Lowbrow Humor

Flower Power

No dentist appointment today due to the fact they called and said they had lost power. They then said they would call back to reschedule later in the day, but never did. Since it was an early morning appointment they were already on their way when they got the news, so Ginger ended up taking the kids by Frying Pan park to play for a bit and watch some people riding horses. No pictures because Ginger apparently doesn't like taking the camera with her (in her defense though, she was only planning on going to the dentist office, so she wouldn't have needed it there).




And here's a question for all the parents out there. How do you get silly putty out of carpet. This is of course a completely hypothetical question. I've looked online and found people suggest rubbing alcohol, but I didn't know if that would damage / discolor the carpet. So I was hoping someone else had run into the problem.


I did find some more pictures from the beach and they're scattered throughout the post. These were from the hand held Nikon, which is why I hadn't processed these as soon as the others. Basically a bunch of flowers and a sand sculpture.

Burgeoning Artist

Today was doctor visit day. In addition to Quinn going in for his six year checkup we also had Catherine going by the allergist today. Somewhere in there they also managed to have a picnic at a park from what the kids told me. And while at the doctor's office they found out all four of Quinn's front teeth are loose. Guess what Quinn's going to want for Christmas? I suppose it's possible (although I think it's improbable) that's Quinn has been resisting eating some things because of the loose teeth. Since tomorrow is the dentist appointments we'll know more about that then.


And check out my daughter the artist. She got a little bear in a McDonald's Happy Meal (directly above) and then decided to draw a bear based on the toy (top picture). None too shabby for a four year old (I think it's good anyway). It's much better than some of the stuff Quinn draws. Although he doesn't really draw all that much, so it's not quite a fair comparison, but at the same time she is almost two years younger. Maybe she's going to be get the artistic gene in the family like Will.

Let's Negotiate

The kids got school supplies yesterday so they're all ready to head back to school next week. Today they attended a pool party for the elementary school kids (Catherine tagged along because it's not like we can leave her home alone). Still hard for me to believe I have a child going into elementary school.

Tonight's movie review is The Negotiator. I rented this one solely on the fact that it has Samuel L. Jackson in it. Well, that was part of the reason anyway, I won't rent just anything with him in it since I have no intentions of renting Black Snake Moan. But rather when I saw previews for The Negotiator Jackson appeared to be giving a crazy loud over the top and boisterous performance and that was enough for me.

The Negotiator is about a police negotiator Lt Danny Roman (Jackson) who ends up being set up for a crime he didn't commit (yes, I know, how stunningly original). He goes a little nuts and the next thing you know they need to bring in another negotiator (Kevin Spacey) to deal with this negotiator. This is a long movie. About two hours and twenty minutes and it's an extremely well done and tense and exciting movie also, at least for the first two hours. The movie seems to overstay it's welcome in the last half hour or so and loses something at that point, but up until then it's a crazy ride that's very well paced and executed. I think they put that last twenty minutes in so they could wrap up everything nice and neat for the viewers. There's nothing really fresh and new in this movie. Much like the "I've been setup" plot it's all stuff you've seen before and it's also fairly predictable. But the performances of both Jackson and Spacey are stellar and really kick it up a notch so to speak. Don't let the fact that it fizzles out at the end stop you from watching it.

Hotel Rwanda

I was a little disappointed that there was no new Daily Show or Colbert Report tonight. I was really looking forward to see what they did with the fact that Alberto Gonzales resigned. On the positive side any repeats help me catch back up on the shows since I'm more than a bit behind at this point (I think I have a week of shows left that I haven't watched yet).

You may have noticed the lack of movie reviews for a while. That's because the latest movie I got to watch through Netflix was Hotel Rwanda. It came in the mail about a week before we went on vacation, and I just was never able to get into the proper frame of mind to watch it. I knew a bit of what it was going to be about after having seen clips of the movie from when the show was first released in theaters. And because I knew the subject matter I also knew it wasn't something I wanted to watch, but at the same time felt I needed to watch.

The movie deals with the Genocide that occurred in Rwanda in 1994. Extremists in one ethnic group (the Hutu) were responsible for wiping out nearly 75% of another ethnic group (the Tusti). Depending on whose statistics you read over the course of three months somewhere between five hundred thousand and a million Tsuti were brutally slaughtered. And the film makes it painfully clear that this is indeed a slaughter.

That this can occur in this day and age is extremely troubling. I don't claim to know all the politics of the situation, and I'm not sure I want to, but the fact that people somewhere can justify allowing this type of thing to occur is beyond simply belief.

The story follows Paul Rusesabagina (a moderate Hutu), who is the manager of a four star hotel. His wife and family however are Tsuti. The movie makes it clear that not all Hutu are responsible for the killings, since some of the more moderate Hutu who try and quell the violence end up suffering the same fate. The movie deals with Paul's struggle to protect his wife and family as the situation around his increasingly degrades. Along the way his compassion for others causes him to shelter more than 1000 refugees seeking to escape the genocide in the hotel (both moderate Hutu and Tsuti), which because the hotel is foreign owned seems to escape the worst of the atrocities (at least initially).

The movie is particularly powerful and brutal in that all the average citizens feel confident that once the world hears of what is going on that help will be sent. Which makes it all the more crushing when the UN does show up, but not to help, but rather to evacuate all the foreigners (whites) in the country to safety.

It's hard to even write a synopsis of this movie, since I'm sure I'm not doing it justice. I hate to even suggest this, but I suspect that some situations and scenes were overly exaggerated in order to make for a more dramatic movie. But even if only 5% of what Paul has to go through in movie is true, that's 5% more than any person should be required to handle.

It's hard to judge this as a movie and not consider it more of a documentary, so I won't judge it in that sense. The only complaint I had was that the version of the movie I had did not have subtitles available, and there were some scenes where the accents being used make it difficult to understand exactly what is being said (even if you can't always understand what's being said, the intent is usually readily apparent).

I will say this is not a feel good movie. You won't be cheering once it's done regardless of whether Paul and his family manage to escape the bloodshed. But rather the fact that these atrocities were committed at all weighs on you well after the movie is over.

Doe, A Deer, A Female Deer

The highlight of the day was a the family of deer that strolled through our backyard. I know, I know, we need more exciting lives. There were five total, looked like a a buck, a doe and what I believe were three fawn. There were definitely three that still had the white spots on them, although two of the young ones seemed considerably larger than the smallest one which I couldn't really explain. The two larger fawns were also pretty skittish and never really left the cover of the forest to come out into the yard area. Pretty sure they were all just passing through, the female and one of the fawns did eventually come over and try out the salt lick we have in the yard which was right in front of us.




All this occurred with Quinn and Catherine out on the deck walking back and forth to get better views. The deer were pretty paranoid, but the kids were very quiet and did really good. The whole encounter was probably under 10 minutes, and it had to happen right as I was grilling hamburgers on the grill too, I almost ended up letting a couple burgers cook longer than they should have.


We've had what I believe to be a massive setup back with Quinn eating new things. I personally blame all the time he spent in Richmond. Let me state that I'm not saying I would prefer he didn't go, it's just that when he's there he gets to play his Uncle JJ's Wii as much as he wants, gets incredibly spoiled and basically is catered to all the time (all this could be incorrect, but it's what I tend to believe). And I can't emphasize enough have no problem with any of that. It's just once he's back home he tends to think that's the way it should be and wants to assert his will a bit more than I would like, specifically when it has been related to eating. He's to the point now where he won't even eat things he does like, like chicken nuggets. Telling us he "won't eat them" because they're "not from Wendy's" or "not from KFC" when he used to eat those same kind before with no problem.

It's probably an unfortunate coincidence that this attitude cropped up just as I'm nearing the the end of my steroid medication. I don't know if this is a side effect of the medicine, but I've been sleeping a lot less for the past week and I feel as if I'm a bit on edge at times because of that. Combine that fact with Quinn making blanket declarations at the table about what he will and will not eat and we suddenly had a serious battle of wills on our hands.

The short version of the story is "Longest... Lunch... Evar!" The extended version is that Ginger was ready to tell him he would be having the nuggets for all upcoming meals until he actually ate them. I, on the other hand, decided I could wait him out and that we would simply stay at the table until he decided to eat his lunch. I explained that he could eat and the get up and go play, or we could sit there until dinner, the choice was his. And he choose to simply sit there. The story has a semi happy ending because after about 90 minutes after Ginger and Catherine had left Quinn had a huge meltdown (which not only do I think he forced, but I also think was a test to see if I was going to change my position). Once he realized I wasn't budging, he decided to eat his lunch and I might add that he was quite cordial and pleasant once he made that decision. Anyway, it just seems like we've lost a lot of forward progress. Add to the fact that he starts school in a little over a week and we have no idea what to pack him for lunch that he will actually eat and we're starting to get a tad concerned.

I will give the boy props for at least taking an extremely small bite of hamburger at the beginning of the lunch meal. Of course he immediately decided he didn't like it and wasn't going to eat anymore, which since that's something new, that's fine. It bothers me that he's already made his mind up about what he will like and not like before trying anything, since at dinner we gave him one piece of corn from some corn on the cob and he decided he wasn't going to like it when he tried it. The thing was when he did try it I could tell he didn't actively dislike it (there was no gag face, which is a dead giveaway), but he still wouldn't admit to liking it since he had already convinced himself beforehand that he didn't like it. I'm just not sure how much more of this drama I can take.

Groundhog Day

Considering that it's Saturday and how hot it was today normally would be a pool post day. But the kids decided they didn't want to go to the pool for some reason. This meant trying to find interesting things to do in the house all day. This morning the kids played with their new Lego toys that they picked up from the Lego store in Richmond. Catherine has a Lego version of Lite Brite and Quinn got two Lego racers (I know, you're shocked that he would go for race cars). The Lego mosaic things comes with four potential pictures you can make I believe and Catherine started with the helicopter. And of the two cars Quinn got and put together he really really likes the yellow one for some reason.


After being in Richmond away from the cats all week both kids were suffering a bit at being back in a cat hair infested house. Catherine's eczema returned in full force and Quinn has been coughing and sneezing. Guess it's partly my fault for not cleaning / vacuuming while they were gone.


And we saw this guy out and about the area where I weeded last weekend. I've seen him before out in the woods. He has a burrow right near the creek I believe, but this was the first time I had seen him venture this far out of the woods.

Reflections From Richmond

Images from the week in Richmond. Everyone went to a pottery place to make some stuff for Grammy for her birthday. My hope is Ginger will see this post tomorrow and come in and add some clarification as to who did what if I get stuff wrong. Not sure who the did the one above, but to me it looks like an adult designed it (I'm going to guess Ginger) with with the kids adding in fingerprints.


This looks like something Catherine would do.


That has Quinn written all over it.


As much as I would love to think one of my kids could do something this good, I don't think they did. Either Grammy or Ginger did this one, but since it's so excruciatingly correct I'm going to say Grammy (only because I think Ginger did the first one).


Quinn playing with the train Grammy and Pop Pop have.


Quinn helping make Grammy's birthday cake.


Catherine helping make Grammy's birthday cake.


Couldn't find a good photo of all of them, so this badly shopped photo will have to suffice.


A cute picture of the kids together on what looks like a train ride around the mall.

Catherine's Ballet Camp Recital Videos

Remember several weeks ago when Catherine had her ballet camp recital? I said I would try and post the videos, but then never did. Well, I'm rectifying that now. As I stated then, I suspect only immediate family will have any real interest in watching these. Each video is two to three minutes.


Lilo and Stitch Surfing Dance


Jasmine Dance


Belle Dance

What Was The Camera Thinking?

Remember when I said I was out of beach pictures? Funny story there, apparently I have more. The one above is similar to a couple of others ones I already posted I think, but it's the one below that I wanted to focus on.


And I know you're probably thinking "What's the big deal, he just went into photoshop or something and added some fancy effects or something to the shot below." I can see how you would think that, but here's the thing. That's the way the camera captured the picture. It was like that when I pulled it off the memory card. I have no idea what happened, but the white metering must have just gone nuts or something briefly. My camera has been sluggish sometimes lately. I noticed it more when I was at the beach than now. But every so often I can see I take a set of pictures and the contrast or something just doesn't come out like I would expect it to. This was obviously a different situation since only one picture out of an entire day of shooting was affected, but that's the worst I've ever seen my camera butcher a photo. I can't even conceive of how it decided to go with that (maybe there was an issue and the whole green color spectrum got dropped or something, that's about the only thing that I can think of). So in summary, I think I need a new camera. But I don't think I can afford to buy a new camera now, so I'm going to just have to suffer through with the D70 for a little while longer. And I'll go ahead and add that while I would like to have my camera upgraded, I don't think I *need* to have it upgraded (unless it keeps taking pictures like the one above and then I'll end up taking it out back and putting it out of it's misery). For now, the D70 does just about everything I would want (plus I feel like I'm finally getting the hang of it now). Below I've included the photo I took immediately after the one above for comparison purposes.

Tuesday Roundup

The itching is better today. Still have some issues once in a while, but for the most part, it's under control. It still looks like crap and my entire right arm underneath is red, but at least it doesn't itch constantly anymore. That is until about an hour and a half before I'm suppose to take my next dose of meds. And then for that 90 minutes I'm scratching like a madman.


Ginger and the kids are in Richmond sans power. There was evidently a storm there that took out power for most of the night. They evidently went to a pottery place today and made pottery for Grammy for her birthday. Ginger said she got some pictures and I told her to send them to me so I could post them. For some reason she still hasn't sent them (something about reminding me that they have no power), so you're left with more burn off pictures from the beach (I think I'm just about done with any of the interesting shots, so that's good news for everyone bored with leftover beach pictures I suppose).

This isn't as appropriate as it was a couple of weeks ago during the constant days of high 90 to 100 temperatures, but there was one of those make your own message signs in front a day care center that had the following joke on it (which is probably really old, but I found it amusing and at the time appropriate):

What did the pig say during the hot summer day?

Highlight for the answer:

I'm bacon!

Roid Rage

Well the poison ivy got worse last night. Much worse. Even with lots of lotion stuff on I was scratching through most of the night and got very little in the way of sleep. And then Quinn was up bright and early yelling for me this morning just to add insult to injury. And this probably goes against everything you're suppose to do to treat a rash brought on by poison ivy, but when I was in the shower and I turned the water on as hot as it would go and basically scalded the parts of the my skin where there was a rash. And it sort of worked, I think I killed or deadened more of the nerve ending so the itching went away for about four hours so I hit the sack and tried to sleep for a bit.

That didn't last too long though since I had to get up to see Ginger, JJ and the kids off as they headed off to Richmond for the week. Before she left Ginger pleaded with me to go see a Dr about it. At the time the itching had subsided though and I thought I would be able to cowboy through it. The only problem was a mere couple of hours after getting to work the itching returned, and with a vengeance. Barry stopped by and also suggested going to see a Dr to get medication. He's had outbreaks in the past and has treated it with some success using Prednisone. As I was talking to Barry I listened to my voicemail and heard a message Ginger that she made it safely to Richmond and she once again asked me to go see a doctor. So lickity split I was off the local doc in a box that's right next to where I work. Who, I might add, no longer accepts my current health insurance. No problem, we'll submit it out of network and at this point I don't care if I can just get the itching to stop. So after waiting *scratch scratch scratch* 40 minutes to be ushered into a room *scratch scratch scratch* where I get looked over by an attendant, I then proceed to wait 20 more minutes *scratch scratch scratch* for the Dr to show up.

She looks me over, asks to see my back for some reason and checks my breathing. Then she asks where I've got the rash. And I explain it's all over both arms, on the my legs, in the webbed area between my fingers, it might be starting near my eye and then I sheepishly point down. To which she says "The inside of your thigh." and I have to reply, "No, a bit higher." And she does this head nod of understanding and says "Ah, your genitalia." To which I have to reply, "Yea, that's definitely the the most awkward spot, not like I can just scratch it whenever." She chuckles and gives me a prescription for Prednisone (which is a steroid I might add) and I head over to Target and fill my prescription then it's back to work. I pop my three pills and five minutes later I'm asking Barry why hasn't it started working yet since I'm still itching. The itching thankfully started to subside after several hours and has been slowly subsiding over time. It's still there and I still have fits of it, but I can go for longer and longer periods now before it hits really hard.

So far I'm not feeling any adverse affects from the steriods. Around six at work I start getting the munchies, but that's not surprising since I skipped lunch to go to the doctor. When I got home I had fajitas for dinner, a lot of them. And I'm still hungry. I'm sure it's just my appetite returning after my system was brutalized yesterday though. I just wanted to type this up befre I turnd n fr th nigh. Hmm, fingrs feelng lrge. Hrd to typ on tis tny keybord. Aarrrggh. STipud komputr. Why komptr not leav JamesF alone? JAMESF SMASH STPID KOMPU...

Overdressed

Fairly low key day today. After church Ginger and JJ went by the grocery store, so I took the kids to the park across the street. It's the same park Barry's kids went to not too long ago. I had seen this park quite often, but didn't realize it was an official Fairfax County Park until about a month ago when they put up a Fairfax County Park sign.






The kids seem to have a lot of fun, but there are a couple of things I might do different if I were to take the kids again. First off, I might actually get them out of their church clothes so Catherine isn't running around and climbing over stuff in one of her nice dresses. Second I would probably take something for the kids to drink. We weren't too long, and it wasn't too hot either, but Catherine started sweating and looking like she was pretty hot (quite possibly again because of the dress). And finally I would make the kids use the bathroom before we go, since we ended up leaving due to Catherine needing to use the restroom.


If you followed the link to Barry's blog, you saw that Jacob got stung while he was at this park. I could see how that could happen. The park is completely enclosed by a metal gate, and along one whole section of the gate there are flowers that are just overrun with bees.

We ended up coming home and grilling out and eating out on the deck. It's been so nice for the past couple of days it didn't seem right not to take advantage of it. I briefly played around with taking off the training wheels from Quinn's bike. The problem there is he can't put his feet flat on the ground when sitting on the bike (he ends up on his tiptoes). He did pretty good and rode down the driveway and stayed up, but stopping is still an issue, and I think it was different enough that he wasn't interested in pursuing any further experiments (so we ended up putting the training wheels back on for the rest of the day).

And from yesterday where I didn't know if the itching was from poison ivy or something else, well today I'm pretty it's poison ivy. After spending just about all night scratching and having the little bumps start appearing today I'm fairly positive that's what it is. I really hate getting poison ivy, so the next couple of weeks are going to be a complete pain.

And yesterday Ginger's computer went wonky again. It was rebooting constantly (wouldn't even make it part way through the boot cycle before it would reboot). Ginger rightfully claimed this was unacceptable and she wanted a new computer. So faced with the prospect of buying a new computer for $1,200 I decided to devote some time to trying to fix it. I was still convinced it had a short, so I took the entire computer apart, removed the motherboard from the case and the put everything back together. I didn't see anything obvious that would have been causing the problem when I took it apart, but now that it's back together it's made 24 hours without rebooting. I may have dodged a bullet there.

Finally, A Nice Day

Today I got up early to go take Ben to Dulles airport this morning. He's going to spend two weeks of his vacation going overseas to help build houses for Habitat For Humanity. Yep, he's using his own money for travel and two weeks of his vacation time to go off and make a difference while I sit here at home and complain about the fact that sometimes our heat pump doesn't work as well as I would like. Nothing like having someone put stuff into perspective for you.


The weather today was fantastic. It's amazing how a simple 10 degree drop in temperatures can make such a huge difference. It was in the low 80s, but it felt fantastic. We had the kids outside all morning and some of the afternoon.


Catherine tried jump rope for a while, but I can see it's going to be a while before she can do it by herself.




Quinn meanwhile just wanted us all to play baseball. No surprise there really. Although he did spend an inordinate amount of time (for him anyway) getting the field 'ready' to play on. I believe he 'cut the grass', used a 'weed trimmer', a blower and something that was evidently suppose to be like a metal detector for weeds. At one point Quinn was directing JJ and Catherine in helping to get the yard ready.


After our baseball game Ginger came out and joined us. Ginger showed Catherine how to 'jump rope' using a hula hoop. She seemed to be able to do that much better than actual rope.






Meanwhile Quinn got out his racing flags and was playing with those. Somehow he managed to convince Ginger to take up him up the street so he could wave the flags at people passing by. It was only about a minute after they left that Catherine decided she was going to go join them. I heard later that a jogger than came by got into it when the kids waved their flags as he passed by, he raised his arms like he was going across a finish line.

While Ginger and the kids were up the street I started doing some yard work / weeding. Once Ginger and the kids came back from flag waving they all pitched in and helped me. Quinn got bored with helping after about two minutes and went back to playing. Catherine on the other hand was my little gardener helper most of the time I was out there. She particularly liked using the big pruners. Although I was constantly worried she was going to lop off my fingers as I would hold out the weeds for her to cut (she didn't in case you were wondering).

Overall a fantastic day. The kids did start having issues near the end of the day, but I believe that's because they were both completely exhausted and hadn't napped. They're always a bit on edge when they get tired, so nothing really new there. We did end up going by Toys R Us partly because of a meltdown Quinn had. We were there to get Quinn some Lego blocks. He had a minor meltdown earlier when Ginger told him we were going to donate his old Duplo blocks to the church, so we were there to replace the Duplos with some regular Lego blocks.

So if we're at Toys R Us, that means a mandatory visit over to the section with the kid's toy electric cars. Quinn just sits in them and pretends to drive and then gets out and gets in the next one. Repeat ad nauseam. Of course decided he wanted one of the cars (actually at the toy store he usually decides he wants just about everything he sees, but this time he was particularly focused on the cars). Now these electric cars got for like $250 to $300. To me that's a lot of money for something that goes a maximum of 5 miles per hour (and I don't care if it does come with a built in working AM radio). So I explained to Quinn how much these were and that we couldn't get them. And he graciously volunteered to forgo getting the Lego's for one of the cars. I tried to explain that these cost a lot more, and then I told him I wasn't sure he understood exactly how much things cost. He assured me he did, so I asked him "How much money do you think the shirt you're wearing cost." He looked down at it, looked at me, thought for a moment and then offered up the answer of "I don't know, maybe a hundred dollars?"

The reason we wanted to go to Toys R Us today was there was an online coupon for 20% off any one item that expired today. So we printed out five and them and went to town. And even though the coupon explicitly says one per customer they don't care at all. We ended up buying 4 things and used a coupon on all of them. I gave our last printed out coupon to the kids behind me that was buying Jak 3 for the Playstation 2 (he looked like he was about 8 or 9 and seemed like he was using his own money to buy the game, so I figured I would save him a couple of dollars).

As it gets later and later I'm starting to worry I may have gotten into some poison ivy or something when weeding. Both my arms have scratches all over them from the the fact that a lot of the weeds had thorns, but in addition to the scratches they're itching like mad. I'm kind of hoping that it's from pieces of the prickly things breaking off inside the skin, but I suppose tomorrow we'll see if that's the case.

Pwn3d

Ginger and the kids returned home today. And the kids brought back their Uncle JJ also. He's up visiting until Ginger has to go back down to Richmond next week ("has to" being an overstatement since she's going down to spend some time since it will be her Mom's birthday). Before they left they found out Ginger's parents lost one of their computer monitors last night during the storm. So they went out and bought a 19 inch flat screen. This of course has Ginger wanting one also. Ginger just also happens to want a new computer in addition to the new monitor. Actually Ginger's been saying she wants a new computer for three months now. She's constantly saying "I can't use my computer". I don't understand it, just because her computer has a short or something somewhere and will randomly reboot all the time she has to claim it's unusable (it was really bad for a while when the CD drive was touching the motherboard, I think it was rebooting every two minutes). I'm not sure what's causing the reboots. Sometimes it gets into a mode where it will reboot whenever you start Firefox, but only on starting Firefox (so I was thinking it was related to the networking hardware, but Gtalk works fine). Other times it just reboots when no one is around doing anything. So maybe it's a specific instruction that the processor gets that triggers it (but it doesn't always do it though). I thought maybe it was overheating, but I'm pretty sure I accounted for that and it was still rebooting. I'm starting to think I might be over analyzing it. It could just be broken I suppose and not something I can fix. Anyway, what Ginger really wants is a new Mac computer.

For entertainment tonight Ginger, JJ and myself played a new Wii game called Mario Strikers Charged (new to Ginger and myself anyway). It's an insanely fast version of soccer with all the typical Nintendo extras (power ups, special moves, etc). We all played on a team against the computer and got severely pwned (repeatedly I might add). We did manage to win two games out of twelve (even a blind squirrel finds the occasional nut), and we went into overtime on two games but eventually lost both of those as well. Part of the problem was for the first several games we didn't know how to play. I had suggested we go through the tutorials, but noooo, everyone just wanted to jump right into playing. So after three games of not having a clue what we were doing we went through some of the tutorials. After that was when we actually managed to start scoring some goals. Don't get me wrong, we still lost most of the games, but they were closer now at least.


Guess I'll sign off with another leftover beach picture.

Batbrick And Ribbon The Noodle Wonder

After the funeral today Ginger was suppose to come back home with the kids. She IM'ed me at around four to let me know the kids were going to run around for an hour or so before they left and she was going to go rest for a bit because she was getting a migraine. So around eight I finally called to see what was up. And they had gone out to dinner with Ginger's parents (shocking, I know) and they decided to stay there for tonight because there was a storm. I asked about the storm and was told there was hail the size of nickels. That sounded impressive to me, so I asked if it was causing any damage to the car. The answer I got back was no, because there was no hail there. I thought maybe I had misheard before, so I said I didn't understand and I thought they were staying there because of the storm. And apparently the storm is in the area, and somewhere there's been reports of hail the size of nickels. So basically it wasn't storming and she was staying there tonight. Or it was storming, but there was no hail there, but there was hail somewhere in the area. I'm not even going to pretend I understand and I'm just going to go with it. Anyway, since Ginger and the kids are in Richmond, that can only mean I have to break out the brick. I had been toying with the idea of making Noodle a sidekick last time, but just ran out of time, so tonight we see the return of Batbrick and the addition of his trusty sidekick Ribbon. And yes, I know Ribbon has more letters than Robin rearranged, but I couldn't come up with anything else and Ribon sounded stupid. And yes, I also realize I'm talking about how the name Ribon sounds stupid when I've dressed up a Noodle as a superhero sidekick. Obviously my judgment as to what does and does not constitute something stupid is slightly off from other people's definition.

Bad News

Got to stay at home with the kids this morning while Ginger went to the dentist. She got scolded by the dentist for not taking good enough care of her teeth. And to add insult to injury they're making her go back for a more comprehensive cleaning. Can't say I'm looking forward to my next dentist visit, since I have feeling this one will be bad (I've either got a cavity or my gums have receded enough that I get a pain when chewing in one spot). I'm thinking Ginger's visit as bad as it was is going to be a cake walk compared to mine.

So this morning Quinn was playing with his Mac truck from the Cars movie. While he was playing he was singing the song from Cars: "Life is a highway, I wanna ride it all night long". But that was the only part he would sing. And he sang it over and over and over again. Sometimes he would change highway to driveway. Of course soon as I tried to record him doing it he stopped.

So we got a bit of bad news while Ginger was out. Ginger's Aunt passed away. The funeral is tomorrow so Ginger and the kids went down to Richmond today so they could attend.

Leaky Tire

Got to play a bit of musical cars today. Ginger's car had a leak in one of the tires and she needed to get that plugged. So around lunch I ended up driving over to meet her at Craven's Tire and Auto so she could use my car for the day. Except that Craven's isn't Craven's anymore. The sign still says Craven's, but apparently all the Craven's were sold. So now it's like Mr Good Tire or something. Or at least that's what the guy told Ginger. The website doesn't mention anything about changing the ownership of the store. But everyone must have quit or something when they sold the place, because the guy that was there told Ginger he only had one mechanic on duty, so it would be a while before he could fix the tire. Having only one guy also means that they weren't offering free shuttle service either (and I'm not even sure the new place will offer that now that I think about it). Guess it's time to locate a new "place to pay a little more than I think I should to get my car repaired" shop. The tire plug ended up being $18, which is higher than I thought plugs went for, but these days who knows (last time I got one done it was plugged for $9, but that was a while ago). Turns out the culprit was a roofing nail. And our neighbor across the street recently got their roof done. Hmmmm.

I've made it past a minor milestone with Catherine. It used to be at night if she would cry out she would only calm down if Ginger went in to see her. Usually this involved her wanting Ginger to put her blanket on her or something equally trivial. Now if I went in she would end up crying even louder and kicking and screaming for Ginger where upon things would spiral out of control until Ginger would show up. That's not completely unexpected considering how closely Ginger and Catherine have bonded and how Catherine is usually only half awake when this would happen. But now I've gotten to the point where Catherine will actually let me do things for her at night if she calls out. Of course I do have to bribe her sometimes by rubbing her back for a couple of minutes, but it's progress. Although now that I think about it, this means that instead of just being able to ignore it when she cries out in the middle of the night, now I might have to get up. Suddenly I'm not so sure this is a good thing anymore.


And since I have no new photos I'll put up yet another shot I got while we were on vacation at the beach (since I took over 4,000 pictures while on vacation I could be posting beach pictures for the next decade). This would probably make a better video than a picture. Watching the crab trying to catch the fish was pretty amusing.

A Pool Post? But It's Monday...

Breaking all known rules of the space time continuum we have a pool post on a Monday. I got home tonight and the kids were telling me how they were going to the pool for just a little while. Ginger wasn't feeling overly good today so they hadn't been able to get out and do anything all day. And they had taken a long nap so I guess it seemed like a good idea. I suited up and off we went. Unfortunately the kids stalled enough getting ready that it was time for adult swim as soon as we got there (literally Quinn had just jumped in and Catherine had walked down the steps into the pool when they blew the whistle). So they ended up in the kiddie pool for the first fifteen minutes.


I've discovered that the new male (teenager?) lifeguard is much more lax than the existing female lifeguards. Once we were back in the regular pool, during the first half hour when the guy was watching the diving boards Quinn and I were the only ones in that section of the pool for a while. Quinn would occasionally swim over and grab the board while still in the water and hang there. I kept waiting to get told we shouldn't be doing that, but the guy couldn't care less it seemed. A couple of times Quinn even grabbed the board with both hands, swung his feet up so he was 'standing' on the bottom of the board upside down and then let go and 'jumped' straight down into the water. Still nothing. Then soon as the shift changed the female lifeguard was there she blew the whistle on Quinn the first time he swam close to the board. Mental note, try and schedule diving board time around the new guy.

The pool was fun, but man did it push back our normal nightly schedule. The kids were just getting to bed a little before ten, which is about two hours past when they're usually in bed. I would love to think they'll compensate and sleep late tomorrow morning, but I know better than to actually believe that will happen.


There's only so many non kids shots I can take a the pool that I haven't taken already, so this is one of the random shots I took. It looked much cooler in person than in the photo. The grass (if that's what it is) actually has colored stripes.