May 2003 Archives

Bummer about no updates.

The address for this site will be changing soon. I'll update as soon as I know where it's going.

Setbacks

Well, I burned my first batch of popcorn in years today.

I am absolutely dumbfounded. It started popping like 30 seconds later than normal, and by the 2:02 mark when I normally hit the stop button, it was right at the peak of popping. So I got real fidgety, but I let it keep going a bit more. No good. I opened the door at 2:24 and -poof- the wincing odors wafted out like an effluvium of cremated gerbils. You cannot hide the aftermath of burned popcorn. I sulked back to the office, trying to piece together what went wrong. The oven said it was set on 'Hi' like usual. I had set the bag blue-side down--in the *middle* of the rotisserie. Although, I realized I *had* played with the package on the way to the oven, mooshing the cake of powdered, artificial butter inside the bag like when you compulsively pop plastic packaging bubbles. I usually don't do that, so maybe that's what set off the weird chain of events that lead to the burning. I won't do it again.

The first set of people to come down the hallway commented on it immediately. Grrrr. I tried to explain, but it was like "oh yeah, surrrre surrrrre". Cooking popcorn is a high risk venture. One must have a sturdy constitution.

Last night, I went with Giselle to a Culture Fair at her school. All the different classes had set up displays and dances and things from various cultures. So we cruised around and got little stickers put in her 'passport' for each land we visited. Giselle particularly enjoyed the life-sized igloo made of paper wrapped around a tent.

As we walked from class to class, I noticed that her school was most definitely a Macintosh school, but almost all of the computers were from like 1992. I was shocked. About 1 in 3 classrooms had a 2 or 3 year old iMac. But almost everything else was all-in-one LC and Performa models. I even saw a couple Apple IIe stations still plugged in and set up for use. I mean, it's not like the kids are sitting on dirt floors, with 6 kids per book or something. But it still gave me a sick feeling seeing what looks like to be a zero budget for computers in the past few years. And that won't get fixed anytime soon. The Flagstaff schools have a projected budget defict of six and a half million dollars next year. The teachers are probably going to get hit with a pay freeze or reduction and 86 vacancies could go unfilled. There's no way that new computers--Macs or otherwise--are going to fly in the midst of that. I asked Giselle's teacher about it, and she said they went from 2 computers to 1 in her class this year because there aren't any district resources available to fix technical problems. I hadn't volunteered in her class this year, and I've been feeling pretty ashamed about that. But if they don't mind outsiders futzing around with their Macs, maybe I can make some sort of measley contribution there.

Divided

I'm having a very bipolar day today. One minute I feel like I've got a handle on everything and I'm cruising right along. The next minute I feel like I should just throw in the towel and go be a door greeter at Walmart.

Stress makes me have to pee.

A first time for everything

Harrison, just got out of the hospital today. We took him to the emergency room around 3 am Monday morning with a horrible asthma attack. He had been dealing with a cold for the past few days, but it just went out of control I guess. He was gasping for every breath, his chest and belly looked like they were having a massive tug of war for air. We gave him several doses from his inhaler and tried Amanda's nebulizer, but after about 10 minutes of relief each time, he dropped right back into distress. When we got him to the e.r., they didn't sit us out there filling out papers, they brought us right in. His oxygen saturation was at 76%. Below 90 is bad. Oh gosh, my little guy. It was killing me not being able to help him. They started breathing treatments, oxygen and prednisone, and over the next 36 hours he gradually pulled out of it. He got used to all the routines by the time Tuesday dawned. I am worn to a frazzle. But he's back to being spicy and sassy. =D

Sharing his breathing treatment with Woody. His oxygen saturation had to stay in the 90s without assistance before he could go.

Oh man I'm tired. I've got to go.

Mule

Man, I cannot get this garage done quickly enough. Particularly the framing. When people see how I'm doing it, they either get that distant stare like 'okay, I don't want to tell you what a moron you are, but I can't think of what else to say', or else they outright tell me I'm doing it all wrong.

See, the thing is, there are two basic ways to frame a wall. You can build it flat on the ground, then raise it up and nail it into place. Or you can attach the top plate and sole plate, and then toenail the studs in afterward. Well I'm doing the second option. And everybody thinks I'm careening toward disaster. The neighbor across the street has had his Dad staying with him for the past couple months, and so he hears all the racket and comes trotting over to 'have a look' since they're going to frame their carport in soon too. He sees the sole plate I'm putting in and starts critiquing how the concrete nails aren't in far enough, and yes, I know they aren't, thanks, but it was getting late, and the gunpowder blasts were really freaking me out and I figured I was going to tick off everybody on the street at dinnertime, so I left it unfinished. And then he's like, so you ARE going to frame the rest of it and then raise it in place, right? And I gave some sort of non-committal answer. I guess it satisfied him, so he left it alone and offered to bring over a rotary hammer to finish getting the nails in place. Great. (I've gotten to where I look to see if his car is there before I do any of the noisy stuff.)

Then a good friend of mine came over today and started kidding me that everything looked just like it did last week. Thanks Jon =). He did help me get some more nails into the bottom plate. He had also suggested I build flat and raise it too. He's the one person I feel like a turd for not taking his advice, as much as he helps me out with stuff.

Then I was outside just now nailing some studs in, and our next door neighbors, who are very cool by the way, come outside to see what's going on. This is a stadium activity, I'm finding out. And anyway, Carlos is like "I know an easier way to do that." I knew what was coming, so I said, "Let me guess, build it flat and raise it in place, right?" And he's like, "yeah, I can help you if you want."...

You know, everybody's just trying to be helpful, and yeah I'm a pedantic mule, but I've got my reasons. First of all, that wall faces the hurricane winds that blast this place 200 days a year, and I want a nice, sturdy, manly wall. mmph! Secondly, the concrete is all cockeyed, so no matter how carefully I measure, if I build it flat and then raise it, it's going to fit tight in some places and loose in others, and I don't want to mess with shims all over the place--I just can't imagine that being as sturdy. Or I could just do what the low-bid contractors did who built the carport facades and just leave places where the studs have big old sloppy gaps at the top and bottom.

But by toenailing the studs in place, I get to measure each one individually, cut it a little long, knock it into place nice & tight and nail away. It's a pain, and the boards want to shift, but it feels so good. Everything is just anchored in there nice and tight. So instead of having a wanky structure that finally gets strong once you put the siding on, I get to have a sturdy frame that gets veritably impregnable once I put the siding on. I mean, that's the theory anyway. So yeah, I've basically lost it.

Deafening Silence

I took the kids with me to Home Depot today. I needed to pick up a plumbob..and aw heck, a jigsaw too. It got us out of the house for a while, and gave Amanda a chance to get ready for a friend's bridal shower this afternoon. So I put the kiddos in a shopping cart together to minimize these leg cramp problems they seem to develop in 'boring old tool stores that are SO boring'. So I was standing there checking out jigsaw blades and deciding if I should splurge for the multipack kit when suddenly I heard Harrison cut loose with ka-choo...ka-choo...ka-phflbbrbrbbsprddt. Oy. I knew it wasn't going to be pretty, and as I turned slowly to my right, I heard the rising volume of his mournful moaning, which further solidified what I knew I would see: great mountainous globules of snot quivering on his upper lip like so much polluted rubber cement threatening to goosh downward into grotesque walrus tuskaboogers. (grrfff)

But you see, that wasn't the bad part. The bad part was that I instantly knew I hadn't packed for this situation, and no tissue of any sort graced my linty pockets. I started in with these useless gestures, that I think I picked up from Mom, where I turn slightly from side to side while mincing my fingers as if trying to grab tools from some unseen cockpit of emergency materials. But jigsaw blades and routers aren't really going to help--humanely anyway. Meanwhile, Giselle is letting me know in no uncertain terms that she doesn't have any tissue to offer up to the cause. In retrospect, I should have used the hood of his cute little jacket, but instead, I whipped out my wallet, grabbed the first available business card and went to work in squeegie mode.

I was good I tell you--bevel in just under the curve of the upper lip and systematically wiggle upward in a rocking motion, finishing off with a slow, deliberate swipe to the right and outward, dragging out the nasal anchors until they snap like limp rubber bands onto the card. There was one last thing: where to put it? I could slap it under the shelf holding the saws like some sort of encrusted time-capsule I could hunt for years later and bring back to show to Harrison in front of his friends...or I could tuck it in my shoe. No thanks. That's when I noticed Giselle lavishing attention on a little coupon booklet she found in the bottom of the cart. It had Winnie the Pooh items featured on it, and had satiated her the whole time we were in there. It had to be sacrificed for the greater good. I grabbed it with profuse apologies and inserted the mucus-squeegie like some sort of perverse flower cutting and handed the booklet back to Giselle with warnings not to open to the last page. She was a bit put out to say the least, but insisted we take it with us anyway since "it can be washed". Bleah.

On the way back from Home Depot

It's so windy outside, I dread the aggravation of going out there and working on the garage. So, I'm putting it off.

The kids have been playing a game on the XBox called Fusion Frenzy. It's pretty tame, but they don't always agree on what constitutes fair play.

Apple Computer just opened up an online music store that doesnt stink like everything else up to this point. When the uproar over Napster got really hot a couple years ago, I realized I didn't feel good about getting my music that way, and dumped all the MP3s I had scored online. Since then, some online sources have opened up that basically 'rent' you the music for as long as you subscribe to their service. Pffith. No thanks to that too. I kept thinking, you know if somebody would just offer songs for a flat dollar per song, that would be perfect. And finally here ya go, Apple comes out with a 99¢ per song venue. Perfect! (Well if you have a Mac that is. The Windows version should be out by the end of the year though. ) I just bought my first 10 songs. Downloading over dialup isn't great, about 15 minutes per song, but next time I'll just set it to download overnight. I made sure one of the first songs I grabbed was Flake (Jack Johnson). Giselle decided a while back that she identified with some of the lyrics:

It seems to me that 'maybe'
It pretty much always means 'no'
So don't tell me you might just let it go
And often times we're lazy
It seems to stand in my way
Cause no one, no not no one
Likes to be let down
....
Please please please don't drag me
Please please please don't drag me
Please please please don't drag me down (daaaaaadyyy)

She likes to tack that last part on there. =)

A barrell of laughs I tellya.

Okay. I need to try and accomplish something out there in the bluster.

Later.