October 2004 Archives

You think the album version of Freebird is endless? Try the concert version. Some things you put up with when you're at a concert, because you're at a concert. Like having the audience sing a chorus, or making the hyperactive ending score of your "classic hit" last 20 minutes because it's a "classic hit" and it's a concert, and everybody in the floor seats is wigging out. It does NOT translate to radio. Makes me want to rip my arm hairs out, throw them in the air and start monkey-screeching.

We ended up getting 10 inches of snow yesterday. It melted down pretty fast, but it looked great this morning. The sky was clear, and everything was warming up fast. As you can see, our front yard is a thoroughfare.

When the snow gets up on Mt. Elden and the San Francisco Peaks like this, it just pops out every crevice, rock, and tree. It was hard to stop looking at them while driving to work. So I broke out the paparazzi tools.

Lastly, there was some weird stuff going on with the kids last night. They were playing some sort of superhero vs. supervillain game. I walked out of the bathroom and noticed Giselle acting like she was tied to a chair, and Harrison points his Maraca at me and says, "Move, and the girl gets it!" while Giselle giggled out the side of her mouth. They posed for some publicity shots.

We're getting some good snow today. Nothing blizzardy. Just nice & steady. Second week in a row, too. Which is a nice change from the past few years. It does present some 'issues' for my hair situation. As you know, my hair exists in a very fragile state. A healthy dusting of snow crusts and flattens it down into a loopy matt. But then putting up the hood on my jacket can add irritating discontinuities too. Won't be long before I shave that mess I tellya what.

And another thing, if all the crap on my desk caught fire, I wouldn't shed a tear. :P

Look. You aren't getting any apologies from me. This web journal is what it is. Which is pretty much squat right now.

Let's see. What happened today?

I forked over fifty bucks to the school cafeteria lady this morning before they posted a bounty on my head. Also noted is that they have this Healthy Habits program where the kids get points for choosing healthy entrees for lunch and for any time they spend in exercise at PE or rec centers. It's a good idea in this day & age. And I'm not talking about chunky, scabby, video game playing, tv watching kids, not that that's not a problem. But I'm talking about this "choice of entree" stuff. A _choice_ of entree. I didn't have a choice when I was in elementary school. It was gray meat or green meat. Mashed paste with gravy. And peas. Or whatever slab of nutrient they were serving that day. Granted we did have a choice of white milk or chocolate milk. I chose chocolate. But I'll have to lend some credit to the fact that I learned to consume what I was given, to my elementary school days. Also to Mom's Buffalo Barf Casserole. As Amanda might credit her Mom's Pasta La Vista With No Meata. But that's another story. Little kids these days though, they have choices.

It's still up to the parents to ingrain good eating habits, I know. But just last night, as I was savoring Amanda's awesome lamb stew she's started making, and the kids were sitting their pouting, and pointedly making a declaration every time they ate this vegetable or that, Amanda lamented that she felt like the host of Fear Factor. Too true. Not sure if I irritated her too much, laughing the rest of the way through my bowl of stew. Yum yum. What's wrong with these kids? Giselle is a pretty shrewd customer, even when it comes to stuff she likes. She complained to Amanda earlier, that she was really upset at lunch that day because she thought they were serving the gray meat with the burgers that day, so she asked for a different entree (good grief). But then when she sat down, she saw from nearby burgers that they were actually serving the "good meat" that day. She was bent out of shape over that for the rest of the day apparently. That girl can rant like nobody's business.

They don't care about our stories of childhood lunch horrors, I'll tellya that much. The past is the past. This is now. And carrots are evil.

Hasta.

Darn stinkin laws of physics. I just dumped a couple cups worth of water down my leg. I hate the feeling of wet Levis.

I was trying to be a good samaritan and change out the bottle on the water cooler. Because nobody else does. Any time I want a cup of water, odds are about 30% that I'll need to change it out. And my luck this time, the bottle was nicely overfilled, and sloshing gobs of water pooshed out all over as I heaved it skyward. Bah. I wasn't even trying to get a cup of water this time; I just saw it was empty. And goodness knows nobody else in this building is going to do it. All the 'able-bodied' males in the building either work in legal or IT, and so as you might imagine, it gets left up to the weak-limbed artists. And sure, there's a bunch of rough-n-tumble shipping & receiving guys back in the warehouse, but they probably go out back and drink water from the hose when they're thirsty. Whatever man. I'm just taking another one for the team.

[edit: somebody at work is probably going to read this and slap me around but good--not the face! not the face!]

I dug up my old Star Wars action figures for the kids this past weekend. Giselle and a friend of hers were excluding Harrison from some boring girl game, so I dug up the goodies and played a little Star Wars with him. He doesn't understand the taking-turns to pick your guys rule, and he kept filching men from my base. But I let him have some slack, as he's a first-timer. He kept pressing me to know who were the good guys and who were the bad guys, and I was trying to distinguish the Empire characters from the bounty hunters and the rebels. And then emphasize that those boundaries really don't matter when you're playing with action figures, seeing's how the Empire and Bounty Hunters had all the cool enforcer types, and everybody needs tough guards at the entry points to their bases. Well anyway, we played for a while, and never got into any battles, what with the fact that his men wouldn't let mine borrow any sugar to make cookies, and the whole game wound up into who wanted to eat whose cookies, and his guys could only have the cookies that Lando sat on because they wouldn't let us borrow any sugar in the first place. He thought that was pretty funny. Not that I'm trying to impress the code of Hammurabbi on the boy, but that's how Star Wars works you see.

Then Giselle wandered in and saw the 'new' toys. "Where did THESE come from?? Where were you KEEPING them??" She had to know what all their names were, and what they did, and on and on. And at some point, I was sitting on the can, with the two of them shoving men under the bathroom door, asking who was who. So I decided it was time. I pulled out the Star Wars (ANH) DVD and got them all excited to watch it for the first time. I was about Giselle's age when it first came out, which I thought was pretty cool...except Greedo shoots first nowadays, and that's not so cool. Giselle just couldn't get over "Obiwan Kenobi your my only hope..." [repeat....repeat...] She thought that was the coolest thing. Some friends of ours have a dog named Chewie. And Harrison kept piping up "Chewie?? That's Chewie??? Haaahahhahah Chewie!"

They sat there watching it, picking up the toys now and then and asking if that was so-n-so, and why weren't some of them in the movie. "Because the Medical Droid is in the next movie..." And the girl goes insane, "Can we watch it next! Can we watch it next!" But I'm pacing them you see. We waited until last night to catch The Empire Strikes Back. Giselle wound up calling the Wampa a Sasquatch, which got me laughing. Pop culture ruins a few things of course. How many times does "Luke, I am your father." get spouted in lame kids cartoons and stuff these days? It still surprised Harrison though..."He's not his father! He's a bad guy!" Giselle is about to lose her mind asking when we can play with the toys together, seeing's how Harrison and I got to do it last weekend. So we've got a date for this weekend. And we will work out the draft pick rules a little more firmly this time...I'll still end up doling out my men to keep the peace. But whatever. It beats playing Barbies hands-down. No contest.