Friday, February 29, 2008

Super Heroes In The Media

Quinn's doing much better now. He stayed home from school again today. He still has a cough that seems to flare up every now and then, but as far as a fever goes it seems like he's past that. So far no one else is showing symptoms (knock on wood).

There's a rumor out that Barack Obama might put in an appearance at San Diego Comic Con. I can't imagine that will actually happen though since the crowds there are already enormous and the extra security that would be required for Barack to show up would be insane. But the fact that it might not happen didn't stop people from finding this photo and posting it.


Next week is suppose to be the debut of the new animated Spider-Man show. It's suppose to be on the CW and there's talk they'll be showing two episodes back to back. I plan on at least giving it a look to see how they do with it. And if it's kid friendly enough I might try and let Quinn watch it.

And to round out the media super hero stuff, it looks like TV Guide is going to have an issue with a bunch of DC's heroes that have had TV shows on the cover. he blurb about it can be found here. I don't know how, but they actually managed to make the Adam West Batman look non campy.

Thursday, February 28, 2008

Déjà Rejection

I've spotted a new trend. Apparently on a yearly basis my car is going to be rejected when I go to get it inspected. This time it was for the back brakes which were evidently "pretty worn". Last year I thought I got a fair assessment, this year I'm not so sure. And did the cost of inspections go up? Looking at my blog post from last year the inspection cost was $16, this year it cost $26. Is the cost no longer regulated by the state and everyone can charge willy nilly? Or did the overall cost really go up 62.5%? That seems like a hefty increase.

So news on the sickness front is evidently Quinn threw up in the middle of the night, but he had his bucket with him and neither Ginger nor I even knew he had thrown up until the morning. Kudos to him for not even needing us. It should come as no to anyone that he stayed home today recovering. From what I heard he camped out on the sofa and watched a lot of TV and didn't have any other incidents during the day. Last night I had gone to the library to pick up some books Ginger had reserved and while I was there I looked through the DVDs they have available for kids and found "The Best of the Electric Company". I have fond memories of that show from when I was younger so I figured I would rent it so the kids could watch it (and last night I had also assumed that Quinn would be home today and might need something new to watch, and if it could be even slightly educational, all the better). I'm not sure Quinn (or Catherine since she got to watch some of it later in the day when she got home) liked it as much as I did as a kid. I remember Electric Company being what you wanted to watch once you were too old for Sesame Street. And it had entertaining recurring characters like The Adventures of Letterman, the hipster Morgan Freeman as Easy Reader, a mime version of Spider-Man and let's not forget Bill Cosby (although when I made a joke about "eating the puddin' pops" all I got were blank stares from everyone).

Wednesday, February 27, 2008

And The Sickness Begins...


Quinn ended up coming home from school midday the same time as Catherine. And a quick doctor visit later in the day confirmed that he has the flu. Ginger said he was so tired at dinner he kept lying his head down on the table, but he also stubbornly refused to nap or go to bed. And he was coughing pretty consistently when he finally did go to bed. We gave him some Delsym, and I know the reports say cough medicine might as well be a placebo, but that stuff seems to work. Well, it somewhat works. It hasn't taken away his cough entirely, but it has greatly reduced the amount of coughing he has been doing. But I suppose that could be a by-product of him being asleep also. I remember back in December when I had a cough that combined with Advil was the only thing that kept me from constantly coughing. So I think it works, but who knows.

Tuesday, February 26, 2008

One Tooth Less


Quinn has picked up a bit of a cough from somewhere. I suppose with all the flu type illnesses running around a cough isn't so bad though. To balance out picking something up though, he decided to lose something as well and now has lost another of his baby teeth. It fell out at school just before he came home from what I heard. Since the kids were already in bed by the time I got home I was lucky that Ginger had taken some pictures of him at dinner.


Told you I had more ice shots that weren't as good.

Monday, February 25, 2008

Stand Alone Complex: 2nd Gig


I finally finished watching Stand Alone Complex: Second Gig tonight. It feels like I've had these DVDs for ages (I think I started watching the second season last summer). I started off strong watching a couple of episodes and then when things got really busy I didn't keep with it. But since we're dealing with the lack of programming due to the writer's strike and no Daily Show or Colbert Report for the past week or so I was able to pick up where I left off. And after watching the end I have to wonder why I it took me so long to get back to it. It's got it all. An overall story arc, character bits, and action galore (there are one or two talking head episodes where they go over everything in the story so far, but there's only one or two of those). The whole group of Section 9 is back in season two. And just as before all 26 episodes of the season combine to tell one large story that mixes personal stories with large scale political stories. Also in this season we get to learn some more background about some of the Section 9 characters through flashbacks tales (think of it like Lost, but providing actual closure). And while there's no shortage of action I was actually happy to see they had Major Motoko in less states of undress this season (HR must have informed her that wearing the Flashdance type outfit from season one to work was inappropriate). That's not to say they don't have the occasional partial thong shot, but this season it seems to be the exception rather than the norm. More often than not this season the Motoko is her combat suit. Overall an excellent series and I really wish there was a season three.

Sunday, February 24, 2008

I'm A Lumberjack And I'm Okay...


I think this is the last respectable ice shot from a couple of weeks ago. Mind you, I have a couple more, and I feel confident they'll make it onto the blog eventually, but the quality of the shots will decline a bit after this (I suppose one could easily argue that the decline has already started).

I spent today removing that last tree trunk. The roots on this one were significantly more entrenched than the other one though. I didn't end up working up quite as much of a sweat as yesterday, but it was still strenuous. In addition to that I had the kids "helping" me. Which as anyone with kids knows means that the whole effort took a longer than expected. I can't remember how many times I had to tell the kids not to run while holding the saw, the clippers or the some other tool that could cause dismemberment if they fell on it and impaled themselves. Once the kids gave up helping and went inside I made pretty good progress. Now I just have to figure out what I'm going to do with all the debris from the trees.

Saturday, February 23, 2008

And Boy Are My Arms Tired


Spent a good amount of time out in the yard with a hacksaw and a shovel. I got all the limbs off both downed trees, and I even got one fully taken down even removing the roots. The other one was the bigger of the two and looks like it will still take a fair amount of time to remove and remove the root system. I got that one down to the point where the trunk is about eight feet and I simply stood it back up until I can get back to it.


I have to say this task required a lot of energy and I was sweating pretty profusely at times. With the kids listening to the various "Little House on the Prairie" books these days Ginger and I have been joking about what it would take to go live off the land somewhere. Given how exhausted I was after a couple hours of work removing a couple of trees, I'm thinking this living off the land idea isn't in the cards. Although things might have gone easier if I had an ax instead of simply trying to cut through one foot trunks with just a hacksaw. I imagine I'm going to be really sore on Monday. For some reason the day after I do exert myself isn't that bad, but two days after is a killer. It's almost like I'm getting old or something.


When I came inside after working on the trees the kids were watching TV with Ginger fast asleep on the couch. After I had showered and changed Catherine and I went outside for a bit since she really wanted to go outside and play and I'm a big believer in the kids getting time outside when possible. Too bad it was still pretty cold out (strangely the cold didn't bother me as much earlier when I was out working up a sweat removing the trees), although the cold seemed to bother me more than it did her. Later in the day we went out to Coastal Flats with Ben for dinner, then we came back home and got the kids in bed and Ginger, Ben and myself watched Talladega Nights.

Friday, February 22, 2008

What A Letdown


What a non snow day event. The weather forecast was all full of sound and fury, but in the end we got nothing. School's closed simply on the basis of the forecast and a little ice this morning. Now don't get me wrong, we got some ice, but not that much. In fact it was nowhere near as much as the ice storm last week. Based on the reports I had been expecting something like what Curt got up north. I did hear about some traffic issues this morning, but it didn't sound like anything that warranted closing schools and the roads seemed fine later in the morning. Maybe we'll get some more precipitation and get some more ice tomorrow. I can only hope I suppose. Although, since there wasn't that much ice today it came as a bit of a surprise that when I came home I noticed there had been enough ice to drop a couple of our trees. I suspect the ice from last week probably weakened these quite a bit. Can't say I'm looking forward to having to clean this up. Ginger's already suggested hiring someone to do it. Meanwhile I wonder if I can just move it to the curb and call it yard waste.


I initially spent part of the morning at home and had planned on working from home. But I wasn't able to get any work done with the kids constantly fighting so I eventually decided to just go to work for a couple of hours. I didn't spend long there and basically called it an early day so overall the day ended up being less than productive.

Thursday, February 21, 2008

Stupid Groundhog


We've got a winter storm warning in effect from 10 tonight until 10 tomorrow night. At this point with all the doom and gloom in the forecasts I have to wonder if anyone is going to be able to even leave their house tomorrow. Of course they also called for like an inch of snow yesterday and we got nothing from that. But this time they're saying it's real! I still haven't even finished posting the ice pictures I have from the last Tuesday when we got an ice storm and now we're already scheduled for another one. I blame that stupid groundhog. If he hadn't seen his shadow on Feb 2nd we would already be well on our way to Spring. On the positive side if the kids don't have school maybe I'll take some of the day off myself.

Catherine had her five year doctor visit yesterday. She seems to be fine, but the doctor was a bit worried that he doesn't think she is gettng enough milk or meat. Now we're going to have to try and get more egg, meat and milk into her. And in case that doesn't work she now gets to take vitamins that have extra iron. Although I seem to remember hearing that vitamins in the supplements don't absorb into the blood stream as well as ones extracted from food do. Not sure if there's any truth to that or not.

Wednesday, February 20, 2008

Lunar Eclipse


I spent way too much time outside tonight trying to capture the lunar eclipse. Sadly after being out for a bit I foolishly set my ISO down to 200 and from that moment on all the subsequent pictures looked like crap. Guess the secret is the higher ISO and just slightly extended shutter speeds.


It never really seemed all the eclipsy to be honest since at no point was the moon not visible. It did take on a neat orange hue though during the eclipse. And while I normally have to set the shutter speed really fast to get a decent moonshot I was really having to extend the shutter speed to past one second in order to capture shots tonight. Which I suspect is why the ISO 200 shots look all blurry since you really don't want to leave the shutter open for too long.


To make matters worse almost as soon as I went outside and took a couple of shots the camera battery jumped from full to half full and then on the next shot to the almost drained. Seriously, would it kill them to actually have the partially drained setting be there for more than one shot? After that there were several instances where it wasn't taking pictures due to low power. So every so often I would extract the battery and do a temporary charge and then put it back in. It's possible all that shuffling around is what caused the later pictures to be blurry and that it had nothing to do with the ISO. I suppose it's possible I accidentally nudged the focus setting putting the battery back in. And it's not like when you're taking pictures you can tell if things are slightly out of focus since everything looks good on the camera's teeny tiny view screen. So instead of decent pictures all I have are excuses and frozen fingers since it was freezing outside and I couldn't actually operate the camera settings with my gloves on, and the gloves I could operate the camera with are so thin it's like I wasn't even wearing them.

Tuesday, February 19, 2008

Catherine's Birthday Celebration


The kids were home again today from school so I came home again for lunch. Unfortunately I forgot that today was Catherine's gymnastics day, which meant they had to leave about 15 minutes after I got here. So I had a quick lunch with them and they were off on their way to gymnastics and I was heading back to work.


Tonight we had what I believe is going to the last of Catherine's birthday celebrations with just the four of us in attendance. The table was decorated with Strawberry Shortcake, because that's one of Catherine's favorite things at the moment. And I have to say, I'm pretty happy with the way some of the photos from tonight turned out.






There was no cake, but instead we had ice cream pie in an Oreo type cookie crust and it was very tasty indeed. Everyone thought scarfed it up. I still find it amazing that I have a daughter that's five years old now. It seems like just yesterday when we brought her home from the hospital.


I really liked how this last shot with the two of them turned out. I just wish Quinn hadn't been going for the 80's look with his all of his buttons undone and exposing his chest like that. Still, both kids are smiling and making nice so it's not like I can ask for too much better from them.

Monday, February 18, 2008

Extra Extra! Read All About It!


Yet another photo of the ice from last week above. The kids had today off from school. So Catherine got to play with all of her new toys. One of the toys she got was some Barbie-ish talking Hannah Montana doll. None of us knew anything about Hannah Montana other than I think it's a show on the Disney channel and there was some movie about it that just came out. So far that qualifies as the most annoying gift with the singing and yelling the doll does. Not sure it ranks anywhere near the annoying level of the Barbie phone from last year that would "call" every 10 minutes between 10 AM and 6 PM. Now that was really annoying. I did come home from work for lunch since the kids were home. Too bad they disappeared downstairs to play almost as soon as I got here. From the brief time I did see them it seemed like they were playing with the Catherine's new spirograph. I heard later that Ginger tried to get Quinn to try a chicken hot dog for lunch. From the reports I heard that didn't go too well. In Quinn's defense I had one of them for dinner and they're not that good, at least not reheated anyway.

I recently watched season one of Extras. It stars and is written by Ricky Gervais, the creator of the The Office, and I have to say it is quite funny. Like The Office there's no laugh track or studio audience, and most of the humor comes from really awkward situations, but it's definitely worth a watch. I haven't seen the BBC version of The Office, but now I may have try and watch that at some point. The only bad thing about the series (and I hesitate to say this is bad more than annoying) is that the episodes are only a half hour long and they don't put more than three on a DVD. I'm fairly certain that the whole season of six episodes could have fit onto one DVD instead of needing two separate DVD (thus requiring me to burn two Netflix rentals instead of one). Season two is most assuredly going to be entering my Netflix queue in the near future even though it will also take two rentals for size episodes. If you're thinking of purchasing it a bundle of the complete series (season 1, season 2 and the series finale) just went on sale.

Sunday, February 17, 2008

Party At Gymini


Today was Catherine's big birthday party with all of her friends. It was at Gymini and it certainly looked like all the kids had a lot of fun. Catherine enjoyed it because she was allowed to be first at everything. Plus she got to hang out with her favorite teacher "Mr Eric". Sadly even though I had powered up all the cameras, made room on all the memory cards, I forgot to change the batteries in the flash unit, so that wasn't working as well as I would have liked (it was taking way too long to recharge and sometimes simply wouldn't fire). Looks like I need to think about getting a lens for low light situations. I took lots of pictures, but not many turned out. I picked some of the better ones below, but even then the pickings were slim.


Parachute games are always a hit with the kids.




There was a huge trampoline area with ropes the kids could climb.






There was also a huge spongy pit area the kids could jump in and swing on a rope out over.




An obstacle course that included some time on the uneven bars and mini rope swing.


Then some the celebration with the cake.


And a rousing game of Duck Duck Goose to end the festivities. After that we went out to dinner with Barry and his clan at Pomodoro (we had tried Red Robin initially but the wait for a table for a group that big was simply too long to even consider with it already being a bit late). Once we got home Catherine managed to convince us that she should be allowed to open up all her loot from the party, but we told her she wouldn't be able to play with any of it until tomorrow. She got lots of books, Barbies and other girly things so she'll have some fun tomorrow playing with that since it's a holiday and the kids aren't in school.

So as has been mentioned in previous posts, Quinn's been in Richmond for the past couple of days. Because of that I had to go pick up him up for the party since, so I met Ginger's parents at about the halfway point and we went straight to the party that had already started (I think we may have been about 20 minutes late or so getting there). I know Quinn likes spending time with his grandparents, because he almost started crying when he had to say goodbye. Of course, that doesn't do much for my self esteem since it can be interpreted that he's crying because he has to go with me. But, even though he was sad and started to tear up he didn't actually cry, and later he told me that he almost did, but that he didn't because "Big boys don't cry in front of other people." I was wondering where he had picked up that line and Ginger explained that it might have been from the "Farmer Boy" book the kids are listening to on CD. That's a book in the Little House series and focuses on a boy named Almanzo. And in the book it states stuff like "He did not cry. He would have cried if he had not been almost ten years old." So I'm guessing that's where that came from.

Saturday, February 16, 2008

Catherine Rules The Roost


Catherine got to spend the day doing just about whatever she wanted today. Which meant I ended up playing Barbie and Groovy Girls way more than I would have liked. We also spent a good portion of the day doing egg hunts with the dinosaur eggs that the kids got from the Fall Fair.


Catherine's been using her new rocking chair. I think the blanket and the rocking chair combination makes her look too old though. She's been allowed to watch a bit more television that she usually is allowed to these past couple of days. I heard she even got to watch Snow White.


Catherine also helped Ginger cook the stuff for her party tomorrow. While they were doing that I was going to the store to get snacks for the party.

We heard from Quinn tonight and it sounded like he really enjoyed the circus. He especially seemed to find the clowns funny. I'm hoping we'll eventually get some pictures from Quinn's time in Richmond, but we'll see.

Don't Fear The Reaper

With the end of the writer's strike the CW announced when we might see some new episodes of scripted shows, and Reaper is on the list! It's slated for return on April 22 with five new episodes (hmmm, one week after taxes are due, I wonder if there's a connection there). I'm really hoping this is good news and bodes well for a season two pickup. But let's be realistic, I like the show so it'll probably get canned. I did notice that NBC also announced when we might see some new shows this season from them, but Journeyman wasn't on the list there (start playing taps now for that show, it's done).

Friday, February 15, 2008

TiWoes


Yet another ice photo for your enjoyment. Don't worry, there won't be too many more of these. At least not a lot of them, I have to run out at some point, right?

TiVo has managed to drag Ginger over to the dark side. She stated the other night that like me, she couldn't recommend a TiVo to anyone anymore. Why you ask? We got our "new" TiVo the other night and set it up. The next day when Ginger was playing around with it while the kids were at school she noticed that it shows a gray screen when changing channels. And sometimes it will just not display a channel and there are a couple of channels that both the old Series 3 TiVo and the television can see but the new TiVo refuses to acknowledge even exists. Turns out the new TiVo isn't so much new as it is new to us. That's because it's a refurbished model. And apparently it's in way worse shape than the one we already had (in our opinion). On Thursday night it started just spontaneously rebooting. No rhyme or reason, just every so often it would reboot. And it was as if it was running at half speed. Remember back in the day when computers had that Turbo button you could press to speed it up? It's sort of like that, but in reverse. It just operates slower than normal and can take multiple seconds to respond to a command. That is if it responds at all since the user interface has a nasty habit of simply locking up at various times. So Ginger called up TiVo and this time she got one of the "special" tech support people (even though she called her "take me to the more advance tech guys" support number). The guy she was talking to kept insisting that TiVo simply had the wrong channel lineup, even though Ginger's knows that's not the case. So at this point it certainly seems like we'll be sending this replacement one back and trying our luck with the next one they send. Ginger's becoming more and more willing to consider my fallback plan of simply keeping the old one with one cable card that doesn't work. I mean it's really only an issue if we want to record two encrypted HD channels simultaneously, because even the broken cable card slot still displays all the local over the air HD channels just fine.

Tonight at dinner Catherine pointed out how quiet it is without Quinn here. She mentioned that no one has been yelling or fighting or anything. Then as if a lightbulb went off in her head she wanted to know if she could get her chip for the day. What's a chip you ask? Well the kids can earn poker chips for various things throughout the day which they can later turn in for a reward, it's a lot like the smile system that Barry's kids use to get stuff, but we require way more chips (each chip represents 25 cents and the toys they can get around between $8 and $20). Anyway, Catherine's rationale for wanting a chip was, as she pointed out, that she hadn't gotten into a fight or hit Quinn all day. We explained that Quinn's been in Richmond and she responded with "Yea, but I didn't hit him." It's this kind of reasoning that has me thinking she may end up being a lawyer someday. It is a creative way to think about the issue, I'll give her that.

Thursday, February 14, 2008

Another Birthday Party For Catherine


Might as well start of with another of the ice pictures from the other day. Almost all signs of the ice are completely gone now except for the roads which have large tracks of sand and salt that was put out.

Today was apparently only a half day at school or some such nonsense. Why was it only a half day? Because it's Valentine's Day. At least that's what the kids told me this morning. Seemed ridiculous to me. Although maybe it was a full day for all the kids and Ginger just picked up Quinn early since he was going to Richmond today. Apparently his grandparents got him tickets to the circus and he's going to that. Why isn't Catherine going? I mean after it her birthday here soon, right? Evidently she thinks she's afraid of loud noises and decided she didn't want to go. So Ginger took the kids down to Fredricksburg to meet Grammy, Grammaw and JJ to drop off Quinn with them.


Quinn's been doing this annoying thing in pictures lately. Whenever he 'poses' for a picture he throws out an arm (as if he's throwing a punch or declaring victory after a race or something). It wouldn't be that bad if he just did it sometimes, but he does almost all the time these days in pictures. Between that and his bad hair these days it's been making getting pictures of him really difficult since the camera will often pick the closet thing to focus on it means a lot of times pictures of him are extremely out of focus. Although I think the pictures Ginger took today turned out pretty good. Oh yea, and I forgot to mention that the other day one of the kids in Quinn's class at school accidentally stepped on his hand and the nail on his finger that he slammed in the car door finally fell off. Which is good (I think) because as I mentioned once a while ago it didn't appear to growing out and had stayed a solid black coloring.


And while they were down there they had a mini birthday party for Catherine at the Krispy Kreme. She got some presents too, but her big present was a rocking chair which she loves according to Ginger. I was a bit hesitant about her getting a rocking chair since when I was young I fell and cracked my head open on one and ended up needing stitches across my eyebrow. Funny how something like that can influence you so much later on in life.

Wednesday, February 13, 2008

A Layer Of Ice


If you woke up this morning and saw all the ice outside and immediately thought "I wonder if JamesF is going to have some cool ice pictures?" then I would have to say "Why would that be the first thing you think?" There are lots of better things to think about than that. And it's pretty much a given if they're ice out there I'm going to be snapping some photos. So rest easy. I'll throw up some more of the next couple of days, but I still haven't had a chance to work through all the ones I took.




School was an hour late this morning as they dealt with getting the roads into usable condition. And by the time I took the kids to school the roads seemed fine (everyone was traveling a tad slower than normal, but that's not necessarily a bad thing given the conditions). It looked like the ice stuck around for most of the day until mid afternoon, and then it all just sort of vanished so the drive home tonight was much more reasonable than last night's.