My Eyes!

Nana is up this weekend. That means the kids got new toys since Nana always has to bring some silly new toy up and this weekend was no exception. This weekend we got an egg race kit. Where there's a spoon and a plastic egg (sort of like a plastic Easter egg). There was also yet another paddle ball set (because apparently the four we already have just aren't cutting it). So we headed over to the local park for the kids to play with the stuff for a bit. The kids liked the egg race for a while. As soon as he wasn't winning all the time, Quinn got bored with it though. And Catherine who decided not to nap today eventually started having meltdowns whenever Ginger would win. The egg has a little yolk looking beanbag in the middle that pops out when the egg is dropped and 'cracks' open. I use the quotes on cracked open because when Catherine initially got out of the car she stepped on her egg within 30 seconds and broke it (good thing there were four in the set).






Oh yeah, Nana also brought up a set of slinky eyeballs (the video is about 30 seconds).

Are You Going To Finish That?

We had dinner out tonight with Robert and his family and Ben (a big shout out to Ben for organizing the event). It was at Red Robin. Based on past comments, I know some people don't like Red Robin, but I do. It's a cheap night out. Five dollars for each of the kid's meals, five dollars for mine, and then a regular meal for Ginger. My meal is cheap because I just get the Chicken Tortilla soup (and hopefully remember to ask for it without the leeks on top). After that I can mooch off whatever the kids don't finish. Yea, that's right, I've turned into that guy. I remember years ago back when I was on a bowling league (this was pre kids) one of the guys on the team (we'll call him Clark) would sometimes bring his daughter to the game with him. And she would have some dinner or something and once she was done, he would eat after her. At the time, I remember thinking "That's crazy". I mean, think of their germs (especially from a kid). Who in their right mind would do such a thing. Apparently I would. Amazing how having a kid makes you suddenly do all those things you once swore you would never do. Point in fact, I've found myself sometimes saying "Because I said so" to the kids. I mean seriously, when did that happen?

Here in the US tonight is season premiere of the second season of the new Doctor Who show (season two started a long time ago over in the UK). Here's hoping the new good Doctor is actually good since I really liked the first season. I've heard there's a spin-off of the show called Torchwood coming soon, but I don't know when that will be out though. Funny story about that, Torchwood is actually an anagram of "Doctor Who". From what I heard they were so worried someone would make off with copies of the first season of Doctor Who before they aired that they mislabeled them on purpose with the anagram Torchwood. Someone later really liked the name and decided to create the spin-off.

Now that the new TV season has started, I expect I'm going to be watching less and less movies now, so I figure I would crank out a couple of reviews of some of the recent stuff I've watched. For the most part, I'll try to keep the following spoiler free.

First up is Lord of War. This movie is terrible. I hated it. I almost rated it as only one star in Netflix, but I went ahead and gave it two. Why you ask? Because the cinematography is very well done. Other than that, there's nothing good about this movie. The intro tries to be clever in showing the life of bullet from the bullet's point of view, but this just comes across as gimicky and pointless. The movie at times tries to be preachy about guns causing all the world's violence, but it doesn't even do that well. The 'story' for lack of a better word isn't that interesting and doesn't even go anywhere. The stories of the people around the main character might have been interesting, but we don't get to see those. All in all, I'm disappointed I wasted a Netflix rental on this one. It took me 4 nights to get through it. And near the end I felt like I was forcing myself to watch it and it just wasn't enjoyable.

Next up, Friends With Money. This movie actually has a lot in common with Lord of War. There are lots of differences though. There are multiple characters and stories all progressing simultaneously. The problem is it feels like you're coming into the story in the middle, and when the movie ends, you don't feel like the stories have really gone anywhere. There's not much in the way of emotionally likeable characters here either. This was a movie from Ginger's queue that I selected, so it's partly my own fault (that's two winners I've picked there).

And lastly, I made it through all six discs of 24 Season 4. I picked this up based on recommendations of people that season four got better than season three. After watching it, I'm not so sure. They've apparently decided people can't focus on one story line for the whole 24 episodes now. I remember first season was one long story. Then season two was one overarching plot and dealing with the fallout (no pun intended) of that plot comprising the entire story (oh yea, and there was a 'Kim' subplot that was completely worthless). Season three was one long plot divided into mini subplots of episodes where the story seemed to reinvent itself every six episodes. Season 4 seems to be many many small subplots none of which last longer than 2 to 4 episodes. Perhaps this isn't as noticeable when you watch over the course of an entire season and this is their way of keeping it 'fresh' so to speak, but when viewed in it's entirety it seems overly contrived. And here's a major issue I have, and I've actually had this complaint about the franchise since season two, but on the DVD when you select an episode, there's a preview image that usually contains a scene from the episode. And for some reason they make that image one of the major plot points that occur in the episode, usually with the scene being a huge spoiler for upcoming show. Because of this I've taken to covering my eyes and only looking at one spot on the screen so I can avoid seeing the image. I do remember one time back in season two one of the images had a picture of one of a character after they had fallen and were lying in a puddle of blood, had I seen that beforehand, I would have had prior knowledge of that character's fate and had the 'wow' and 'surprise' factor removed. I shouldn't complain just about TV DVD shows doing this (although that's where I've noticed it the most), but movie trailers are basically doing the same thing these days. Heck, some of them actually show the end scene money shots right there in the trailer. I can't stand it. Whoops, I appear to have gotten off topic. Anyway, the acting and production quality of 24 is really well done. I just wish they had more respect for the viewers and didn't keep veering the plot into these mini subplots every couple of episodes.

ZOD!

I picked up Quinn from school (I was only slightly late, but there were lots of other people in line behind me, so I consider that on time). Once we left the school, he insisted on playing on the playground for a couple of minutes before heading home, and I went ahead and let him play.

I stayed at work tonight longer than I would have liked (again), but once again today was a good progress day. We finally figured out why the interrupts weren't working (surprise surprise, it was because the software supplied by the vendor wasn't actually enabling them).

Smallville premiered tonight. I personally think the wrapped up all the plot threads they had from last season's finale a little too quick. At least they were able to use the "Kneel before Zod" line before wrapping up the Zod storyline, that line is a classic. And I especially would have liked to see some more ramifications on the Clark and Chloe kiss from last year's season finale instead of just pretending it meant nothing and introducing Jimmy Olsen as a new love interest for Chloe. By introducing Jimmy and having it be such an obvious attraction thing they're insuring that they won't follow up on that kiss. That's one of the big problems with this series though, the Chloe character. Chloe isn't in the mythos, so we know she doesn't play into things long term (I mean, it's common knowledge Clark and Lois end up together in the end), but her character works really well for how they're currently using her. It's a shame they can't do more with her since her character on the show is much more energetic and likeable than the Lois character on the show. All this is complicated by the fact that Chloe currently is a combination of Lana and Lois from the mythos. She's Clark's confidant who knows his secret (in the mythos, that role belonged to Lana). Chloe is also a reporter for the Daily Planet taking on aspects of the 'Lois' role. Since she's part both, and yet neither and doesn't exist in the mythos, I don't think she's going to survive the series (before the end of the series, Chloe's character will have to be removed from play).

The rest of the pictures are just ones where I've been trying different stuff. Nothing too fancy or too good this time around. Ginger's told me she needs like 10 more really good photos, that have to have green, blue or yellow in them. Every since she's requested good pictures, I've found it's impossible to take good ones when I'm trying to take good ones. So that's how I ended up with these. I think the mushroom shot at least had a shot at being good had I adjusted the depth of field to get the stem in focus also (but when I tried that, the top part of the shroom was thrown out of focus). And the lamp shot shows me I really need to clean the glass in the lamp at some point.

Wait, I Thought They Sued Them

Quinn drew this at school last week. He's still just doing stick figures for people. I wonder how long it will be before he actually starts putting some effort into it and fleshing out his people.


And here's a piece of news that will be of interest to almost no one (and I say almost because I know of at least two people that may care). Marvel is apparently is going to team up with Cryptic studios for the production of a MMORPG that takes place in the Marvel Superhero Universe (the 616 one). Here's an article about it. The reason I find this so interesting is because it was just about two years ago that Marvel sued Cryptic because their hero creation program allowed people to create heroes that had the likeness of some Marvel heroes. Which most people thought was a pretty silly reason to sue, since Marvel wasn't suing Crayola because kids could use crayons to draw the likeness of a Marvel character. The suit was dismissed if I recall correctly (and quite harshly at that).

Finally, has anyone else been having issues with Blogger recently? Seems a lot of the times I try and publish these days I get the yellow triangle with the spinning graphic that just refreshes continuously and always stays at 0% done. Is this something happening across the board, or just to some individuals?

How Do You Forget That?

I don't wear a watch. I stopped wearing one years ago. Didn't see the point since I felt like the burden of the watch itself was imposing this rigid inflexibility on me. I was, for all intents and purposes, a slave to time. Time was the director of my life and it was a harsh mistress. This isn't to say that I always kept appointments, but rather the watch was a constant reminder of upcoming and scheduled events. And it's not like I really needed the watch to be honest. You're hard pressed these days to go anywhere and not have the burden of the current time forced upon you. Seriously, clocks are just about everywhere. They're on your cell phone. On your dashboard. On any receipt you get. Down there in the lower right hand corner of your computer monitor. Heck, even a lot of phones in your house these days have the time right there. Without going out of your way, it's really hard to get out from under the pressure of knowing what time it is.

And if you wear a watch, I'm not trying to say this in any way shape or form any of this applies to you, but rather this is how I feel about wearing a watch. It just isn't something I want to do. Although in the interest of full disclosure, I should point out there are people that feel differently in regard to me wearing a watch. This has also been complicated in the past when Ginger has bought me a watch as a present and then decided the fact that I wasn't wearing it was somehow disrespectful to her since she spent the time and effort to buy it for me.

So I've noticed over on KennyG's blog that he's had this mini theme about bad parenting running. I think I'm about to be a footnote in his blog. You see, today Ginger called me around 12:30 and asked me to pick up Quinn after school. I assume this was so that Catherine would be able to nap a bit longer and catch up on some sleep. Today though, I was really busy at work, because I made a ton of progress with that hardware I was having trouble with last Friday. Turns out the vendor supplied us with the wrong software for the card we have, so I spent more than a week trying to get talk to this card using an incorrect protocol. Lovely. Mind you, I had been in constant email contact with the support person they assigned me. And none of the suggestions from this support person were really helping. And it was clear they weren't trying to find the problem and were just replying with something. So the past couple of days I kept emailing every hour asking for explanations of why the card was acting the way it was (and my tone in the emails was probably starting to imply I didn't believe the person understood what was going on). It was after my last email around noon today where I explained how every suggestion made in the last three emails was not only incorrect, but based on previous comments I had made, were obviously not going to fix the problem. After that suddenly I got bumped up to the next level of support and someone called me that was actually capable of troubleshooting what my problem was. Needless to say, throughout the rest of the day I was on and off the phone with them as we tried different things before they finally figured out their mistake.

It was just around the time I finally got off the phone with them after they discovered they had given us the wrong software that I got a phone call from home. I answered and it was Quinn. And the first thing I hear is him tell me "You forgot to come pick me up from school." D'oh! I had gotten so engrossed with trying to fix the problem at work I had completely forgotten I was suppose to go pick up Quinn. To be honest, I was probably only half paying attention earlier when Ginger called and asked me to pick him up because I was so wrapped up in trying to fix my problem. Luckily he wasn't too upset about it (and by not too upset I mean not at all). Evidently he had a grand time hanging around helping the teachers clean up. Although now I suspect we have a black mark with the school since how in the world does one forget to get their child. Now I will claim that even had I been wearing the watch (see how I tied this back into the stuff above), I still would have forgotten, simply because I became so engrossed in work that I had blinders on to everything else that was occurring.

The school had apparently called Ginger at home to 'explain' that she had forgotten to pick up Quinn (they didn't know that Ginger had asked me to do it). Sadly, from how I heard the story told, when Ginger saw the school on the caller id she immediately knew that it was because I had forgotten without them even telling her. I wish I could claim this was somehow part of my master plan, like in Bill Cosby: Himself where he screws up a task intentionally so that he won't be asked to do it anymore ("Dad is great, he gives up the chocolate cake!", if you don't get the reference, you really owe it to yourself to rent the standup Bill Cosby: Himself). But no, I can't claim anything of the sort. Although I would bet money that the next time I get asked to pick him up I'll probably get a phone call reminding me to do it fifteen minutes beforehand.

I haven't gotten a lot of pictures of the kids recently, but I got a couple tonight. Nothing spectacular. Catherine is at the sink because when you ask her to wash her hands now, she pulls a chair over to the kitchen sink to get up there and wash them, because it's evidently too much trouble to walk the 20 feet over to the bathroom to wash them there. And even though that first picture of Quinn really looks like he's upset (in theory because I forgot him), that wasn't the case, but I just like the way that picture turned out.

We Could Be Heroes

So Monday is turning out to be a big TV night here. We started with a helping of How I Met Your Mother, and while better than last week, still wasn't as good as most of the episodes from last season. I tried paying attention, and the voice over narration really does imply that it's future Ted telling the stories. It still doesn't come out and say that future Ted is the father of the kids he's talking to, but I think that's also implied (but not explicitly stated). Since the whole story is basically about how Ted met the mother of the kids, maybe the kids were Barney's and something happened to him and Ted raised them (I just get this feeling there has to be a twist in there somewhere). Since this is a TV show based on a relationship it only seems to sustain momentum with this "will they / won't they" get together aspect (last season it was Ted and Robin, this season appears to be Marshal and Lilly). Ultimately the "will they / won't they" aspect can't sustain a show long term (see Moonlighting). Now that I think about it, I don't think we've seen the future kids this season. Maybe they're gone from the show. That would make sense due to the fact that if the show lasts any amount of time (several seasons), the kids would grow out of their roles since only hours (or days at the most) should have passed from their perspective.

Then we switched over and watched Heroes live while the TiVo recorded Two and A Half Men. I must say, I liked the first episode of Heroes. It's obviously built to have a long term storyline, and you start seeing hints of the interconnectivity of the characters in the first show, but it definitely leaves you wanting more. It even got the coveted Ginger approval since she said she would watch it again next week. Of course, the only problem is the show conflicts with Two and a Half Men, but no worries, because after Heroes we watched Two and a Half Men and decided after the lackluster series reboot last week and the less than amusing episode this week we would drop that show (to be fair, there was a really good one liner about one legged waitresses in the episode, but honestly, you can't carry a half hour comedy show on one joke).

If you missed this first episode of Heroes, but want to see what you missed, the show is going to repeat Tuesday night at eight. If you miss it there too, there was an implication the episode would be available online from the NBC site (which I linked above, but as of right now it's a couple hours past when the site says it will be available and it isn't available yet). In fact, I visited the Heroes website earlier last week, and it was pretty spiffy, but now it's been clogged down with ads and promo stuff and it seems much clunkier and slower (seems like the page is trying to load too much interactive stuff on the main page). And there's going to be a web comic available online after each episode. After checking it out, the online 'reader' blows chunks, but it is early and maybe they'll work through some of their technical issues in the future. The online comic isn't crucial to the storyline, but it does flesh out the actions of one of the characters and adds some nice info that would have been boring to film, but was nice to see at least see that someone thought of it (I don't want to get explicit since it would be a mild spoiler piece of information).

We then finished the night by watching Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip. Here's my problem with this episode (and admittedly, it's minor). It's suppose to take place a couple days after the first episode, and yet everyone on the show (except Matthew Perry) has changed appearances and hairstyles (and some even changed hair color). Doesn't exactly give me a sense on continuity. Barring that nitpick, it's still another good episode so we're keeping that show.

Tonight's random image is a close up of a soccer goal that I took at the park this past weekend.

Scalped

I got my hair cut today. I didn't go quite like I wanted.

Here's what I looked like (more or less).


Here's what I wanted.


Here's what I got. Ack!

This evening I helped finish putting together the swing for the screened in porch tonight. Everything was okay for the most part until we finished. Then it was obvious that the swing was hanging much closer to the left side than to the right. And with the crazy antics of the kids when they use the swing, it hits the edge more often than I would like. Problem is I'm not sure exactly what I can do about it at this point short of taking the entire thing apart and pounding the frame into a new shape (which isn't something I really want to do). Anyone have any suggestions?

To The Park!

This morning, Ginger and I were in the, uh, I have no idea what that room is called. A sitting room? You have to walk through this room from the hallway in order to get to our bedroom. Anyway, whatever the name of the room is, Ginger and I were in there. Quinn was in the hallway, and we could hear him yelling to Catherine over the balcony. We hear "Catherine! Catherine! Look at me!" Then two seconds later we hear Catherine start crying. We walk into the hallway to find that Quinn took a ball (I think it was one from a paddle ball set) and threw it to Catherine. Catherine didn't know he was going to throw a ball, so she didn't even try and catch it, and it hit her right near the eye. As we walked into the hallway Quinn was already apologizing (guess he's learned enough to know when he's going to get in trouble for something). One the one hand, you have to be upset with him since he should know better than to throw a ball over the balcony (aside from the fact there's an explicit rule about not throwing balls in the house, there's another one that says you shouldn't throw things over the balcony). But on the other hand, from that far away, that was a really nice shot. At first we thought Catherine was going to have a shiner from the incident, but after some time with an icepack, the swelling went down a lot and you could just barely see it at the end of the day.


Today we had Ken and Amanda come over to visit. Karen was off in West Virginia or something, so Ken had kid duty all day. After the kids played at our place for a while, we headed out to a local park. I was foolish and thought it was going to be cold like the past couple of days, and wore a long sleeve shirt and long pants. Man, that was a mistake, even though the sun wasn't out, I was dying. And Quinn trying to make me run all over the place wasn't helping any.

Because Quinn insisted on monopolizing almost all of my time, I didn't get any good pictures of Catherine today. Since we were at the park, and it hadn't rained, and there wasn't anyone else on it, Quinn insisted on playing Baseball on the real baseball field. At first he insisted he was going to pitch from the pitchers mound. But after about 5 throws where it landed a good 15 fifteen feet in front of home plate, he moved up some.


Of course, he still hasn't gotten over his competitive streak, or the ability to process the emotions that come with not winning all the time. He still has a tendency to get really upset and cry if he doesn't win, so if I smack a ball out of the infield he's already crying as he running to get it. I'm sure part of that has to do with him being a bit more tired than usual since he's doing extended day at school now (which means no more napping during the week). So just in case he wasn't tired enough, whenever he got a hit I would have him run around the bases.

For lunch we all headed out to Ledo's Pizza, and then after that we said goodbye to Amanda and headed home to have the kids nap. Quinn was down for under an hour before he got back up again. Once he got up we played some cards. Evidently Ginger's been teaching him some card games. So we played Crazy Eights. He asked me if I knew why it was called Crazy Eights, and after I told him no he told me "Because the eights are craaaaazy." (and there was a voice infliction on the crazy also, it was pretty amusing). He still needs to work on strategy. Like when he picks up his hand, he'll start doing this evil scientist laugh if he has any eights and then in case you didn't get it, he'll follow it up with "Guess what I got?". He also tends to play his eights sometimes when he doesn't need to. And worse, there for a while when he used an eight he would call a suit that he didn't have, then get upset when he would have to draw on his next turn (I think I managed to teach him to at least look at his hand and pick a suit that he has).




Once we finished playing cards, he decided he wanted to go back to the park and play soccer. So off we went. I had changed into shorts and t-shirt, so it was much more enjoyable for me, but it was still really humid out and just overall icky. I'm not sure how Quinn ran around as much as he did. And I made him run the full length of the soccer field multiple times (he should be good and tired tonight).

And finally some random photos I took as we were getting ready to leave the park. It's a shame that the butterfly has had part of his wing destroyed.

Room Mom

Today was a horrendously depressing day at work. Way more so than usual. But enough about my day. I got a minor break this morning when Ginger took the kids to school. She had a meeting at the school this morning as the parents discussed plans for the fall festival and some other things. Evidently Ginger has "volunteered" to be a room Mom. Which I think, if I got the skinny of the job description correct, is the parent that interfaces between the school and the teachers for things like Holiday presents, events and what not. I'm certain there are more job responsibilities than that, but I can't recall the other ones at the moment. Maybe Ginger will chime in with everything she has to do now.

I went ahead and picked up Quinn from school this afternoon so Ginger wouldn't have to. This let Catherine get a longer nap than she has been getting this week (since Ginger has been having to wake her up to go get Quinn from school in the afternoons). I was depressed enough with work that I almost stayed home once I dropped Quinn off, but with the sheer amount of crap I still have to do I headed back in to try and get some of the stuff on my plate cleared off (didn't really help, I barely made any progress on talking to the hardware I'm working with).

No pictures of the kids tonight. It's a shame too, Catherine was wearing this overalls jean / skirt thing with knee high socks this morning and she looked adorable. I'll have to try and get her picture in the morning next time she wears it (the socks were off by the time I got home tonight). Guess I'll leave with this flower image, it's another from Vienna last weekend.

Bullbunky Was Here

So when I got home tonight, everyone was on the couch reading a book and Catherine was wearing a Cinderella dress. I asked her where she got it, and she told me she got it from "the mail truck". So I just had to get her picture in it. Unfortunately I didn't get a good picture, and she took it off soon after that since it was time for dinner and we didn't want her ruining the thing the first day she got it. We had to hurry through dinner tonight so that Ginger could run off to attend "Parent's Night" at the kid's school. So I stayed home with the kids while Ginger went to find out how they're doing at the school. Once I get a bit more info from Ginger on what she learned, I may post it here. The basic gist was they're about at the level one would expect for them. When I pointed out that since we're paying for the kids to go there, I seriously doubted they would say anything overly negative about the kids. That simply resulted in me getting the "you're too cynical" look.

Our friend John is in town this week, and tonight he came over for a visit. It's always fun getting to see John. Invariably the conversation usually turns into something along the lines of what can we talk about that we haven't posted to our blogs. We don't do a lot of catching up since with this new fangled thing called the internet, instant messaging tools and blogs we've been able to keep track of each other pretty well even though we rarely see each other in person. So after he mooched some of our dinner, I ended up having to basically force him to try some of my fake cheesecake. I think he was just scared of it because I made it myself.

And finally, I have another black and white outdoor shot that I took in the backyard a couple of days ago.

Bug In Google's New Tabbed Homepage

So I mostly like the new additions to Google's homepage. The tabs are pretty nice, but I sure would like to be able to control the color assigned to each tab instead of having it automaticaly pick one for me. So far the only way I've been able to pick a color is to keep adding tabs until I get the color a color I like, then move everything I want onto that tab and delete all the other tabs I created in between. And from what I've seen, there's a limited number of colors (I only saw blue, green, orange and purple). And there's a limited number of tabs you can add (although I don't forsee every needing more than the six they let you have).

The other minor annoyance is with a bug in the new tabbed homepage. If I have multiple tabs in Firefox, and on each of those tabs I go to the Google homepage, then from there go to a different tab within the Google homepage on each Firefox tab, after a while they all end up showing the same Google tab. I have to believe this is due to it using a cookie or something to set which Google tab you're on (so that the next time you go go to your personalized homepage and load the page it will display the correct tab), but since there's only one cookie (at least that's my guess), that means the multiple Firefox tabs are overwriting that cookie and the last Google tab you open becomes the 'current' one. Then after some amount of time (however long the time is between automatic refreshes on the page) all the different Firefox tabs on the Google homepage will be displaying the same Google tab. It's minor, but annoying since this means I can't use multiple tabs in Firefox to monitor my multiple Google tabs.

Not much exciting to report here on the homefront. Quinn's doing well in extended day. At least I think he is. Quinn also ate a piece of chicken tonight that wasn't a nugget. Not making a lot of progress on getting him to eat other types of meat, but anything 'different' is good at this point.

The following are some picture of Quinn at the NASCAR Busch race a couple weekends ago. I believe all these pictures were from Friday night, I don't know if we have any actual pictures of the Nextel race unless they're on one Grammy or Pop Pop's camera. As you can see from the last picture, even though he was having fun at the race, it wasn't too long before he started having more fun creating his own version of the race with his cars.






Finally, another random picture I took over the weekend, I'm not even going to bother with the color image of this one since I like the B&W version of this one much better than the color version.

Vroom!

Ok, another picture in color versus black and white. I also took this one over in Vienna this past weekend. As you can tell from the barb wire, I'm not sure I was suppose to be in there taking the picture. But there wasn't anything at the base preventing me from getting in though.




And this is a short (under a minute) video that Quinn took when he attended the Nextel NASCAR race down in Richmond a couple of weeks ago. Even though the free tickets they got were 'good' seats, that means they're up high (so you can see almost all the track). The problem is 1) Quinn doesn't know how to use the zoom capability on the camera and 2) the poor guy is only three and a half feet tall, so being behind people he has a tough time seeing over them (I heard reports that whenever something exciting would happen everyone would stand up and he wouldn't be able to see anything). I must say, this seems a lot like football to me. Not comparing the two sports, but rather the spectator aspect of the sports. It's one of those things where if I wanted to watch this, I'm not sure I would want to be there watching it versus watching coverage on TV. It's not that exciting, just cars driving around a track (no wrecks or anything), but I guess it gives a feel for what one would experience if you attended one of these events (and weren't in the fancy schmancy indoor box seats with all the extras).

Extended Day, Overly On Edge

Today was Quinn's first full day at school. He got to take in his lunch box and was pretty excited. It's strange the things kids get excited about. The thing he really liked was the fact that Ginger used a label maker and put his name on the lunch bag, that was like the highlight of his day. And as I was driving them to school, he took out all the contents of his lunch and showed me everything he had for lunch.

Afterwards he told us he liked staying the extra time. And Ginger says he did fine when he hung out with her while Catherine was in ballet class today. But since he was at school for extended time, that means he didn't take a nap. I really don't know what was going on, because there have been a lot of other days where he hasn't taken a nap, and things haven't gotten too bad. But man, tonight was terrible. Every single thing was setting him off. If Catherine got a toy he wanted, he lost it. If he didn't hit the ball, he lost it. If Catherine had the unmitigated gall to try and play on the driveway where he was having his race, he lost it. Everything was just setting him off (I'm sure the neighbors were thrilled with him crying at the top of his lungs every two minutes).

Because of that we tried to make sure he got to bed a bit early tonight. He was asleep before eight thirty, so hopefully tomorrow will be better. I'm kind of hoping this is just an adjustment thing since he's so used to taking a nap, it may take a while for him to get used to not taking one. I really hope that's the case, otherwise he may just end up going to bed at seven at night.

After the kids were asleep Ginger and I watched some of tonight's season premieres on TV tonight. We didn't really like the direction "How I Met Your Mother" took. "Two and a Half Men" was just weak overall, in addition to being weak it felt like they tossed out everything they had built up and rebooted to the show back to where they started. We're considering dropping it if it doesn't show signs of improvement next week (as of right now, it's on the bubble, for a comedy it really wasn't that funny). Finally we watched "Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip", which we both liked a lot. That show has now been added to our already over populated list of shows we're watching. At least a lot of my shows I was watching over summer are finishing up their seasons (Blade, Stargate Atlantis), so that will free up some of my time.

No pictures of the kids tonight. But I have this I took while over at the train stuff in Vienna this past weekend. I can't tell whether I like the black and white version better or the color one.

Wipeout

Normal Sunday routine for the most part, got up, church, grocery store, back home for lunch. Catherine was a bit on edge today, probably due to no nap yesterday and not going to bed early Saturday night. So Ginger had them nap right after lunch. Quinn wasn't down long, and after he got up it wasn't long before we were outside playing, then he decided to go to the park.

Instead of riding his bike though, he wanted to take his scooter. I tried to dissuade him and tell him how bad an idea I thought that was. But the young can be stubborn and determined (much like the old actually). So we headed over to the park. Aside from playing briefly on the swings, I'm not really sure what we did at the park that he couldn't have done at our house. Thing eventually degraded back into the game of him being in a NASCAR race and me having to be the pit crew and 'change tires' and 'gas him up' on pit stops as he races around a parking lot.


Had a minor issue on the way back home. He wiped out and scraped his knee up a bit. We called 91Ginger and had her (and Catherine) come pick us up and take us back home. He felt better after a band-aid was applied. I think the fact they watched some TV helped also. They watched the new Curious George show, which after watching an episode with them, I kind of like. It tries to teach some deductive reasoning. Not bad for a kiddie show. After that we all headed out to Ledo's Pizza for dinner. When we got home, this was on the walkway. I can't tell if it's the same as the previous one that Scott catalogued as being a toad. This one looks shiny and doesn't appear to have the bumps the other one did. Verdict Scott? Frog? Toad? Same as before? Different?


Once we got home and put the kids to bed, Ginger and I finished watching Season 2 of Veronica Mars. Now we just have to decide whether we're going to watch Season 3 when it starts in a couple of weeks.

And finally, no, this isn't a Risky Business homage. Last night the kids and I were playing around with a weird looking pair of sunglasses while Ginger was off at her stamping thing. And yes, I know I need a haircut.

Model Trains

It's Saturday, so of course Quinn got up at the crack of dawn calling for me specifically. Wouldn't have been that bad had I not been up till three the night before catching up on TV and DVDs. So I was basically the living dead for the hour and a half until Ginger got up and let me go catch some shuteye.






We got invited over to Vienna today to hang some with Ken, Karen and Amanda. There was this special little house along the bike trail that is used for model trains that was open today (apparently it's only open a couple of times a year). Quinn was absolutely fascinated with the whole thing, you could tell he was excited as he would yell from across the room every time a train came out or went into a tunnel. There was obviously a ton of time and effort spent on this train setup. The mini memorial for a car that had once come uncoupled and rolled off the track eight years ago was at least mildly amusing.


In addition to the model train place being open, the caboose was also open to the public today. The caboose was a lot like the caboose down in Clifton that the kids liked so much. After going back and forth between the model trains and the caboose a couple of times, we all went to dinner at (wait for it...) Red Robin. After dinner Ginger and Karen went to some stamping thing and I took the kids home and put them to bed (after we played for a while anyway). Oh yea, and during dinner, Quinn got to try something new. Fried clams. Ginger ordered them for dinner and I offered one to Quinn. When he asked what it was I dodged the question and told him it tasted a bit like popcorn chicken. I was going to tear one in half, but he ate the whole thing, then asked Ginger for some more. So that's another one in the win column, and that wasn't even a struggle.