Big News
I'm not sure what's more significant this week in the grand shceme of things. An Israili scientist's Star Trek Hypospray painless injector got FDA approval, Sharpie came out with a Retractable Sharpie, or the fact that, late yesterday, my daughter decided that she could now walk.

And walk she does. She gets a big kick out of it. Though not such a fan of mobility in her carseat in the station wagon, she is a huge fan of mobility in the Miata, and now walking. Fast walking.

MoCoing the Loft
The computer has been moved from the library and into the loft. Rather than keeping it on the, granted minimalist but in such a econo way, white melamine computer desk, it is now on a steel and bluegreen glass computer cart. I used an Ikea LACK stacking table (the medium sized one) to hold up the HP printer/fax/scanner. I've gotten some gray flex-conduit from Lowe's to get all the cables together and some zip ties to hold things against other things. Next step is to move the stereo that is attached to the computer out of the library.

I also moved the Bowflex out into the loft. I used it in the loft fairly regularly before we moved it into the library. I have used it exactly zero times in the time it was in there, so it's out.

What the loft needs now is storage. I might make a prototype of the shelving I'm planning to replace the DVD/video game storage pie safe with for up there. Though, actually, the placement of the media storage pie safe really lends itself to me making the glass shelves. We get so much western light through the prismatic curtains in the afternoon. Glass just begs to show up over there. Also, I need houseplants. I'm thinking of propogating the fooyan out of the spider plant and also pilfering a few cuttings off the neglected jade plant in the lobby at work.

End of Month
Since it's the end of the month, I'll be making another month of photos in The Chronicles of Nina at my Pbase site. There aren't tons of pictures for Septemeber. What we have mostly is pictures from visits to my parent's house. We've been so busy that we just haven't gotten the camera out at home. Also, when Alison takes pictures, she takes three. When I do, I take 75 to 200. But then again, out of those, I maybe have four good ones.
- posted by Nick Postagulous @ 10:40 AM

 
I Installed a Dishwasher
Monday morning the movers showed up to move all of Alison’s mom’s stuff that was in storage for those two months. Now, it’s all crammed into the new house. The old house was 2600 square feet and this one is 1531 (I can remember that since it’s the name of the house plan). Needless to say, there are not nearly 1531 square feet available to walk around in. When I got off work, I went over there and picked up a tired and fussy Nina.

Alison stayed over at her mom’s and toted that barge and lifted that bale. I fed Nina. I don’t remember if that was salmon, sweet potatoes, apple/plum sauce, and of course Hawaiian Delight. I think it was. After eating, Nina didn’t really want to play on the stairs, her all time favorite thing. She didn’t even want to watch her Boohbah. She was fussy. So, another all time favorite event, riding in the Miata, was combined with her all time best comfort event, going to Mommy. So, we went over to Alison’s mom’s house to see Alison, aka Mommy.

What I didn’t mention, was that when I was trying to get the Boohbah to indoctrinate my daughter into a happy Boohbah moppet, I had pulled the old dishwasher out most of the way. I’d turned off the water, but couldn’t keep kids and cats away from me while I did the bigtime stuff.

After a while at Nina’s Grandmother’s new house, we came back home and I started on the dishwasher. Now that I’ve done it once, I’m an expert, but unfortunately I won’t be needing to install a dishwasher for another decade or so. The only two mistakes I made is that (1) I accidentally crimped the water line and when it feeds water to the dishwasher there is noisy cavitation in the line now and (2) I leveled it with the back a little low, so that when you pull the bottom rolly basket out to load pots n’ pans, it rolls back in via gravity. Grr. I’ll fix those as soon as I get another copper line.

Oh, and I also put together a glass and steel computer cart. We’ll be moving the computer from the library into the loft. As it is, if you put Nina down for a nap/sleep in her room, she can see a person sitting at the computer. But, really, she sleeps in her other crib down in the master bedroom. I sleep on the floor in her room, since I like to actually sleep through the night, and a 3 to 5 a.m. feeding has become the norm lately. Only Alison’s mutant sleeping factor keep her alive.

Robin’s Baby
My cousin Robin had a baby last month. She is either working on her mutant sleeping factor, or turning into a zombie-mama. Looks like mutant sleeping factor to me.

Robin with Lily

Went To Nanny and Papa’s
And by Nanny and Papa, I mean my parents. And no, I never called them that while I grew up, but when mom and dad were moderately younger and my sister had her kid Corey, they decided that the grandma and grandpa monikers were too damning for their early 40s selves.


Modern Day Corey (Nina's cousin) and Tiana, his wife
(This wasn't here, it was at some Tiana relative's 90th birthday.)

Peaches and Cream
Mom fed Nina peaches and Coolwhip. Nina might have liked it. It’s hard to tell.





- posted by Nick Postagulous @ 10:15 AM

 
Dishwasher
Saturday afternoon, as Alison helped pack up her mom’s apartment’s kitchen and moved it over to the new house, I got a call from my dad. He needed 16 pages scanned so he could email them. Rather than scan them per se, I decided I’d head over to their house and use my 3.2 megapixel Nikon’s document copy setting to take pictures of them. It worked great, though I would have preferred some sharper contrast. While we were offloading the data to his computer and he was emailing the documents, we talked about what I did earlier in the day. I washed dishes for about two hours.

Actually, I washed dishes by hand for one hour plus however long the movie Daredevil is. Yahoo Movies says it 1 hr and 42 minutes. So, I washed dishes for nearly three hours. Why? Because when our dishwasher’s pump motor broke, it was loaded with dirty dishes. And since last week had lots of stuff going on with the two inspections of Alison’s mom’s new house and the closing, two dentist appointments, dinner at my parent’s house, and epoxying the new garage floor, we didn’t wash dishes, we filled up both sinks and then a little bit of counter.


Does this outfit make me look fat?

And I didn’t listen to Daredevil while I washed dishes. I listened to the commentary track. It’s funny to hear the writer and one of the producers howl at the bad CGI and horrible, truly horrific city model they have in the meeting with Kingpin. Ouch, when I saw it in the theater, I thought it was supposed to be a model. Nope, it’s supposed to look like a window overlooking NYC. David Letterman has a better fake view.

Well, Dad offered to help me pick up a dishwasher later that day. I called Alison and she said Ok. It wasn’t until I was at Alison’s mom’s new house helping move a recliner that we realized that I didn’t need Alison to help with the dishwasher. I called Dad, but they still wanted to wait so that Mom could hang out with Nina. So we met at our house at five. Actually, Alison was still at her mom’s new house waiting on the garage door opener installers to finish, so we all went over there. Mom hung out with Alison and Nina while Dad and I went to get the dishwasher.

The dishwasher we settled on was the Frigidaire 710. It’s not just 710. There are some numbers before and some numbers behind the 710, but I can remember the numbers and not the letters. DU710XTWW or something. It is the cheapest quiet level 3 dishwasher out there. And, granted, it’s almost as unreliable as a Bosche according to Consumer Reports. But, we’ve had a bottom of the line GE for seven years, with a quietness level of 0 (AKA loud) and it took seven years to die. If the $230 710 lasts seven years, I’ll be pleased. I’ll be installing it myself, probably Thursday. The installation should be nothing. I’ve already turned off the water. It’s just having the power off and still having light. I’ll do it at night so I’ll run an extension cord from another part of the house to see. I’ll also use a flashlight, but I’d prefer more ambient light too.

Coincidentally, repairing our lame cheapo dishwasher would be $100 labor and $130 for the part. So, exactly the same amount of money.

Moving Day
Today is bigtime moving day for Alison’s mom. The movers are getting all the stuff out of the big storage building. Alison and Tom, and probably me when I get off work, will be moving the stuff out of the small storage building. Alison got all the stuff out of her mom’s TDY apartment last night. Checkout is at 11 a.m. today.

Alison has taken off work today. So has Tom. I don’t think Brad will be much help. No smirch against Brad’s rep, but teenagers have a longstanding tradition of standing and not doing on moving days. But, really, today shouldn’t be that bad. It’s the rest of the week/month/year while she gradually gets all the stuff out of boxes and figures out where to put it. The situation is particularly interesting since Alison’s mom moved out of a 2600 square foot house into a 1531 square foot house and didn’t get rid of any furniture. If she does actually set up the great room the way she’s talking about, I’ll have to take a picture of it since it will be crammed full of furniture. Literally, two sofas facing each other not two feet apart.

- posted by Nick Postagulous @ 7:52 AM

 

- posted by Nick Postagulous @ 8:23 AM

 


Agent Orange
One of the lame things about living near a cotton field is that around this time of year they spray a defoliant on it so that all the leaves drop off and the harvester gets cleaner cotton when it rips all the stuff up. I realize it’s a cost effective measure and helps the farmer not go out of business (since farmers don’t earn money really, they just pay debt and eat), but the side effects of this stuff is very lame. Headaches, sometimes sinus or ear infections, achy stuffy head, sneezing, and slight body aches are normal. The old cliché, “Earthquake Hits Valley, Women and Children hurt most” is almost true in this case. I think that Nina and Alison are having the roughest time. But that may be because they are home more than I am.

That stuff has to be bad for you. I mean, besides the obvious temporary side effects.


Scare the Kid to Death
About a month ago, Nina got scared to death by my Thai Demon mask that used to hang over the entrance to our master bedroom. Now that mask is stored in the closet. But it’s understandable that the tusks, fangs, bulging eyes, horns, and golden flames coming off the top of the face could upset a one year old.

Yesterday, when I was checking to see if the problem with the clothes dryer was the duct leading outside being clogged or the heating element, Nina got scared to the point of shaking again. I had pulled the dryer out and hooked a piece of panty hose to the flexible conduit thingy so that the air didn’t have to go through the tubing in the walls. Then we dried a load of clothes. The clothes dried faster then they had in months, so it’s clogged stuff in the walls.

At one point, when I was checking halfway through the drying cycle on the temperature of the air, it was really hot, so I told Alison to come feel. Alison happened to be carrying Nina at the time and when Alison got partially behind the dryer which was running and bent over, it scared Nina bigtime.

With the sick feeling from the defoliant, and then getting horrified, Nina had a tough time falling asleep. She went down fine enough, but woke up 40 minutes later and I held her and she fell asleep on me. The same happened shortly later, and I held her and then she wanted Alison to hold her. Alison and Nina both fell asleep on our king sized bed. I woke Alison and put the sleeping Nina into her crib.


Too Much Family, Not Enough TV
Alison and I managed to watch Big Brother, but weren’t able to watch The Amazing Race finale. In my opinion, dumb ol’ Cowboy would have won BB5 if he just could realize what his strategy was. He said it was “being himself”, which may be true, but saying “I served everyone. I gathered information and reported back. And mostly I aligned myself to the Head of Household at all times. I played the game under the radar and convinced everyone that I wasn’t a threat. I didn’t lie to anyone the entire time either. Personal charisma aside, I clearly outplayed Drew, just based on the honesty alone.”

But, alas, dumb ol’ Cowboy didn’t even realize that his strategy was to be an obsequious worm. To him, it was “being himself,” Chason’s dad. Or stepdad, which works better. Because that way you can’t be blamed for Chason’s tragic name. Yikes.

Google Hit
I’m the number one hit for “SARS airbag Miata.” I just wonder what the person was really looking for.

- posted by Nick Postagulous @ 9:09 AM

 
Busy Busy Busy
I’ve been really busy lately, work-wise. These new responsibilities of mine, are really making me evaluate the local radio stations as I drive drive drive all over the place. I’m also testing for hydrogen sulfude at one location. Joy. The thrill of the laptop is totally over. Totally.



Pretty Good Weekend for Tiny Kiddos
Nina was pretty good all weekend. The only thing that seems to be really going on with her is that she is getting sick of Pediasure. Well, it’s only natural since normally kids just can’t stand the stuff anyway. But now that she’s up to 20.5 lbs, maybe they’ll take her off of it. She has about three weeks until her next doctor appt and I’m sure they’ll let us stop doing the Pediasure, or at least cut back. It’s expensive.



Nanny and Papa (Grandma and Grandpa Brockman)
We ate at my parents’ house last night and Nina pretty much scarfed meatloaf, broccoli, and potatoes. She also had a cookie and ice cream. In fact, I think that on Monday, Nina only had only one bottle of Pediasure, but she ate so much random stuff on Sunday and then on Monday, that I wouldn’t expect her to need it.

Half Puffer Fish, Half Chipmunk
Sunday, when she woke up, I fed her some babyfood while Alison was getting ready for church. Nina did something odd. We had the Boohbah on, so as to brainwash her into inactivity while both of us were getting ready, and I kept it on while I fed her. She was staring at the TV and I was spooning Something Beef and Something Something Dumplings babyfood into her mouth. But after a while, she was trancelike looking at the Boohbah and didn’t eat anymore, but would still open her mouth for me to put in more food. Soon, she was in full chipmunk mode, cheeks a-puffed. I stopped putting food in and she kept staring at the TV. I called to Alison to turn the TV off, and she did. Nina blinked, looked at me, and then started swallowing all the babyfood in her mouth.

She did that again a few minutes later, sans TV. I just covered her eyes for a few seconds and then uncovered them. She did the same. She blinked, looked at me, and then started swallowing the food.



Alison’s Official Title
Alison was pleased that, while in PM worship at church, while we are trying to keep Nina quiet, Nina proclaimed “Mama!” and slammed her head into Alison’s chest. Alison was grinning from ear to ear. I get called Dada all the time thought. I’m that good.

No Pppppppppppppppppt Allowed
We also have now successfully, at least temporarily, gotten rid of one of Nina’s annoying and rude habits. She used to like making I guess what you’d call Raspberry noises. She’d do this when unhappy in her car seat or when she was sick of the food that was currently in her mouth. And she’d keep raspberrying until she got all the food out. Through the harsh saying of “No” twice to her, and pushing her stuffed “cat block” onto her mouth (partially to get her to stop and partially to keep her spit from getting all over her clean dress), and her crying about it with genuine crocodile tears, the bad habit is broken. She now knows that if she doesn’t like the food in her mouth, she can indicate this by holding her tongue out and we’ll napkin it off. The only acceptable protests in the car are whining and crying. Fake crying is not acceptable, and I don’t think that Nina will ever win an Emmy award. At least not while she’s an infant/toddler.

Oh, and she might be a toddler. She does toddle. But she doesn’t toddle very far at one go.

Her new bad habit is trying to chew on her sleeve. Freak.



- posted by Nick Postagulous @ 10:36 AM

 
Note: Short version as blogger ate my stuff.


Ex-Hurricane Ivan
Well, yesterday everyone was freaking out. The radio people were trying to freak everyone out. The TV people were trying to freak everyone out. And generally, I think about 18% of people were freaked out.

Others, like me, were irritated that people were driving very slowly on the interstate, very slowly on the parkway, and it was only sprinkling all day. Heck, I had bought into the doom n’ gloom weather forecasts the day before had had myself all mentally, and DVD, prepared to do my stormwater sampling, with my new laptop with the DVD drive keeping me entertained. But no, it rained too slow.

Ivan Hits...Like a Girl
During Survivor last night, Ivan hit us. We’re about 400 or so miles inland, so we just got rain and wind. It did manage to shake our dish enough that Survivor hiccupped when they were doing the pig dance stuff. All my neighbors, after being warned by the media that fire was going to rain down from heaven, did take their garbage cans into their garage so we didn’t have any projectiles flying around. I did see two downed trees. One was a bradford pear, so it might have been the case that some car’s headlights had hit on one side more than the other and the extra mass of the photons wrenched half the tree off. Or a baby bird broke wind on it. Bradford pears are like that. The other was a rotten pine stalk, a very formerly pine tree, which basically fell down into tiny rotten pine chunklets all over Slaughter Rd.

I also saw a rat run across Vermont Rd on my way into work. I brake for fat, dark brown forest rats. I never would have suspected.


Reinforcing a Slipping Baba Mmm
Since Alison is working four days a week, and Alison’s mom who babysits Nina isn’t 100% what with the wheelchair and all, Nina’s toilet usage habits have been in steep decline. In fact, Alison can’t remember the last time Nina actually pooped in the toilet.

Now, I’m sure most of you would think that for a 14 month old, them not being able to use the toilet is fine and good. But Nina was taught by her Chinese foster mother to use the toilet. We continued that, but I think the reinforcement they used, however you do that, we aren’t continuing. Plus, Alison’s so busy, I’m so busy, and Alison’s mom’s so limited in her movement. And, I don’t think the little potty seat that Alison’s mom put on the floor since she can’t get to the toilet with both Nina and her wheel chair is percieved my Nina to be a real toilet.

So, yesterday, without Nina needing a change, I walked her into the bathroom that’s been set up for her, unsnapped her romper-thing, and helped her take her diaper off. Nina then walked over to the toilet, put her hand inside it, and peed on the floor.

We’ll have to work on that.

- posted by Nick Postagulous @ 9:05 AM

 
Superfrog TNT
Tuesday was a pretty good day. Most of the monitors that I visited were functioning correctly and I figured out the best way to set up the laptop, etc, in my work van so that I can get everything out the side sliding door. But the event that put it over the top, from being a day spent mostly outside (due to my new responsibilities at work) in nice weather, to a just plain cool day, was me rescuing the tree frog that was in a manhole.

The name of the manhole is 5S1E02031, which translated to five townships south of the Tennessee border, one township east of the meridian of the state (easily found at Meridian Street downtown), in section 02, manhole number 31. My database doesn’t indicate it’s depth, since obviously the wusses who we contracted with to survey all this were scared to get in the thing. I don’t get in manholes either. And I’ll fight tooth and nail if they ever try to get me confined space entry certified.

So, I get out to this manhole and pop the top, while accidentally stepping on an ant hill. The ants start swarming and I’m about to just forget checking the status of the monitor since, hey, ants are mean little cusses, but then I notice the tree frog.

Inside this manhole that is approximately 21 feet deep, on the top of 14 steps, sits a little light greet tree frog. The type of manhole cover for this area is a bolt down. And while it wasn’t bolted down (what’s the point, it weighs 80 lbs and it’s in the middle of nowhere), a bolt down type cover has no vent holes. In other words, before I opened the manhole, it had been in pitch darkness since August 23rd, when it was last opened according to my database.

And when I say steps, these are D shaped rungs that stick out from the concrete walls of the manhole, there were no vertical elements for Superfrog to climb up. Though, if he is able to climb up the rough concrete sides, that makes the story quite a bit less impressive, because if he can’t climb up the concrete sides, then he, in total darkness, jumped up 16 inches onto the next step, 14 times.

I’m thinking he can climb the concrete.

Well, in any case, after I see him, I realize that I have to rescue him. I used to rescue turtles crossing the street, or really help them across, quite often. But I haven’t been able to rescue any animals all this year. Until Tuesday that is.

I don’t think the frog could see yet, as he had been in total darkness for who knows how long and now he had sunlight streaming down on him. I just scooped him up, and it was then that I saw the underside of his legs were bright yellow, and let him jump off into the weeds next to the soybean field.

Two Other Frogs
There was only one other time that I rescued frogs. It was a big frog and a little frog that were down a 4 inch PVC pipe leading to a water valve in someone’s front yard. I don’t even know why I looked down the PVC pipe, well, maybe because I didn’t know why there was an open PVC pipe sticking up in the middle of a person’s yard. They were harder to get out, but I rescued them. Yay. This was about 5 years ago.

Superfrog, Superfrog, Who Art Thou?
I looked on the internet and couldn’t find any frogs matching the description of the frog I saw. The two that I rescued out of that little pipe were actually toads. Boring old toads that I don’t feel like looking up the type. But, dang it, I want to find a picture of the kind I rescued.

- posted by Nick Postagulous @ 8:39 AM

 

Blue Spots! Landing On My Head!
During the manditory standing around drinking coffee period of my work day, where I have to listen to the Director talk about college football ad infinitum, one of the guys that doesn’t actually work in our building said something that got everyone worked up. Worked up about looking at the back of my head, in fact. He said that I had blue spots on my head.

I told him he was full of crap, but then he got his cohort he brought along to verify. I went and looked in the mirror in the bathroom, but I couldn’t see anything out of the ordinary. But Dusty, we’ll call him that since it’s his real name, insisted that I had at least two blue spots on my head. And they kind of glowed. I told him he was full of crap again.

So, Dusty gets Labman to look at my head. I say that if there is anything on my head, it’s just sunscreen, and that’s white. They said this wasn’t white, it was blue, and it glowed a little. Labman sided with them and said I had blue spots on my head. And now I was getting the info that they distinctly didn’t look like bruises, that they were very light blue, and they were iridescent, though I think they were using the word incorrectly and actually meant incandescent.

Iridescent
SYLLABICATION: ir•i•des•cent
ADJECTIVE:
1. Producing a display of lustrous, rainbowlike colors: an iridescent oil slick; iridescent plumage.
2. Brilliant, lustrous, or colorful in effect or appearance: “The prelude was as iridescent as a prism in a morning room” (Carson McCullers).

Incandescent
SYLLABICATION: in•can•des•cent
ADJECTIVE:
1. Emitting visible light as a result of being heated.
2. Shining brilliantly; very bright. See synonyms at bright.
3. Characterized by ardent emotion, intensity, or brilliance: an incandescent performance.

Carson McCullers is a Dork
I copied those directly from American Heritage dictionary at Yahoo. So, Carson’s iridescent prelude...that’s not me writing that drivel.

I’m a Polar Bear
Then, they asked TC, and TC confirmed that he could detect some sort of glowing, but it was very light blue, and hard to see. How comforting, my head glows, but it’s not that blue. I went to the bathroom to see if I could wash whatever might be on my head off. In other words, I washed all my sunscreen off. And guessy what, still the peanut gallery insisted that I had a glowy blue head. Or, according to dusty, I had brilliant blue plumage.

Ah, but there is the key that makes it all fall together. The suggestions on my part as to what it was were bruises, gray hair, sunscreen, glowing blue dandruff, die from a hat (but my only two hats I’ve worn recently are red or black, but you never know, black is often a very deep purple). After Susan was in awe of my shining blue visage, I finally got TC to actually theorize about what’s going on.

He looked at my head and said that it looked like it was my hair reflecting the light of the fluorescent bulbs. Yeah. Duh. I said that to Dusty first thing, or maybe second. Susan then said that if I let my hair grow out, it would be a really pretty color. Yes, but a horrible receding hair line configuration. It would look like I had a petite hamster sleeping on my forehead.

My gray hair isn’t white, and it isn’t gray, it actually has no pigment in it at all. It’s clear. I’m like a polar bear.


Only pic I could find of the sides of my head
- posted by Nick Postagulous @ 8:31 AM

 

Daddy’s Girl
Earlier in the week, Nina finally hit 20 lbs. In fact, today, Alison weighed her and she was 20.5. What this means is that since she’s over a year old, and now over 20 lbs, she can face forward in a carseat. So, Friday, after work, I picked her up from her Grandmother Jackson’s TDY apartment and took her home in the Miata for the first time.

To say that Nina loved it would be a severe understatement. Rarely, if ever, have I seen her have such a long, sustained, laughing and whooping (but not true whoops, but baby whoops). I even took a slightly longer way home so that we’d have more trees and hills on the way home.

Sense of Accomplishment
Since the Neenster is prone to Miata these days (weekdays minus Wendnesday), I had to fix one of the, shall we say, little flaws my car has. You see, the car is eleven years old, manufactured March 1993 as a 1994 model, and things get old and break. In this case, it was the “gaskets” at the top front of the side windows. They have little rips along the inside, the unseen part, and when it rains, they fill up with water. And when I start driving, when I do my first hard acceleration, it pees on my shoulder. And when I do my first braking, hard or not, it pees on my knee. So, I had to fix the gaskets. I used clear silicone caulk type stuff.

After that, which was done with Nina sleeping in her stroller next to me in the garage, I changed out a hallway light. And then after that, I put Nina’s ceiling fan in her room. Handy me, eh?

Resident Evil: Doodoo Stacked on Poopoo
I liked the first Resident Evil movie enough to buy the DVD (used). It’s a great show, background music by Marylin Manson, and my favorite genre cliché, elite military team. Oh, I’m all about the elite military team, as long as they are fighting zombies or aliens, and they all die die die.

This movie is not only discombobulated, which is in MS Word’s spell check, but it’s just plain dumb. And, there really aren’t too many zombies in it. It starts with mucho zombie action, but they intentionally go out of their way to have no plot revealed. Was this supposed to make me feel suspense? It didn’t. And then, stuff just didn’t make sense.

If you are an alleged elite military team fighting zombies, why not get on top of a building and bring in more ammo via helicopter. What they do in this is stand in the middle of the street and run out of ammo, get bit, etc. Uh, let me hint you a little here; the Zombie Nation will never win ladder climbing at the Olympics. (Uppity up up!)

Then, about the time that Nemesis shows up and kills all the interesting characters we’ve just met, some plottyness starts. Plot 1: Kill Nemesis. Then plot two, which is stupid, starts. Plot 2: Pick up bad-guy-turned-good’s daughter from school.

Never, if you are in an American cinema movie, ever challenge the turf of zombie middle-schoolers. American cinema will not let you shoot kids. I’m sorry, angst ridden zombie youth will eat you. And skinless dogs will chase you out of the building, you’ll discover that T-virus infected Milla Jovovich smokes, and that gas explosion you planned will finally “finish becoming.” But who are we kidding, like that wuss explosion could kill a zombie dog with no skin. Hey, something happened that made his skin all fall off, and probably worse stuff than your one-step-higher-than-a-grease-fire kitchen antics. Though, kudos for hitting a skinless doberman with a frying pan. First time I’ve ever seen that. I’ll cherish it.

Then we get to lame as crap plot 3: Don’t get killed by the guy who for some reason wants lots of people to die in the town. See, he’s trying to cover up the fact that the T-virus got out. And, hey, ruin the end for you, he succeeds posthumously. But what about all the people who evacced the city at the beginning, don’t they know the truth?

Oh, and Plot 1, forget that, Milla fights Nemisis and then they’re good buds. Plot 2 was accomplished, but the dude got killed and zombified faster than you can well, read this long rambing sentence.

At then end of this movie, that made Terminator 3 look like high art, they set up some lame crap so they can have a third movie…EVEN THOUGH THEY NUKED ALL THE ZOMBIES.

Especially crap anti-kudos goes to the “Milla can outrun a helicopter’s ability to aim its machine gun” and “Milla drops her gun and catches it to shoot the guys who told her to drop it”. Why? Because I just saw those two scenes during a documentary of the Dreamcast. They were in Resident Evil: Code Verinica.

Oh, but the sucktasticly most sucko suck suck scene was when Milla crashed her Harley through the groanfully bad Jesus Christ Surfer Superstar stained glass, and then shot it so the explosion would kill a quick zombie (they’re different) that had moments before been dodging bullets. Obviously, it can’t dodge motorcycles. And that other one can’t dodge crosses.

Moderately amusing was that the data screens at the labs show a Milla with actual breasts, and when we see her naked, she actually has no breasts. I was like, “Who put that boy in that tank full of zombie water?”

If you liked the first RE movie, skip this one. If you didn’t see, or didn’t like, the first RE, well, definitely avoid this, but the DVD is worth a rent just for the documentary on Marylin Manson doing the background music.

Oh…oh…and the girl that had to be picked up from George Washington Zombie Elementary spoke with the same exact voice as the Red Queen did in RE1. Boooo!

I could go on forever. Just wait until I freak out when, rumored to be ultra-sucky, Blade III comes out.

- posted by Nick Postagulous @ 1:14 AM

 

Mixed Feelings
After Alison and I got back from China with Nina, my boss told me that in my absence, it was plotted that I would take over a certain part of the work around here. In fact, this is work that we normally contract out, and the new contract is coming up and it’s $500,000, so, regardless of whether I like this work or not, I’m learning valuable skills that I can use when being a scum-of-the-earth contractor after I retire from my lil’ govt job.

There are good parts of it and bad parts. Good part, I have a laptop in addition to my desktop computer. Bad part, it’s for offloading information from monitors out in the field. And the field is dirty. I’m wearing some of it on my jeans right now.

It’s also a little hot out in the field. And the sun hits me in the head and burns me. And grasshoppers laugh at me. Cows look at me and think, “He’s so small. I could kill that human, if it weren’t for his superior technology. Curses!!”

Work Swappin’
I was able to hand off nearly all of the billing that I do. However, that’s only about 8 hrs a month. My new duties take about 20 hours more a week. And sometimes get dirt on my pants. Not only that, but Princess Fluffy and TC, the people that they were mostly handed off to, keep asking me questions about things that they don’t know. Sheesh, you’d think that after I’ve done this for a few years, some of it would just seep through the walls by osmosis.

Fatato Pancake
No, I’m not talking about our belovedly obese and brain-damaged cat, I’m talking about Nina, our belovedly non-obese and non-brain-damaged non-cat child. She finally hit 20 lbs on Tuesday or Wednesday, so now she can ride in the front seat of my car. That really means that she can ride in an front facing baby-seat, which in turn means she can ride in my car.


Nina in rear-facing seat, but same model as I have in mine

Alison and I struggled with the car seat and got it mounted in my car after not a minimum, but not a maximum either, of fuss. Today, I took the car by the govt car baby-seat inspector people at the hospital and they really tighened the hooah out of it. They said I had done a good job, but they’d like to see it tighter.

They agreed with the previous person that Alison had talked to about not disabling the airbags on my Miata. The main reason is that no one will disable them anyway, regardless of wether you get the form that makes it legal from the NHTSA’s website.

When I got back to the office and Alison called me, she asked if they had said anything about the Miata. “They said that it sure was a nice car several times.” Also, one jokingly offered to buy it.

- posted by Nick Postagulous @ 2:35 PM

 

Alison's Posts
These are some of the posts that Alison has posted at the forum made for the people that went to China with us, Group 620.

RE: Shots
I hated watching Nina have blood taken. They had to stick her 4 times to get enough blood. They said it didn't hurt her, that she was just scared. But I thought, who are you guys kidding? I've been stuck many, many times and when you have to search for a vein, that hurts. My sister held her down, the doctor didn't want me to do it, and it seemed to be bonding experience for them. Leeann was the only one that could hold Nina at the beginning.

Has everyone switched to table food?
We are still giving Nina Pediasure. The doctor wants her to gain more weight, and Nina takes 3-4 cans of Pediasure a day. She just nibbles at table food, the doctor thinks Nina knows how much energy she gets out of the Pediasure, so she just doesn't bother with the table food much. She does love peanut butter, though. And refried beans.

Eating Out
Nina is not terribly thrilled about eating out. Or maybe we just don't hit the right times. It seems like she's too hungry or tired when we are eating out. At least there are Cheerios for the times that the food is slow. : ) She's having a terrible time with teething, also, so she can be fussy for hours at a time, and it's just her teeth.

- posted by Nick Postagulous @ 7:39 AM

 

Labor Day Nina
Well, Nina spent labor day hanging out with us, her mommy and daddy. Alison wanted to go to a craft n’ hobby megastore Micheal’s and we did. I think I spent more that Alison did since I got a teddy bear for Nina and three little cookbooks for me, but also one as a stocking stuffer* for Christmas.

The latter half of the day, she was tired. At 3 pm, we put her down for a nap and she cried and cried. See, the problem is that just a little while before, I had her giggling and having tons of fun. After about 20 minutes of crying and us checking in on her, I made the mistake (but only a mistake in hindsight) of getting her out of her crib. The next four hours were her having fun, trying to stay awake when having fun, and then, finally, massive mood swings as she struggled to keep her exhausted little self awake. Once she went down at 7 pm, she slept for a full 12.5 hrs. And, despite all our attempts to baba mmm her with the toilet, she crapped herself. Boo.

*Oh, yeah. This year we’re not doing stocking stuffers. Which means I just wrap this as a normal gift. Not doing stockings has been an ongoing thing with Alison’s side of the family. They always say we aren’t going to do them, and then everyone still buys little bits for each other and we basically do stocking stuffers anyway.

Finally Finished Freedom Fighters
I’ll just say right now, for those who are doing google searches to find out if this game rocks, yes, Freedom Fighters for the PS2 rocks! Woot! But, and it’s a little but, but it is a but, the last mission sucks. Why do I say this? Because I couldn’t find my way around inside the big fortress with walls that all look the same. I couldn’t find out how to get on the roof and raise the stupid flags.

See, I’d already taken out the attack helicopter base, and the supply thing, so basically, I’d driven the alternate universe Ruskies back to their big old fortress. And, then, when storming it with my 13 man team, we just plain ate their lunch. Earlier in the game, I had a harder time getting across a street so I could steal C4 from the Red Scare. Now, I’m wandering hallways full of dead soldiers I killed earlier trying to figure out where to go. Anticlimactic much? Yeah!

Now I am waiting on the game that I ordered last Friday, another squad based shooter, this one called Conflict: Desert Storm. I also read about one called Ghost Recon, but the problem with getting games that aren’t 5/5 stars type games is that, well, I really expect my games to be perfect. Crappy crap really irritates me.

Oh, and I did get the absolutely brilliant Two Towers game in and played some of that. It is the most cinematic, beautiful, and action filled game that I totally suck at. Heck, I played for maybe 20 minutes. Me playing as Legolas looks like a bad I Love Lucy skit or something. Just plain sad.

- posted by Nick Postagulous @ 2:53 PM

 
FWD: Color Tee Vee!
From my NASA Contact:

Last night I watched Bush's acceptance speech. At the end, when the balloons were coming down, Jim Lehrer said, "Those balloons are red, white, and blue, for those of you without color TV." Three questions:

1.) What color would you expect the balloons to be?
2.) Who cares what color they are?
3.) In what century is Jim Lehrer living?

Perhaps the typical PBS viewer still hasn't made the switch from B/W.

- posted by Nick Postagulous @ 1:37 PM

 
I Changed My Comment Provider
Or, I should say, the service that allows anyone to make comments. Rather than use Haloscan, which is very nice, I'm using Blogger's internal commenter thing. I realize that, to most people, my blog is just a webpage, but to me, it's always an interface with blogger. I rarely go to my own page, except to use the list of links to blogs over on the right. Blogroller is handling that for me, and keeping my template, which I never understood completely, a little less cluttered.

And I added a Links thing
Now, I actually have three different blogs at blogger, but only one is hosted at my bellsouth account (this one). The other two are at blogspot. They are Word I Had To Look Up and Links et al. I say "et al" because sometimes I plan on quoting stuff on it too. BTW, if any of my internet pals would like for me to make them a member on the Words blog so they could add words they looked up, just let me know. I'm always one to learn new words, or at least be momentarily exposed to them for novelty value.

Parents Came Over
It was the most interactive visit too. They brought chicken strips, cheesecake, and a used trifle. I picked up some bread from Publix, also potato salad and cole slaw. Alison opened and warmed up a can of baked beans. When I tasted the potato salad, it tasted wrong. Like barfy wrong. So I only ate chicken, bread, and cheesecake. No one at Alison's sad little beans but her.

[Note to Alison: My family doesn't really eat baked beans. Not a baked bean eating family.]

Dad, Nina, and I went on a micro-walk. And generally mom and dad interacted with Nina and us until around 8:10 or so. Then, when they left, Nina pretty much dove into bed and, according to Alison, slept fretfully all night. I think that tooth that is coming in is still coming in, despite it looking like it's already in.

U.S. Mulch
Back when Alison worked for the League of Extraordinary Business Stooges, she told me that the company that took over the land where a garden center used to be, U.S. Mulch was actually named after the Owner of it. His name was Ulysses S. Mulch, but everyone just assumed the US means United States. "Really," I said. No, she was just joking with me. Hmm.
- posted by Nick Postagulous @ 8:26 AM

 

Cow Troubles Part I
The other day, or week, Alison took a roast out of the freezer and started it thawing. It thawed and thawed. And then, we didn’t put it into the crock pot to cook, because it was so dang dark colored and just plain gone bad. So, Alison threw it out into our standard green 90 gallon garbage can outside.

To add some background to the story, let’s all remember that I was rather sick over the weekend, and I’m not sure I’m over it. I’m nauseous right now when I’m writing this, but then again, I know the rest of the story.

It’s summer here and in the day it gets warm. And in the evening it gets cool and moist. I woke up on Monday late. I’m supposed to have my Palm wake me at 5:30, then I set a snooze on it for ten minutes. Then I get up and get ready and the alarm on my watch at 6:20 tells me that I need to go. But I woke up with the 6:20 alarm.

After hurrying to get ready while still dizzy from the sickness, I grabbed the bathroom garbage bags from the master bathroom and the baby changing bathroom and took them out. The big green garbage can looked like it was covered in rice or something.

No, not rice. Hundreds.Of.Maggots.

That kind of thing can really freak you out in the morning. It freaked me out. But, I just went on to work, the end.


Cow Troubles II: The Meat’s Gone Bad!
And speaking of bad meat, and not in the “it’ll make you sick” way, the meat from Wal-Mart totally sucks. It tastes lousy. Really lousy. A guy at work said that Wal-Mart buys up all the beef that no-one else wants. It sure tastes like it.

[Note: warning/foreshadowing the following story has vomiting]

Last night, Alison made hamburger patties with way too much seasoning, on purpose, since it was crappy Wal-Mart meat. She also half-made some Rice-a-roni by not browning it before. It looked all mushy, so we ignored it. I assume that Alison fed it to the garbage disposal. So, our meal consisted of only one little nastyburger patty each. I wolfed mine, which wasn’t that good, but sure was spicy.

Then Alison asked me if the roast beef (deli type, not the maggot in the garbage can type) that we bought last week was good anymore. She said it didn’t smell right to her, but that since I’m the one that can tell if meat is bad best, she wanted me to check it out. And check I did.

I got the package out and smelled it. I couldn’t smell it. It didn’t occur to me that I had spice face and couldn’t smell anything. I smelled and smelled at it. Declared that it was partly frozen, and ate a little of it. “I think it’s freezer burned,” I said as I put a little more in my mouth.

[3...2...1...]

“It’s bad!” I said as I started spitting what was in my mouth into the sink. My body took over and made me vomit out the bad roast beef. Oddly, my body didn’t feel the need to get rid of the lame Wal-Mart beef that I’d eaten just four minutes before.

And thus concludes my nasty beef stories. I would appreciate a quiet golf clap. Thank you.

- posted by Nick Postagulous @ 8:06 AM

 

A Little Irritated
I probably shouldn’t gripe about this as a few people from work do come in here, but man, I’m irritated at Mountain Man. Not for anything he did to me, though. But he went to a restaurant yesterday and when he was telling us about it, he made a point to say that the waitress was “well spoken.” I’m also sure he thought he was being politically correct by telling us, about four times, that the place was “very ethnic.” Man, that stuff ticks me off. It’s the so called soft bigotry that we’re surrounded by in the south.

I also get people making Chinese jokes at me, I suppose to test the waters and see if I’m a bigoted white like they are. Really ticks me off.

I’m sure that Mountain Man thought he was being generous by saying the waitress was well spoken (implied, “not like the others”), but how can he not know that’s such a clichéd racist remark. I mean, duh.

One of the rules that we have at home is if the ethnicity of the person is not part of the story, don’t bring it up. Here in the south, though, the ethnic caste system is always part of the story with some people. Heck, that’s why I told a brief rundown of the story in Menace II Society yesterday to someone without mentioning that all the people in Watts are, in fact, black people. If I did, they wouldn’t want to hear about it.

Fussy Bunny
Yesterday, Nina was fussy. Rather fussy. She fussed and fussed. She fussed in the morning and fussed in the evening, all over this land. After crying in bed for a long time, we got her up and let her stay up for a while. She ended up getting in bed by 9:30.

And I know, everybody will say that we should let her cry. Well, screw that. She’s upset about something. Who’s to say what kind of emotions she’s having. We made sure it wasn’t her teeth, wasn’t food, wasn’t being wet, and wasn’t gas pain. I think it was separation from Alison or me. I think Nina really wants us around a lot more than we’re able to be. With Alison working four days a week, Nina spends a lot of down time over at her Grandmothers. And I say down time, because the activity level is very low over there. I get off work and head over and take her on a walk, but, while I’m pretty fun, she really wants her mommy. When Alison gets there, Nina is very happy to see her, but then cries when she has to be separate from her, physically, just for the drive home.

Then, she’s fine, until we try to put her in bed. Only if we get her totally exhausted will she stay down. So, maybe we need to either let her stay up later (like we did last night) or not let her nap as much during the day (though that makes for crappy afternoons like yesterday).

But, you have to cut her some slack. On Saturday, it will be the two month anniversary of us taking her away from the person she thought was her mother.


Fu Pei Xi and her Foster Mother


- posted by Nick Postagulous @ 9:32 AM