Lame Picture Post

Been pretty busy with work and what not, so all I have at the moment is this inadvertent black and white photo. Meaning it looks black and white, but I didn't convert it.

Jesus' Birthday Party

We had a bit of an ice storm come through last night. It wasn't much, and frankly I don't think the roads got much of anything on them. It was enough however that Ginger insisted I get up and drive her and the kids to church. Quinn and Catherine's Sunday School class were combined this week since one of the regular teachers was out and they had planned a special Jesus' birthday celebration today (which is why Catherine insisted on coming back home last night from her short trip to Richmond). Ginger signed up to help out of the combined class, so she had to be there. Turns out we were the first ones there. I think the weather might have been a deterrent to people showing up since the attendance for the combined class was only about seven kids total (and that was including our two).

The rest of the day turned out to be pretty wasted. I didn't get anything done really and we mostly sat around resting and kids watched a couple Christmas videos (at least I think they did, it's technically possible that I fell asleep when they were watching them). Ginger was feeling a bit worn down from being on the go so much for the past couple of weeks, so we all just hung out and took it easy for the day. I included the warping Christmas tree picture above because based on comments John made when he was visiting I know how much he was looking forward to me doing that again this year (and yes, there's a tinge of sarcasm in there).

And All I Got Was Pictures Of Cookies

So after the kids got out of school yesterday, Ginger embarked out a trip with the kids down to Fredricksburg to drop off Catherine with Grammy. Catherine was going to visit Grammy and Pop Pop because one of her annual things with them is to go to the Richmond ballet (much like how they annually take Quinn to a NASCAR race). The performance was this Saturday. In addition to getting to go to the ballet she also ended up getting to go to Build-A-Bear yesterday and making a Hello Kitty doll (which she apparently got a ton of accessories for, so buy Build-A-Bear stock since the grandparents are doing their part to keep that business afloat).


In the past when Catherine attends the ballet I've gotten pictures of Catherine meeting with attractive female ballerinas backstage, this year all I got is pictures of Catherine decorating Christmas cookies. Somehow it's not quite the same. And from the looks of it she's decorating the cookies with her fingers. Which I suppose is okay as long as she isn't tasting the icing also.


D'oh! Now I have a dilemma. Do I eat the cookies she brings home anyway, or forgo them? Who am I kidding, they're cookies, of course I'm going to eat some of them. And they look pretty good too.


This year was also made a bit more difficult by the fact that Catherine wanted to be back home to attend Sunday school this weekend since they're going to be having a birthday party for Jesus. This meant that Ginger had to drive all the way down to Richmond to get Catherine and bring her back on Saturday night. And for some reason Quinn ended up driving down with her (I think he thought he might get to play video games, but that didn't happen), so that left me to my own devices here at home on Saturday night.

I spent this going to a couple of stores to purchase some stuff, which ate up most of the time I had available. One of the things I went out and bought was an $18 soldering iron. A while back Ginger bought a couple of small fake fiber optic trees for the kid's rooms (for $11 apiece). Catherine's was making an incessant squeaking noise though, so I took it apart thinking I could try and fix it. Well, the trees are pretty cheap, so the wiring inside ended up breaking. I bought the soldering iron to fix it. In retrospect it would have been cheaper just to buy another tree. But now at least I have a soldering iron (because you never know when you're going to need one of those).

End Of The Semester

Today was the last day of school for the kids this year. After this they're on break until the start of the new year. So the kids worked on their presents for their teachers on Thursday and took them in on Friday. Quinn made the above tree candles. He did all the work himself, cutting the wooden pole and drilling into the candle.


Catherine on the other hand made some ornaments for her teachers. She made a star and a snowman for each of them and did personalized drawing on each of the stars.


Today was also the day where the elementary class puts on a performance for the other kids and the parents. The good news is this year Quinn wasn't doubling over in pain like he was last year. He sang along on the songs and generally seemed to perform quite enthusiastically. Since it was their winter / Christmas performance the kids were encouraged to wear hats and scarfs to give the impression of cold and snow (these were the only props though and because of that it ends up coming off looking like it's cold in the building).


After that there was a brief performance of some songs by the kids in each of the preschool classes, so Catherine and her colleges gave a brief performance (most of which I ended up missing because I didn't know it was occurring, but luckily Ginger was on top of things and was there).

Artsy

Is it artsy, or do I just have the shakes really bad.

Winter Premieres

So TV has completely gone down the crapper now that we're getting close to the holidays. No more new shows and we're knee deep in repeats and holiday specials. Luckily the light is just around the proverbial corner with new shows starting next month. Here's a list of some of what I consider to be more the most important midseason shows.

• Scrubs (ABC) Tues. Jan. 6
• Damages (FX) Wed., Jan. 7
• 24 (Fox) Sun. Jan. 11
• Battlestar Galactica (Sci Fi) Fri. Jan. 16
• Lost (ABC) Wed. Jan. 21
• Dollhouse (Fox) Fri. Feb. 13
• Reaper (CW) Tues. Mar. 17

I've always enjoyed Scrubs and I'm glad it managed to survive by jumping networks. I'm not sure how much longer the show will be able to continue though since Zach Braff has announced this is his last season on the show (although if he doesn't get anymore movie work, or if the work he does get isn't better received than some of his previous stuff he may change his mind).

I've almost lost interest in Damages. They really had something with the show a while back, but I think in letting it languish this long before season two they may have squandered people's a lot of people's interest.

I stopped watching 24 last season, but I know a lot of people out there still like it. I mean, it's Jack Bauer, what's not to like. I stopped watching the last season after episode 4, does anyone think if I picked it back up via DVDs that I would enjoy it?

Even though I think the last season and a half of Battlestar Galactica has been terrible, I still plan on watching this if for no other reason that to get closure on it. I don't plan on watching the spin off though.

I haven't really made up my mind about Lost yet. I think it was pretty obvious for the first couple of seasons the writers had no idea where they were going with the show, but now with a set end date and flash forwards I get the impression that the story is actually moving towards something. It doesn't excuse how bad some of the logic on the show is, but the one positive about the show is viewing it in HD is absolutely gorgeous to watch.

I have big hopes for Dollhouse since it's Joss Whedon, but I'm afraid that FOX will prematurely end the series before letting it find it's audience and I'll end up being filled with rage as they cancel another fantastic show. FOX: Please don't pull a Firefly, please don't pull a Firefly, please don't pull a Firefly...

It's really a shame it's going to be so long before Reaper starts again. I suspect with the shortened season this year this could be the death knell for this show (which is a shame, but it's a really smart and funny show).

Bullbunky

Earlier today we had a family of deer walking through the backyard again. I only got a shot through the glass, and the lens I was using I don't think has the Digital information, so it was a bit brighter and more washed out than I thought the picture was going to be. Guess I need to think about getting a decent low F-Stop lens (I have an old on that's 50mm, but it's not digital so with the crop factor it's actually like a 75mm).

Later in the evening we had a nice visit from our friend John was in on business from San Fran tonight. He managed to beat me in a game of Wii bowling by four pins (and I choked on my 3rd ball of the tenth frame and only got 6, so I should have been able to tie him). I'm looking forward to a rematch since he's said he'll try and come back by later in the week. But I'll bet we get some excuse and he won't show up because he'll be scared to face me again and lose his title.

Hancock

Hancock is the latest high powered energy flick from mega star Will Smith. This time he plays an alcoholic super-hero who engages criminals with a blatant disregard for the property damage he causes. It's a fairly straight forward action flick with the expected humorous bits thrown in for good measure. It's not a terrible movie, nor is it all that good. It is decidedly average at best and maybe a bit less than average at worst. You eventually get his origin story if you can really call it that, and it's pretty weak and doesn't really explain anything. The most annoying thing for me at this point is that there is a "twist" to the story that has been given away by some of the DVD covers (I had to go searching for one that didn't have the spoiler pasted right there on the cover for this post). The spoiler is also all over the recent commercials playing for the DVD, so if you've seen commercials for the DVD, then you've probably already seen what I'm referring to (possibly without knowing it). Just try and forget everything you've seen about the movie before watching it (sadly it won't be that hard to forget once you've seen it either).

For me the funniest thing about this movie wasn't in the movie itself, but back when it was in theaters someone decided to put the words for the movie up in reverse order resulting in... Well, click through to see it since I suppose it could be considered NSFW (and consider that a warning before clicking).

Up Goes Snowman

We actually put up our snowman on Friday. Don't have many good pictures of the event due to it already being dark by the time I got home. I think a couple of the lights in the snowman have burned out, but it'll be a while before I can check and replace any of them. Turns out it was a good thing we put it up on Friday since the weather has been pretty miserable ever since. I'm also going to use the face that it was dark as the reason the snowman is turned to the side a bit.


So we did this right before the kids went to the opening night of their concert, and Ginger had already dressed them in the clothes they were going to wear. So wouldn't you know it Quinn had this great idea of crawling along the ground and got his pants wet in addition to getting grass stains on them. Luckily we still had some other clothes he could wear.


And today was the last of the three concerts the kids performed in. In addition to Grammy and Pop Pop who were still here from last night Nana also came up to catch today's performance. And then after the concert we all went out to eat (I know, I was amazed that Grammy was up and we ended up going out to eat, I mean that never happens). After that we made the kids take a nap once they got home. What with them having been up so late for the past couple of nights it was really wearing on them. And being up late at night wouldn't be that big of a deal except for they were still getting up at their regular time in the mornings. So the nap was a necessary evil even though neither of them would ever actually admit to being tired (they would just be on edge all the time). After the nap though it was like we had two completely different (and well behaved) children. Sleep is good. I need to try it sometime myself.

Holiday Party 2008

My company had our annual holiday party on Saturday night. This meant two things, one is that we didn't get to go see Quinn and Catherine's second night performance in the church concert, and two that Ginger's parents were up to watch the kids while we went to the party. This also allowed Ginger's parents the opportunity to go see the kids perform. I heard afterward the performance went well, but for some reason the kids didn't get to bed until close to 10 PM (which may have something to do with the fact that we got a call from Ginger's parent's while at the party during dinner asking us where the popcorn maker was).


We ended up hanging out with our usual group of suspects at the party. In addition to our normally motley crew we also had Nadra and Colin hang out with us a bit beforehand and during dinner.


I normally hate dressing up, and this is really no exception to that. Luckily the party has free drinks, so it makes it easier. The food was a bit on the bland side. They had some cut beef that was rather tasty. but then they also had some salmon that someone tried to save by loading it up with butter and cream sauce. Ginger thought her lasagna was rather bland. But again, the drinks were free. Although if that's what I thought of the food with some alcohol in me it which makes me wonder how the food would have tasted without the drinks.


For the past couple of years there's been a gambling theme where surrounding rooms have had roulette, blackjack and other games. This year the theme was more on active entertainment as they had a couple pool tables, some ping pong, air hockey, Foosball and even a couple of rooms with Wiis in them. The Wiis seemed popular eventually, but early on in the night had few takers so we managed to get in a game of Mario Kart initially. Ken schooled me and a couple others at Mario Kart. As one might expect those of us that had played the game prior all came in the top slots and people that had never played it before came in at the bottom. Having the Wiis there allowed Ginger to try out Wii Ski with the balance board, which probably saved us from purchasing it ourselves since she wasn't impressed with it and didn't think the kids would like it that much.


Later in the evening after dinner Pete schooled me in some ping pong, but wearing a suit and doesn't go real well with physical activity so we switched to air hockey, which he also beat me at. Basically most of the night consisted of me getting beat up on by someone at some activity. Eventually around 11 the bar closed and we left a short while thereafter. One would think those two events were related, but truthfully I had stopped drinking after dinner so the lack of the bar wasn't what prompted us to leave. What really prompted us to leave was the fact that the closed bar prompted everyone else that was there to leave, so the party was really winding down after that.

In general Ginger is running out of people she knows to talk to at this yearly event and has decided that next year she may just stay home and have me go stag. So I'm guessing from that she didn't have that much fun. The gambling in year's past hasn't really been her thing and it was tough for her to participate in the physical activities with heels on (although I think she did play a little air hockey with Karen for a bit).

Opening Night!

Opening night for the church's Christmas concert is finally here! The kids were excited. And looking at the photo of them together taken before we left it doesn't appear either of them had any performance anxiety that I could see.


Everything seemed to go pretty well. There was no video allowed during the performance itself (all the better to make you buy the DVD). So below I have some crude footage of the first song the kids sing in the concert from Thursday night's dress rehearsal. In retrospect I should have uploaded one of the songs where they're on screen more. It's the first song so the kids don't come onto the screen until about halfway through. Quinn and Catherine are on the left side on the second row from the top on opposite ends of the row.

Dress Rehearsal

Tonight was dress rehearsal for the church's Christmas concert. More or less the same as Monday's practice, but now with everyone wearing their best outfits. I took some video (some high quality dv and some just from a small hand held Nikon), I might try and put that up soon, although it'll probably bore the daylights out of anyone not related to the kids.


Speaking of being bored, I think Quinn's just about running on empty this week from going to bed so late and yet still getting up so early. Check out that yawn of his during last night's performance in the picture above.


If this things goes off without a hitch I'm going to be amazed. There was still a lot of confusion it seemed as to who does what and when. In fact, after the song where Quinn plays Joseph they had the kids practice how they would exit the stage from those positions, only to later realize they had one more song to do. Quinn still won't get near "Mary" during the song, nor does he even look at the baby. The good news was during the performance there was no nose picking by either kid.

Instant Netflix

TiVo has recently added the ability to use your Netflix account. You can go onto Netflix and add things to your instant queue and then choose which ones to watch via TiVo. This is pretty much the definition of awesome. But as with most things, there are some positives and negatives to this. The big thing I saw as a positive was you have unlimited viewing of instant films. Like the other night we finished disc 2 of MI-5 season one, so rather than wait for the next disc we could just queue up the next episode on the instant queue and immediately watch it. Awesome. Which brings me to the negatives. The quality of the instant viewing pretty much blows. It might be slightly worse than analog. I know I've gotten spoiled by HD content, but after watching MI-5 from DVD (which wasn't an HD /Blu-Ray disc, just your standard DVD) and then watching an analog version of the show the difference really stood out to the point where I stopped watching it and decided to wait until the next disc arrived to watch it (the quality of the DVD is just better and with the disc I can turn on subtitles since sometimes I have trouble following what's being said).

Another negative of the instant viewing is the navigation. One of the biggest pluses of TiVo is it's ability to easily and quickly navigate within a show. These instant movies are streamed, so any change you make means it has to renegotiate with the server where it is and rebuffer within the stream. So if you back up 8 seconds sometimes the video won't appear for several seconds after you back up (or you may end up with video, but no audio, so you end up having to back up and pause, which is just annoying). Another negative related to this (and this is possibly unique to our setup) is since the movie is streamed you're at the mercy of your internet connection. To make matters worse, our TiVo has a wireless connection, and it's an old school wireless that only supports the 54 mbs rate. And since we have at least five wireless devices in the house your connection is at the mercy of any other device that wants to make use of the wireless connection. Now it is possible that it somehow adjusts the quality of the show based on your internet connection, but I haven't tested that theory.

I will admit that having the instant viewing is nice for those movies that you really would never waste a rental on. We started watching Mad Money the other night. What, you don't recall what Mad Money is? It's not the TV show with Jim Cramer, it's the movie Katie Holmes did with Queen Latifah and Diane Keaton instead of reprising her role in The Dark Knight (and now Batman is closing in on the 1 billion mark worldwide, good call Katie). Still, it's a really silly chick comedy flick that there's no way I would have ever burned a rental on, so this gets around that (don't ask me how the movie is, we didn't make it all the way through it yet). Which leads to the other bad thing. Now we might end up watching a lot more mediocre movies just because we can.

That's A Lot Of Marshmallow Krispies

The kids attended some after school play date / activity thing today (I'm big on the details, can't you tell?). At this event they decorated some huge marshmallow krispie thingies.


Catherine went all out and put a ton of detail on her's (I included another shot of her's below). She even won first place for best decorated. This was much to the chagrin of Quinn who when Catherine was telling me about it Quinn kept insisting how it wasn't fair, because he didn't know beforehand they were going to be judged. Which if run that through the Quinn translator means he threw his together as fast as he could so he could be off playing and doing other things and would have spent more time on it if he knew they was going to be some type of contest.

Concert Practice

Tonight was practice for the church's Christmas concert coming up this weekend. The kid's church participates in several of the songs during the concert and both Quinn and Catherine are in it this year (last year only Quinn was in it). Luckily they're both on the same side of the stage so it makes taking pictures of them a bit easier. About half of the kid's practice for the night was spent rehearsing the entrance and exit of the group.


Quinn is also playing the part of Joseph during one of the songs (you can see him in his costume below). It's a non speaking part, which is probably good. In fact he basically just stands there through the song with "Mary" by his side.

Leftover Snow Sunday

It was just me and the kids this afternoon as Ginger was off to another one of her stamping / cutting / scrapbooking things. While Ginger was gone the kids and I watched the most of the little bit of snow we had gotten melt into oblivion.


So for dinner I grilled hamburgers. I know, it's like 20 degrees outside and I'm grilling hamburgers outside. Why is that? Funny story (well, funny if you're not me anyway). After church when we were talking about what to do for lunch Ginger mentioned having hamburgers out on the grill. I was skeptical, but said okay. Then after stopping by the grocery store once we got home there was really no time to grill since Ginger had to leave for her outing in about 20 minutes or so. She was suppose to be back home by around 4:30, but (unbeknownst to me) she got held up because one of the women sliced her finger really bad and it played havoc with the whole schedule. So around 5:30 I figured I should start dinner, so I went out (in the dark) and fired up the grill. I did my best to cook the hamburgers. Given how cold it is you really have to fire up the grill to get them to cook, and then when you fire it up too much you end up blackening just about everything. So I'm out there cooking and freezing my keister off and then later when Ginger arrives at home she tells me that she was only kidding about cooking out on the grill because why would she want me to go grill outside in this weather. Lovely. So for dinner instead of some moist juicy hamburgers cooked inside we got charred black cheese burgers where the cheese that melted to the bottom of the burger actually became black and seemed like hardened ash. Beef and ash, it's what's for dinner. Well, it's what for dinner for Ginger and myself anyway since Catherine had a baked potato and an orange. And Ginger stopped on the way home and picked up KFC's popcorn chicken for both Catherine and Quinn.

Kid's Holiday Party

My work had a holiday party for all the kid's employees today. So we bundled up and headed out. Last year the event was mobbed and there were a ton of people. This year the turnout seemed significantly less. Not exactly sure why that's the case. They had most of the same events and stuff as last year, and Santa also made his yearly fly by of the event.


As per previous year's Catherine's allergies prevented her from being able to partake in the cookie decorating. And her recent spat of outbreaks from face paintings also meant that wasn't an option either. Neither kid was interested in juggling, and while last year the rage was the balloon animals / items, this year neither of them were interested in that (partly because based on the negative reaction last year when said balloon items popped Catherine decided she didn't really want something like that again and Quinn has decided he is too old for balloons in any form).


So here's the fun item. We had Catherine go sit on Santa's lap and she told him she wanted the animal hospital. Then she mentioned it was in a magazine of toys she had seen at home. The problem is we have no idea what this toy is. And we've looked through the book she claims it was in. This has potential bad news written all over it.


Quinn was overly reluctant to go sit on Santa's lap and had to be semi coerced into doing it. I believe now that he's in on the whole Santa secret he realizes that pursuing that avenue won't be garnering him any extra goodies come Christmas day so in his mind there's no real point to the exercise. Ginger on the other hand wanted another picture of him and Santa and wanted to keep up appearances for Catherine.


Me? I still haven't given up on the big guy. I mean there's the possibility of free goodies. How can you not take that chance?


Santa gave everyone who visited with him a candy cane. Since we didn't know if we could trust whether it was safe or not we promised she could have one of the ones we bought her at home (that we know are safe). Turns out the ones we have at home are blue. I'm wondering if you could have guessed the color had I not mentioned it. Ken and Amanda also stopped by briefly after the party as they needed a brief layover before heading out to a birthday party in Maryland.

Later in the afternoon Quinn had a birthday party to attend. And when we left the house at four to go drop him off it was snowing. Then Ginger, Catherine and myself went to dinner at PF Chang's and when we got out there was actually some snow sticking to the ground. Sadly it doesn't look like we're going to get anything more than a light dusting.

More Tree Decorating

The other night we put up the Christmas tree on the main floor (I say we, but really Ginger did it all and I only helped with getting the lights working in a couple places). But we hadn't put the ornaments up yet, so on Friday I came home a bit earlier than usual and we all started decorating the tree.


We got most of the bottom pretty well covered at this point. The kids still have a bad habit of placing ornaments right on the absolute edge of the branch in such a way that they're almost guaranteed to fall off.






The tree is actually pretty tall. I can't reach the top without a ladder. And that means kids have trouble reaching anything in the mid to upper level which is why the bottom is pretty well decorated at this point, but the top is still a bit sparse.


Putting up the ornaments is always like taking a trip down memory lane. Since for each ornament we have to go through the story of when we got that particular one, or if it's a picture ornament who it is and when it was taken.


We would have kept going and decorated the whole thing, but we ran out of ornament hooks that could actually support the ornaments. When did the hooks become so flimsy? Back in the day you could hang like a five pound ornament with a little metal hook, but these days the hooks are more pliable than the twist ties you find on loaves of bread and can barely hold up miniature ornaments, much less ornaments with any heft to them (like the Hulk there). Not sure where we're going to find strong hooks, but we need to locate some before we can finish the tree decorating project.