reminded me of nothing quite so much as going to school at the U of MN and learning to avoid the library bathrooms because the holes in the wall were there for a particular purpose. There's a coffee lady at the coffee shop closest to my cube whose name is a derivation of Glory Hole, just like those holes. This is why parents should keep up to date on sexual terminology...it's just mean to your children to not be hip enough to avoid the obviously avoidable. Which brings up a further point, that I once worked for the state creating a database of rest stops, in part so that more frequent maintenance might serve to curb rest stop sex, including through glory holes.

I don't bring up these things for any particular reason - just to show that my mind seems to be mired in the gutter lately.

Potty Chart

Eryn just finished telling Pooteewheet, "My body says it needs to pee." And then she sat down and peed. So she gets her third potty chart sticker today. This is from earlier this evening. There is a sticker that says USA and it is for taking a dump, but Eryn was being patriotic, not snarky. She really likes the sticker. We do a lot of cheering each time - she might make it to big kids' school by fall

Disco

Yesterday, on the way back from Cookie Queen's house (where a very happy Dan'l relished in the annoying sawmills that came with Heroes of Might and Magic V I gifted to him), Barry Manilow came on the radio, singing Copa Cabanna. Eryn asked why there was "wavering" in the song. I explained that that was sort of a "thing" with music in the past, as were big endings, and that they had since sort of gone away. I elaborated that music tastes changed from era to era, and that rap and grunge (and emo) weren't even really around when I was a kid, but that the styles that were around tended to maintain an audience of adults as it made them remember the passion they had when they were kids. Some of those styles included Barry Manilow, 80's music, and disco, which no one likes anymore.

"Except mommy. Mommy likes disco."

Sigh..."Yes, Eryn, Mommy really likes disco."

All About the Animals (and Zero Pounds Wasted)

Honestly, what numbnut didn't decide that they should be showing "Snakes On a Plane" at the Apple Valley Zoo IMAX? I can't imagine anything more deserving and appropriate. Pooteewheet has left for the evening to get her fill of Samuel Jackson, at least figuratively, at a different theater. Me...well Dear Reader (oooo...I hate that), I am sitting around blogging, reading the book my VP gave me (more on that later, when I'm actually done), and playing God of War. Not all at the same time, mind you, but close enough for horseshoes.

Let us begin by talking about my half day off, which isn't really a half day off, because I've been asked to do at least three different work-related things over the weekend. I cannot learn new technologies if work fully extends into the weekend. My future relative-stupidity is the fault of everyone involved. I could cancel my interviews for the two open positions for our group and gain some more time, but that's counter-intuitive as the longer I don't have two employees, the more work I have, and the truth is, I actually enjoy talking to interviewees. I find their enthusiasm for a new job refreshing. And if they have no enthusiasm, I find it amusing. It breaks up the day in a pleasing manner.

Regardless, I did take a half day out of the office to go to the zoo with Eryn and ptw. While it was humid and saturated with wasps, which make me very nervous, particularly when they hover inside my sunglasses, we had a great time, feeding the farm animals, playing at the zoo playground, and riding the horse-drawn carriage to the farm and back.

Here's a video of Eryn yelling "echo" in order to achieve an echo. This makes absolute sense, because the word echo echoing is so much the word taking the perfect form of its meaning (heck, you can echo the word echo in a cave...the Greeks would find that deep). Much more sense than when she's dancing in DDR Max and announces she's going so fast that she's "Zero Pounds Wasted". What the f does "Zero Pounds Wasted" mean? She's tried to explain it to both ptw and me, and we both understand that it involves doing something fast/quick, but she's never been able to make either of us understand what she's truly trying to communicate. It reminds me of that hideously annoying Star Trek the Next Generation episode where Picard is talking to an alien who keeps announcing everything is "arms wide open"because it talks only in metaphors.

We saw a tiger drinking, which we hadn't seen before. Here you can actually see a video of it drinking if you've also never seen one drinking. It's probably not quite the same as in person, but pretend some random four year old is shoving you, and you'll have the appropriate experience.


I found the trivia questions about the tigers to be rather disappointing as they've been somewhat commercialized. I can't prove it, but I think they're pandering to the movie industry, or maybe even receiving a sponsorship. The Liger Mystical Powers presentation in the aviary area only proved my point.


This is for grandpa John now that his highspeed internet is fixed, Eryn on a John Deere tractor. She loves sitting on tractors. He better be up here for the State Fair as I'm pretty sure she wants him to do the tour of machinery hill with her again.


I have blogged previously about the Meerkats that were put to death because some kid's parents were a-holes who 1.) let their kid climb up almost into the meerkat pen and 2.) wouldn't just give their kid the damn rabies shots for being a little s***. The zoo has now posted signs to warn other parents whose children might be tempted to dare a similar fate. I think the bones of large animals make it VERY convincing. I'm of half a mind that they should throw a human skeleton in there somewhere...a small one.


Yes, I am still touching animal statues in inappropriate places. My sister wants to be a lactation consultant, so I feel the need to gain an empathetic feel for that extension to her career. You may also refer to me as a nipple nazi, just not in front of the chillen (I was very careful to avoid letting the tykes see me engaging in nipple pinching, even of the faux kind). This is one of the first pictures where I've noticed just how pronounced the silver is on the sides of my head...yep, silver...not gray. Maybe I'll finally look like managerial material to someone.


Finally...Eryn Chicken. Scooter Chicken. Damn, am I ever one cool bird. Poochy's got nothing on me.

On Being A Programmer

My manager noted after an interview I was involved with (giving) the other day, "Some people don't have CompSci degrees, but they can still make good programmers."

To which I had to respond, "I don't have a CompSci degree. I have degrees in English and History and a Masters in writing."

The subject was immediately changed.

On a different note, I did my first data-driven Ruby on Rails application two nights ago, and I have to say, bravo. That's a sweet bit of language design. I do internal web sites all the time - I'm pretty sure I could cut time to delivery by about 80% using Rails. I think I need my own rogue server (well...another one) at work to serve up sites for internal users.

How Will the Religious Right Ever Stop This?

I suppose the only thing to do is to deny it happens. The City Pages, now with The Straight Dope. Sweet.

"What else are they doing in there for nine months without cable? Let's put it this way: fetuses manage to entertain themselves. For instance, in 1996 two doctors reported on their ultrasonic observation of a female fetus masturbating over a period of 20 minutes. Twenty minutes? Change the channel already, you pervs."

DDR Max 2

Eryn and I were going to go outside, then DDRMax2 and two dance mats showed up in the mail from eBay. At least I can't complain that she wasn't getting exercise.

Sci Fi Monday

I went classic with my last book. I read "The Day of the Triffids" by John Wyndham. I have to admit that 50's fiction that stands the test of time is almost always really fun to read, and The Day of the Triffids wasn't an exception. While it's about twin disasters that affect humankind (being blinded in the midst of an explosion of man-eating plants), the story focuses less on the blindness and plants, and more on the issues the remaining humans encounter trying to stay alive in a post-apocalyptic world. While I'm not entirely sure of the historical lineage, it seems that there's an almost direct line from H.G. Wells (noted/quoted liberally in Triffids) to Triffids to every zombie movie ever made. If you wrote a zombie book or made a zombie movie after this book, I fail to believe you didn't read it or weren't influenced by it, at least from a once-removed perspective. I.e. if you don't know it was the source of your movie, it's because you don't know the full history of the sources that informed your zeitgeist.

While I'm not done with it, I immediately followed up with Night of the Triffids by Simon Clark, which is what got me reading The Day of the Triffids because I knew that Night had received a British Fantasy Award (2002). While there are some similarities, Night of the Triffids is not H.G. Wells, it's Swift. It is out and out Gulliver's Travels in a post-apocalyptic, plant-infested world. The triffids might as well be Lilliputians in some respects, with the various isolated human cultures fulfilling the rest of the roles of the various strange communities Gulliver meets. Still, good stuff - I strongly recommend the pair of books if you're looking for a good sci-fi fix.

Speaking of sci-fi, Tild~ has a post up about James Tiptree, Jr., which is the only sci-fi author I know of that has been read by every single lesbian I've ever known with an interest in sci-fi. Seriously. I don't know enough about Alice/James to know why this is (or lesbianism, for that matter), but Tiptree's fiction, when you know that it was Sheldon writing under a pseudonym, tells you more about her than might be gleaned from similar pseudonymous writers (I hope that was the correct use of that word).

Freakonomics

I'm actually a little embarrassed that I just finished reading Freakonomics. Primarily because everyone is reading it - it's still in the top 5 on the Minnesota non-fiction list according to the Strib and the reprint has been out for over a year. I've never really been a top 10 reader, and the fact that my manager stopped by my office to tell me about how "We" really enjoyed it as a books-on-tape (in his defense, I don't think it was a royal We unless he refers to his wife that way) didn't help. I have an anti-authoritarian streak in me that extends right down to someone telling me a more efficient way to get to my cube. That streak has been reinforced in the last several days, and the fact that I'm doing the gem install for Ruby on Rails right now speaks to how desperately I want to break free of conformity.

Yet, despite all I'd heard and all I expected, I still enjoyed Freakonomics immensely. I don't think I've read anything so easy to read in quite a while, particularly given the amusement factor of each chapter. I think my favorite part was where Levitt discusses how names are cycled down from the rich, to the not so rich, to the no money at all, to oblivion, until the rich like them again. I've always been convinced this is somewhat how everything works, so statistical proof is just damn funny. What's even funnier is page 190 where Levitt notes (near the area where he talks about some poor bastard named shuh-TEED (Shithead)) that "We all know names fall and rise--witness the return of Sophie and Max from near extinction..."

I don't have one nephew niece named Sophie or Max, I have both, and they're both from the same family, and they are not poor, unless owning a cookie factory and a house in Chicago qualify you as not as well off as the Nabisco clan. As proof goes, that's strong stuff. But then my other nephew, Oliver, shows up in the richest white boy names, and a trend to Celtic/Irish names shows up as well (nephew Arthur, nephew Oliver, daughter Eryn?), and a tendency to replace i's with y's in the more well-off monikers (Er"y"n). I would be the first to admit that my clan is not poor. While we don't have million dollar houses, we do own an average of two houses apiece when you diivy up the rental property and cabins, and some of the rental property is worth more than the 1000' square feet per person my family inhabits (my liberalness quails at that space-to-person ratio - the only way I can justify is to note that my dining room/kitchen takes up over 1/3 of the house and that it has a table that cost me $0 as it used to serve as a meeting table for a local union), so there's no shortage of wealth, even if it is tied up in structures and not anything portable (we don't even own a flat screen). My niece A... doesn't show up on any of the lists, but she's named after a severely pretentious movie (that I like), so I imagine on some level she qualifies as well. There's just so much anecdotal evidence without leaving my immediate surroundings that it's like Levitt was hanging out somewhere in my house where I couldn't see him.

Which reminds me, LissyJo is sure that my niece is a genius. I fully believe this is so, despite the stair diving. But it's my job, as LissyJo's big brother, to burst her bubble (read the comments, people) when I get the chance because big brothers, well, it's their job to be pragmatic and f-ing annoying to a degree that's unattainable by others. And not annoying in the same way middle brothers are annoying, but intellectually annoying, or pseudo-intellectually annoying, which is all I really ever hope for, which you'd know if you were in my space for any length of time. Americans of an Asian heritage (AoaAH? that's so stupid...Happy Americans Pacifically Pre-Ancestored? At least that fits with Happa, but it's not much better) generally test at a 5-10% higher level than caucasians (so sayeth not only Steven Levitt, but various other sources of data)...doesn't that mean, in order to compete with other AoaAHs/Happas, my niece has to have a 10% greater vocabulary than your average kid, or she has to learn her vocab 10% earlier and maintain that lead in order to compete with others in her demographic? So, LissyJo should assess A...'s level and then subtract 10%, like some sort of golf handicap, in order to compare her to the other kids she knows, unless those kids are of a similar demographic.

Umbrella Time

A pretty quiet weekend for the Scooter clan. Mostly some movies, some reading and some playing in the rain. Pooteewheet and I both went to see The Descent (that's her review - here's RottenTomatoes) on separate nights. I agree with her review, though I would add that any horror movie in which they kill the tall, attractive, British brunette earlier than the rest of the victims gets an immediate thumbs down from me that it is forced to recover from for the rest of the film. That recovery wasn't going to happen in The Descent as the first half, the claustrophobic crawling through caves part, was really the creepiest part. Cavers are freaking nuts, even when they're not crawling around hidey holes with monsters and their dead husband's mistress. I drink beer so no one can invite me along on an expedition, I simply wouldn't fit.

Note that we didn't go to Pulse, which got a 9% on Rotten Tomatoes. Apparently, we have standards. That should also keep us away from Zoom with Tim Allen, which scored a 0%. Way to go - that would seem to actually require effort.

Barnyard, The Original Party Animals, which we took Eryn to on Friday, was almost as scary as The Descent in some parts, when the coyotes were jumping all over the farm animals. No blood, but it was perhaps just a wee bit violent for our taste, particularly as the main character's father is actually buried after his encounter with the predators. Some funny scences with cows in cars, however.

Here's Eryn doing a bit of spinning in the rain.

And Eryn playing hide and seek with the camera using the umbrella.

I Suspect Her Belief...

...may be thinner than the mysterious water coming from the tree. Call it a hunch, but I'm guessing her insurance agent was there to make sure the water from the tree wasn't damaging the house. And even his faith doesn't seem to extend to having a cool glass to drink. If she sees a rainbow later, can assume she's safe, or does the covenant not apply in this situation (I would postulate that deity-covenanted water issues are situationally specific as the flood, the Red Sea episode, and the water-to-wine seem to be more or less textually unrelated as far as the Bible is concerned without resorting to the deus ex machina-like cover that it's all god or by using some kabbalistic manipulation that is best left to Madonna)?

Her insurance agent dabbed drops of the water on a spider bite and the welt went away, she said.

"I just want to know if it is a healing tree or blessed water," she said. "That's God's water. Nobody knows but God." (Woman finds 'God's water' gurgling from tree - CNN)

As an aside, I may feel the need to claim this miracle water for myself, as a manifestation of my holy powers. After all, when I was younger I survived a horrible brush with scrambled eggs, M&Ms, spider bites, and RAID for cracks (for said biting spiders) that I was sure was going to kill me one morning at around 3:00 a.m. I didn't die, and that's probably a miracle. I was also in Texas this year. That's a lot of coincidence.

Mad Meerkats

Not so much. The headline in the Sun-Current says, "Minnesota Zoo meerkats didn't have rabies". I'm sure that family is extremely proud of their superior parenting skills for putting five meerkats to death for an injury that "broke the girl's skin, but didn't cause serious injury".

"So at least the little girl is safe in all this," Gergen said. Just not the meerkats.

Spamalot

I bought three tickets to Spamalot today at work, row D on the mezzanine. One is not for Eryn, but for most of you, that also does not mean it's for you. It's for Kyle - he's a Monty Python fan and deserves a ticket. Future girlfriends do not. They (she) can meet us for drinks afterward. I told my wife any future girlfriends she finds can't go either, but that Kyle might give up his ticket if she traded him the video. She scoffed! Scoffed! She's a real downer.

Oh well.

The truly weird part about Spamalot is that the tickets I bought are for almost a full year in the future. Seriously, August of 2007! I don't think I've ever bought something for twelve months out unless it's a cell phone plan, and even that makes me edgy. I consider it a bold move forward - along the lines of making plans for New Year's Eve 2025. I'm accepting suggestions.

Kline is a Wanker

The first piece of mail I received from Kline this year and it's a flyer explaining that Rowley is full of dirty tricks. Listen you piece of crap - I know you could give a fig about my family if you knew I was a dirty liberal, but did it ever occur to you that even if I was independent, seeing your name next to the trash cans in my neighborhood followed by a flyer whining aboutRowley's dirty tricks rather than a statement of positive things you've achieved might not encourage me to give you my vote?

Where's the part about how you're being sued by a U.S. Marine?

Where's the bit explaining how you used your stationary and taxpayer-funded mailing?

Explain harrassing bloggers...

And sure as hell don't offer any details...after all, according to the G.O.P. the accusation is often the truth if it's repeated often enough.

non sequitur

Pooteewheet and I were watching "So You Think You Have Talent" (or something similar in name) last week and a family group called Gaelic Spring came on to dance and play instruments and etc. When they were done Pooteewheet said, "They remind me of the Aristocrats". She's a keeper.

At work I got a spy phone. I got a spy phone. I got a spy phone. Hey lady, I got a spy phone. (That's a Simpson's reference). My favorite part is when Tall Brad calls and the phone says I've got a call from BJ. He should call me every day just to cheer me up. He won't have to talk to me - just seeing that on the phone display is enough.

One of my coworkers said of our intern, "Blake touches everything." Does that mean if someone is really productive they're Lewinsky-esque?

Today, at one point, I was actually receiving email at a faster rate than I could read and subfolder (categorize) it. Not just status emails and such, but actual "someone needs you to respond to this" emails. 50-some while I was gone to lunch for an hour. I need to write an AI bot that'll pass a turing test - it's the only way to maintain sanity.

I think Eryn would give Pooh's Heffalump movie 5 stars out of 5. Not that you should watch it if you're significantly older than 5.

The track lighting in my kitchen is not burned out nor shorted out...it's all merely screwed in so tight from the previous tennant that it seems to have ceased working. I had to turn until I was afraid I was going to shatter a bulb in my hand. But for the first time in several months, I can see what I'm cooking.

I saw Will Steger yesterday - he came to work to talk about global warming. Then today The Blotter goes on about the Alps disintegrating, which is exactly what the executive who spoke before Will was telling us about when he was in Switzerland, hiking, with his wife, in the mountains...damn it. That's not inspiring and a warning about global warming - it just makes me very jealous I haven't been to Switzerland. Ming said he left Will Steger's presentation during the Q&A when someone asked whether we could harness methane release from the permafrost. I noted that he missed the follow up where we all tried to catch our own farts.

Eryn got a new valance from my mother for her room that matches her bed spread. I thought it was a really short dust ruffle for her bed (I have to say "for her bed" because otherwise dust ruffle doesn't make any sense if you're a guy).

My Captain Underpants name, as determined by Pippy Pee-Pee Poopypants, is Snotty Bananabrains.

God of War, despite all the violence and heaving bosoms, is a heck of a lot of fun and absolutely beautiful. I like ripping the wings off harpies with my bare hands.

Ruby on Rails...it's about time I learned something new and Java seems so....old.

30 Miles and Change

Ming, Scott and I went on a 30 mile ride into Minneapolis today, hugging the creek and lakes on our way up from Eagan. Actually, Scott did 44 miles, but that's his own fault. My favorite part of the ride...Scott is discussing his relatives with better jobs than him. This includes a cousin that traveled southeast Asia gathering noodle recipes in order to open a noodle restaurant. Normally this wouldn't be a very funny story, but if your other rider is Malaysian, it becomes funny because he has to point out (with some goading from me because he wasn't close enough to hear the story the first time) that the damn Americans are stealing the noodle recipes and it's not much different than 15th and 16th century colonialism.

So Scott responds that it wasn't so much stealing as taking them and "making them better". That made me laugh and I noted it was probably much more p.c. to state that they were "Americanized" as there's no connotation that they were lacking in the first place. To which Ming responds (I paraphrase), "Yeah, just add a fortune cookie."

That's good biking banter.

The Twits

On the way to Boppa and Manna's house (and on the way back) I read Eryn one of her new books, Roald Dahl's The Twits. I've been a Roald Dahl fan as long as I can remember, in large part because he doesn't treat kids like kids - he tells it straight and assumes they'll cope and that they'll find humor in sometimes rather horrible things.

In The Twits, Mr. Twit, a truly horrible man, is upset because he's been painting glue on a branch to catch birds to eat in his bird pie and the monkeys have taught the birds to avoid the branch. So he puts glue on the top of the monkey cage and the monkeys teach the birds to avoid the cage. So Mr. Twit comes out to find all the birds sitting on the house laughing at him and the monkeys in their cage laughing at him. Title of the next chapter?

"Mr. & Mrs. Twit Go Off to Buy Guns"

Don't worry - they get their comuppence.

Aqua City Motel at the Terminal Bar

Friday night I went to the Terminal Bar in Northeast Minneapolis to watch Erik's band, Aqua City Motel, perform in their latest incarnation. By the looks of it, you'd expect the Terminal Bar (cash only) to be the home of 60-80 year old hard-drinking smokers, but the smoking ban, or the proximity to the college has driven them away, and I think I was almost the oldest person there, if you don't count the parents of a band-member girlfriend. Unlike last time, my camera was fully functional this time, and although the movies won't be great as my camera isn't designed for optimal sound - they should be sufficient for those people in my group who have never once been to see Erik play.

Aqua City Motel no longer has a keyboardist (although the keyboarding lawyer in point was in attendence), so their sound is a little less Randy Newman and a little bit less ocuntry, and with more feedback, more of a rock sound. So their progression has been sortof folk to sortof country to sortof folk rock. I like the new sound and Dan, Erik and Will, the guitarists/bass all sang at some point, only Bill the drummer refraining (and he pointed out that it was difficult to hear from where he was, so I imagine even if he can sing, it would have been difficult). Erik was much louder this time - a very positive thing, and I liked his new song, Never Coming Back (excuse me if I have titles wrong, I aimed for what I could hear in the refrain). Will only sang one song at the end, but it was good, particularly as he started out looking and sounding nervous and got stronger as he went along which jived with the tune.

So...without further ado, and because Erik said I could put them up here (at least until he tells me to take them down), here are four Aqua City Motel partial performances from the Terminal Bar on August 4.


Erik singing...there was some discussion between Holly, Will and I about whether this song was about Holly. Will said it reminds him of her, which worried her, because Erik's baby is leaving him and never coming back. Will clarified that it was the mood and beat, not the words that reminded him of Holly...

Will singing...

Dan Tanz singing...I'm sorry I couldn't catch one of the nice little three-person guitar dip transitions that happened a few times during the night - very funny.

Erik singing again (he gets double billing as he's my coworker)...he sang this song last time, in Dinkytown, but he's louder this time (though he still gets very quiet a few times) and I think they've got a better beat for it.

5 Apple Valley Denizens Put to Death

You can read Chris' post over at After School Snack, or all the commentary at MNSpeak (73 and counting). Baker from MNSpeak encourages you to complain to the Department of Health.

A family of five Minnesota Zoo meerkats destroyed after a girl was bitten did not have rabies after all, a zoo official said today. The 9-year-old girl, who has not been identified, was bitten Wednesday when she reached her hand into the animals' exhibit. The meerkats -- two mates and their three offspring born this spring -- had been vaccinated for rabies but were killed because the girl's parents didn't want her to have to undergo a series of rabies shots, said zoo collections manager Tony Fisher... The girl had climbed atop 3 feet of rock work and reached over a 4-foot glass barrier Wednesday afternoon when she was bitten, said zoo collections manager Tony Fisher said. The rock work is designed to allow kids to climb up for a better view, he said. (Star Tribune) (alt. WCCO)

Cube + Grilling = Crilling or Grubing?

So, I was cooking at my George Foreman Grill in my cube and...naw, I don't have a George Foreman Grill. I thought it was funny when Ming's sister in law got busted for her fan, and then I read that Pete got busted for his fan too, which made it funnier, as he'd just posted a picture of his cube, but when he noted that some people have George Foreman Grills - that's just shy of unbelievable. I fail to understand where in a building that's becoming so packed they strap me into a cube less than my height in both widths a person would find opportunity to use a George Foreman Grill such that a cube neighbor wouldn't report them. I'm not particularly fond of my previous lead eating her egg salad sandwich next door and I don't think she's enamored of my sushi habit, but grilling might put us on last name terms unless we could figure out how to liberate a manager from her doored office so we had a sealed hibachi room.

It does make me wonder what you can get away with at work. Say your fan plugs into your USB port...is that acceptable? Isn't it just part of your computer at that point? And what about other usb-capable products? I think the USB vibrator (nsfw) would definitely be a no no, but would it be banned because of power issues? USB Christmas tree? Lava Lamp? What if I had an ambient device like an orb to tell me about the health of my servers/applications? I imagine that would be seen as necessary hardware if it were actually used for vital application monitoring.

So, that brings us to the real crux of the matter - is there a market for me at work selling USB George Foreman Grills? What about ambient George Foreman Grills? Sure, it's cooking some delicious mixed grill, but the lights on top are indications that servers Chicken, Steak and Burger are running above threshhold, Brat is looking a little throttled on disk i/o and BloodSausage has either just dropped its SAN cabling or some jerk turned it off. I'll check it right after lunch.

Slide Jumping

Mostly just for the grandparents and Cookie Queen. When I first came down the stairs, Eryn and Conner were doing this with just the bean bag. I added all sorts of padding from the basement bedroom and then checked in upstairs to see if I was engaging in good parenting by letting them continue. Eryn so seldom does anything physically wild that this was really sort of a surprise.

Donald Rumsfeld and Captain Underpants

Eryn has graduated to a new level of book. After spending an hour at Target the other day, looking for something as a no-time-with-Daddy day present, I finally spied a Captain Underpants book. I remembered reading them for the kids at Garlough Elementary, so I picked her up the first 112 page installment. Might I say, bravo to me. There is nothing quite like moving from constant re-readings of picture books to a book that you can read over several nights without fear of memorizing it, particularly when it's not a book you're reading just for your own sanity, but something the tyke really enjoys. So the new habit - we read Captain Underpants before bed, and for a big chunk of time after bedtime Eryn reads easier books by herself. She's getting pretty fast at reading and I think that's making it more enjoyable for her as she's turning into a little bedtime bookworm.

Yesterday, when my Dad was in town, we went out for dinner and stopped at Half Price to pick up the rest of the Captain Underpants books (and Dahl's The Twits and the first Treehouse book). They were on clearance, which is like finding lost money in your underwear drawer. Anyway, when we were done shopping, we went into the Apple Valley Half Price Books lot, and a man in a red pickup next to our car managed to get Pooteewheet's attention and ask several questions about our Ford Focus and whether we liked it. When she got in the car I said (paraphrasing, but darn close):

"Hey, wasn't that, you know..."

"Donald Rumsfeld?"

"Yeah...what did he want?"

"He wanted to know about how we like our Focus."

Donald Rumsfeld, in the parking lot at Apple Valley asking about our Ford Focus, truly a brush with fame.