Loading 20# Bond in the color laser printer and leaving it there should be a crime, punishable by repeated ear flicking. :PPP
Oh well, my kids make out like bandits off the non-confidential waste-paper I feed them for their drawing and coloring recreation. The fact that some of the pages have vascular operations pictured on one side doesn't seem to phase them, which could be a good thing when it's biology-lab time ten years hence.
Blah blah blah. Gotta get home and fix up some good tacos.
Oh man. I realize all too well that I am less than coherent most of the time, but that 4 am entry this morning was just attrocious. I had trouble reading it just now. Yech.
Jack-in-the-Box fries are horrible. Just horrible. I drove up to the JitB speaker and asked for "three monster tacos and a regular coke". The lady says "Okay, the monster tacos are ninety-nine cents each, but we have a meal deal that includes two monster tacos and a drink, so when you say you want three monster tacos, you're confusing me."
What huh?
She really yanked the stool out from under me on that one. I said I wanted three monster tacos and a drink. I didn't say anything about a combo meal. I don't order the combo meal, because it comes with the crappy fries. But I was in a hurry and didn't want her to totally screw up the order by venturing outside the tried-n-true combo format, so I caved "oh, I wasn't looking at your combo meals, but okay, I'll take a number one combo with a coke, and could you pour some lye on the fries so they don't stink when I bury them? Thanks." Whatever.
I took the kids over to the mangy excuse for a park our little development has set aside to taunt us with its potential yet leave abandoned to shoddy groundskeeping. We played some frisbee as well as some toss-the-ball-and-run-screaming-like-it's-a-monster. Giselle tried teaching Harrison to dribble a basketball, but when he just sat there and watched it bounce limply before him, she decided to turn it into a soccer ball and tore off across the field with him choking on her dust and losing ground with every step. Can't have the old basketball getting kicked you know, so we went and got a cheapo soccer ball at Target after our Sunday meeting. And what the heck, she wanted it, so we got a kid-sized bat, a mit*, and semi-squishy baseball for her to practice with the next time. She's got more potential and motivation than I had at her age, so I'm indulging.
*plus matching mit for Harrison of course.
I saw a couple of these creepy critters skittering around outside our door tonight:
It looked like a miniature cross between a spider and a scorpion, and sprinted like a cockroach. I was thinking vinegaroon? false scorpion? It turned out to be a Solpugid The thing gave me the creeps, thus the blurry picture--it could climb glass like it was a ladder, and I didn't want it practicing its facehugger techniques on me. After agreeing with Amanda that she could kill any of them she found in the house, I let it go out front to hunt down black widows and other nuisances. The kids wanted me to read to them about the spindley varmits I had on the screen, so I took the opportunity to show them pictures of scorpions and talked about not picking up rocks or boards from below where you can't see and tell Mom or Dad if you ever see one. I wouldn't be surprised if we had some lurking in the post-apocalyptic disaster I call a back yard. I think this is just the excuse I need to go pick up a fluorescent black light :D Yeah babe, I'm going scorpion hunting tonight muahahahah...where's the shiskabob skewers by the way?
Yes. I'm posting late/early. I just finished up some work from my regular day-job. I'm trying to head off getting chewed out for overdue projects when our group leader gets back from vacation tomorrow. So instead, I'll walk in with my deck clear, and then walk around with my nictating membranes half closed all day.
Oy.
Well I took my own advice and passed out when I got home yesterday. I slept a good 14 hours before waking up this morning. It was a sleep filled exhausting, troublesome dreams. It's the kind of REM I get when I've been skipping out on my beauty rest. I needed it badly.
All the dreams reminded me of something. The past few years, I've found that I have 3 or so locales that I repeatedly return to in my dreams. None are places I've actually been, but they're always the same in their respective ways.
One is a gilted hotel, complete with a huge open air lobby showcasing an elegant elevator and curved-stairway combo. Everything here is rich ivories, burgundies and gleaming brass. Professionally dressed businessmen and women mill about with their briefcases, sometimes holding classy buffet lunches in a warmly lit meeting room. I tend to wander around this place, trying to find somebody or during those uncomfortable underwear dreams, trying to find the least populated direction to exit the building. I play in the elevators...jumping during the descent to get that prolonged weightless feeling.
Another location is a large industrial complex with pipes, close hallways and large metal-grate stairwells. This place is painted in bright whites, neutral grays and blues. There's a lot of action in this place that usually involves shoot-outs. More than once, it's involved the A-Team. Sometimes I'm on their side, sometimes B.A. is gunning for me. They are horrible shots. It's a place of no escape. I always feel lost in this dream.
Finally there is a stadium. It's similar to the industrial complex, what with the close hallways mixed with huge open stairwells, but it's painted in dingey browns. And the shootouts don't take place here. Instead, I find that I'm usually trying to hide from somebody, or escape notice because I'm someplace I'm not supposed to be.
I don't know how to piece it together. These imaginary places mean something to me, I guess. But I don't know what.
Nevermind the horrible gradeschool dreams where I'm trying to find my class, and I'm late, and I have no idea why I can't figure out which dimly lit hallway I'm supposed to go down. Oof. I hate those.
I think I ran through all of those places last night. It's a wonder I don't feel any more exhausted than I did before.
I think I've already talked about how I had my work email changed nearly a year ago to get rid of spam. I've only given my new address to printers we deal directly with. I don't give it to online vendors, I don't even give it to my friends or family. Well, I'm getting spam again. Not a sudden influx, just some initial tricklings. And where is it starting? That's right, "Septic" problems. "Prevent Septic Backups" and "Do you have a Septic Odor problem?" were the last two I got. Well, they've got my number.
Oh man I'm tired. I've been up unacceptably late the past few nights, either working on freelance jobs, or hammering out the infrastructure on the new web server. And I'm at that stage where I could have a narcoleptic seisure at any moment. By the time the tunnel vision sets in and the gray spots start floating before your eyes, it might be too late to pull yourself back out. I just need to succumb to biology, walk in the front door after work, drop to my knees and collapse onto the soft, yet partially crusty carpet and start laying a drool puddle.
And I better do it soon.
Next week, we head off to Oklahoma to visit Amanda's family. We're not going to do the overnight keep-the-kids-asleep driving routine this time. We managed the San Francisco/Reno trip last year during the daylight hours, so we should be alright. The week after that, we're headed down to Phoenix for our Summer convention for a few days. That will feel like a cinch.
A couple nights ago, we were eating dinner, which included broccoli with cheese. Giselle had requested quite vocally that we not put cheese on her broccoli. This confused me to no end. It just ran contrary to everything I knew about kids and broccoli. So basically, I ended up interrogating her about why on earth she wouldn't want cheese. It was all about taste, she said. And for whatever reason, I decided to pull a Hansel & Gretel routine on her.
Dad: So you just think it tastes bad that way...
Giselle: Yes.
Dad: I bet you wouldn't taste very good with cheese either.
Giselle: Whaaaaaat???
Dad: Well, what do you think? I mean, do you think you taste more like beef? or chicken?
Giselle: :: scrinching her face up in that look of exaggerated displeasure :: Daddy!
Amanda: Or maybe bacon?
Giselle: :: letting down her guard :: hmmm. I don't know. Let me find out...:: raising her wrist to her mouth ::
Dad: :: starting to laugh ::
Giselle: hmmm. Doesn't taste like anything. :: switches to palm of hand :: Hey! I taste like rubber!
And the sidesplitting laughter ensued. (mental note: must be more diligent about monitoring handwashing before kids sit down for dinner.)
A spa commercial came on the tv tonight, and Amanda said, "Oh look, it's your worst nightmare: hairy men in a hottub." She knows I have a huge problem with hottubs...I guess the hairy men thing goes without saying. So, since I'm always on the defensive, I felt I had to explain myself yet again. "Well see, those people have their very own hot tub, it's not one of those public hot tubs, so that's not as nasty. That's what hot tubs should be for. Personal use. It's just when you've got a hotel where scores of people are stewing in it all day every day that it gets so disgusting." By this point, she's wearing that look of tormented long-suffering, on the verge of breaking out in tears of exasperation. But I didn't take the hint, "I mean, if they drained those suckers every couple hours and filled them with fresh, clean water, it wouldn't be so bad. It's like when you take a bath, you drain the tub afterward, you don't just run a skimmer through it and save it for next time for heaven's sakes..." At which point she threw her hands up in the air, "GAHHH!! Why must you suck all the joy out of the things I like??" (She likes hot tubs.) I know I shouldn't have laughed, but I think I chuckled to myself for a good 10 minutes after that. There I was, thinking I was just making all the sense in the world, proving my impeccable case for the five-hundredth time, and I was just throwing a wet blanket all over one of life's more sublime pleasures for her.
After taking wayyyy to long, I finally got the 2nd wall framed on the garage:
Will Drake was chastising me the other day for taking so long. "YOUR STILL WORKING ON IT???" Something about the lumber being exposed to the weather for too long. Which I guess he's right. I was figuring that as dry as it is, I'm probably good for another couple weeks before I plunk siding on it. But then I realized that my 'couple weeks' actually translates into 'couple months' based on my track record. Oy. I'm going to see if the inspector will pay a courtesy visit this week before I put siding up to be sure he's okay with how I've anchored the sole plate and to ask a couple questions about the 12" x 16' header they want over the entry. I'll probably need to rig a pulley for that one.
Also, I've gotten the Effigies page going with it's first entry.
I've been diddling around with this site some more. A friend, John Rodgers, offered to set up Moveable Type for me to use for publishing this weblog in exchange for help with his splash page. Last night as I was having endless problems setting up new email accounts to go with the whole 'perezmedia.net' thing, and discovering that MSN has way more irritating things in common with AOL than I thought, I had this sudden urge to prove that I had the powers to make something work with this int@rnet stuff. So I was up until 3 am setting up and troubleshooting all the Moveable Type software on the new webserver, and BAM! It works. It is very cool too. Lots more control over things. The layout for the page right now is pretty dull. I've got to mess with that some more.
Anyways, there ya go.
By the way John, I'd still like to help you with your index page :) I just had to prove something to myself. Got the new email accounts to work too eventually.
Displacement
Well it's been a good long dry spell. We signed up for DSL 3 weeks ago, and since then I've been trying to figure out how to get web services running with MSN. Duh. I should've known better. They only offer some lame groups feature. So I went shopping for web hosting and a domain name, and here we are.
Alrighty. I got some job deadlines poking me in the ribs so I'll blither more later.
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