The guys were here repairing the drywall in the laundry room and finished powerwashing the deck this morning. The deck looks a lot better than it did before, and the railing looks almost newish (the deck floor looks better, but you can still tell it's worn). I'm a bit concerned about the laundry room drywall. I think they just patched it up. I was under the impression they were going to take some of it out and check to make sure that the insulation hadn't gotten wet / moldy. Guess I'll have to ask Ginger about checking if they're planning on doing that.
Ginger and I both had haircuts scheduled for today. So we drove into the mall with the kids in tow. Ginger's appointment was for 12. We got there around 11:40ish. I went and inhaled some lunch and Ginger got lunch for the kids. She went off to get her haircut and I watched the kids while they ate. She forgot to leave the epipen though, so I had to go get that from her. Then at around 12:15 Quinn announces he has to go poop and as if on cue, Catherine announces she has to go pee. Great. I've got bags, 4 drinks, and the bag of food. I can't carry everything and control the kids so I went and dropped off some of the lunch stuff with Ginger. Then took the kids to the restroom. Let me just say, mall restrooms are disgusting. Holy crap. There were four stalls in the restroom, and three were occupied. Ok, no problem, there's one we can use. Quinn at this point has decided he doesn't have to poop and just has to pee. So he's outside the stall at a urinal and Catherine is pulling her pants down trying to get up on a completely disgusting toilet seat. I try and clean that off, but that means I have to use the toilet paper. Thinnest...paper...evar! This stuff is thinner than 1 layer of a tissue. I hope the money the mall is saving buying this stuff pays off sometime. And to make matters worse, what's on the back of the toilet seat? Some pr0n flyers or something with let's just say some very explicit pictures. I'm not making this up. At this point I'm wonder what the f*** are people doing in here. I finally get the seat cleaned off and put down like 5 layers of toilet paper. By this time Quinn has started wandering off so I have to drag his butt into the stall to keep him from leaving. Then after Catherine is finished and I'm trying to pull her pants back up her and Quinn start playing some peek-a-boo game between my legs. Once we're finally out of the stall and I'm trying to get the kid's hands washed, Quinn decides he really wants one of product being sold vending machine style from the restroom (two guesses what that was, first one doesn't count). I seriously do not know how Ginger does this crap on a regular basis. My respect for her ability to manage this crap has grown immensely. Although, I *have* to believe that the Women's restrooms are in better condition than this one was (and I suspect don't have pr0n just lying around either and they probably don't have prophylactics for sale).
Once the trip to restroom of doom was complete, we went back into the mall area. Here we found what I thought was one of the coolest things I've seen in a long time. It was this device called Reactrix. Now I know what it is, so I'm not saying it's something it's not. It's a big interactive ad. That's obvious. But the way it works is pretty cool. And I don't think the kids even really knew it was an ad. Here's what it is, there's a projector on the ceiling that's projecting the 'screen' onto the floor. On the floor is (what I believe is) a light sensitive screen. There's a wireless device on the projector that I believe is getting input from the screen on the floor. By moving their body parts across the screen this creates a shadow on the pad on the floor, which sends that info back up to the computer in the ceiling and acts as input. So what you get is kids being able to 'kick' digital balls around on the ground, or chase fish, or fight space ships or squash spiders. The spider mode was pretty cool, since there are 2 types of digital spiders, the bigger ones which can be squished by 'stepping' on them and a pack of small spiders that home in on one of the points of input (usually some unsuspecting child which runs away from the pack of spiders coming for him / her which is usually accompanied by said child screaming). This thing kept all the kids I saw there entertained (mine included). There were a couple of 'ads' interspersed with the games also. Some work better than others (the one ad that simply had the product and a rainbow overlaid that could be moved was probably the least impressive one).
So we hung out there at the Reactrix until Ginger was finished getting her hair cut (I included a picture of Ginger I took later with her new haircut, I've noticed lately my posts are getting more wordy and less with the pictures), then I handed the kids off to Ginger so I could get my haircut. And I hear that even though they apparently went and bought some stuff, eventually they ended up back at the Reactrix.After that we came home, stopping at a couple of grocery stores along the way to pick up some more Nouriche and Orange Juice. Once we got home the kids took a little nap.
When the kids got up from their nap it was snowing. Today's been weird weatherwise. It started around 50 degrees this morning, and as the day went on it just kept getting colder and colder (and windier and windier also). The snow only lasted about half an hour. Just long enough to get the ground wet and put some ice down. The wind has been incredible. We lost one of the bird feeders off the deck (well, not lost, I know where it is, but it blew off the deck).
After dinner (pizza from Papa John's) it was time for cleaning up the house. We're expecting visitors tomorrow and we had to clean up (which really means Ginger did most of the work). We also took down some more of the Christmas decorations that were still up (bye bye Belly Buttons, the Belly Buttons are the little snow guys in the picture with Ginger).
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