Nick Postagulous
Friday, December 31, 2004
The Girl I Didn't Go To High School With
Well, if you actually read the paragraphs where I start rattling off about diverse interests I have, like lately my interest in how the dude at Face of Tomorrow actually managed to pull off all that cool stuff, you know I've been wanting to do just what I've done above.
That is the composite of faces of girls who were my friends. There were only 16 female faces I collected that matched that criteria who were in my senior class, and I had to eliminate seven of them due to facial angles that hid part of the nose.
Some of these gals I didn't really have contact with in High School. Dead Astronaut High School had about 700 people in my graduating class. Oddly, when I collected pictures of guys and gals who I considered my friends, or friends from the past (and Mike Sloup did graduate with me), I had 16 girls and 34 boys. I'm not sure if I'll do a composite of all 36 guys. I think my next project is either serial killer or other celebrity mugshots.
From bottom to top:
1. Ginny Connell - My best friend in first grade before I met Matt. I didn't have any contact with her in high school, but I always considered her a friend from the past. She has the same birthday as me, October 18, 1968.
2. Samantha Sampson - Also a friend since first grade, but we never really were friends all through grade school, etc. I think we had a class together as seniors though. If she was in a class with me, and we didn't have assigned seats, we'd tend to sit near each other.
3. Dawn Edlin - Another to make the transitions from my Elementary to Middle to High School. I was not even aware she was in my high school, but I think it was around fourth to seventh grade, we were co-worker friends.
4. Sherri Presnel - I worked at Krystal with her when I was 16. Great gal. Didn't really see her at school though.
5. Holly Crocker - Sure, she's pretty and all, but Holly had a great attitude. She's a very happy gal. Though, for some reason, when I think of her, I always remember her bitching about Rick nearly constantly. But in a good way.
6. Tonya Boglio - Tonya is the closest to me putting a girl friend in here, which I chose not to do, as there is no need to irk the wife. But Tonya and I never really were romantically interested in each other. But we would go out to movies when we didn't have anyone else to go out with. I'd not date any of my good gal friends, as that would usually screw things up forever.
7. Tracy Pack - Another really cute, great attitude gal. I wasn't romantically interested in her, except when she would wear that yellow jump suit with the zipper in the front. Ouch. I don't remember the social connections that we knew each other by, but I think she was in lots of my art classes.
8. Angie Young - I think the social connection with her was due to Kasey, possibly a little Rick too. Angie was a great gal in school and ended up really cementing what a great gal she was when she managed to suffer through being married to a cheating drug abuser. Gals, if you don't like the Grateful Dead, don't marry a deadhead.
Gals, if any of you find this on the internet, I hope you don't mind me using your images to make a composite. I liked you all very much, but I'm sure I never said goodbye to any of you.
And that composite gal, she kinda looks like my friend Gary, like, if he had a sister that was hot or something.
Disclaimer: Though I am now 36 years old, I can talk about hot teens without being a perv since they are all as old as me. Plus, the shame of the 80s hair makes it just dorko tragic.
Thursday, December 30, 2004
Beware the Phantom Scarf
My sister made Nina a little mini-scarf for Christmas. But for Nina, since she's a mini-person, it's normal sized. Yesterday, I let Nina see it, and she put it around her neck like I showed her. Then she wrapped it around again. When she wanted it off, she grabbed both ends and pulled.
She was pulling so hard on the ends of the scarf that her arms were shaking. I'm only a few feet away, so I try to get her to stop, as she's working on strangling herself. She was in a panic at this point and I actually had to pry her fingers open to get the thing off her. Her face had turned red in the ten or so seconds that she was choking herself.
Once the scarf was off, she waddled off, singing, as if nothing had happened.
It let me know why you have to keep an eye on these little critters. Who'd think that, given a scarf, the first thing a kid would do is start choking themselves and not know how to stop it.
Otherwise, Nina seems quite smart.
Wednesday, December 29, 2004
Correction: Edlin not Tomlin
Looked through a yearbook. Dawn Edlin was the all around cool gal. Tomlin, not so much. Sorry, Dawn (both). As if either'll ever read this.
In A Funk
And I don't mean a George Clinton/parliament Funkadelic type funk (but do please make my funk the p-funk), but just a cruddy downness. I made a mistake a year and a half ago in a spreadsheet. I just discovered it. It has affected the real world. And I'm sick of jokes about them docking my pay about it. Though The Director did tell me not to worry, that Tim Turkeystealer has managed to pull off the most expensive loss ever. A quarter of a million dollars in a vehicle wreck. Yowza.
Oh, and I do have to fix my 19 meg xls file. I've figured out that it would be easier to just fix it, since that way I don't have to remake the graphs.
Facial Composite One
With my new software that can morph multiple faces together, I have tried it out. Now, I'm nowhere near as good as the guy who runs Face of Tomorrow, but I also just grabbed some pictures off my Pbase site rather than going through several gigs of pictures I have at home.
The nose and eyes in this are a little botched. I forgot that when doing this you need to use either diffuse lighting or flash, and not strong sunlight. I didn't realize why, but it's the shadow from Nina's foster mother that makes the composite girl's nose have a bulge. I also obviously didn't center the node in the middle of the pupils exactly. Symmetry is so important in facial features too.
That image is made up of Nina's foster mom, Alison, my sister, my niece, and my nephew's wife. I also did another test one using photos of Sarah Michelle Gellar, Eliza Dushku, and Princess Amadala, I suppose in rabid geek frenzy. The composite really isn't that interesting. Their faces are quite similar.
I'm thinking for my next one, since this is all playing around even though I call it practice, I might try to find some high res pictures online. I think CBS keeps profiles of all the people who have been on survivor at their site. I could make the Survivor Male Amalgam and the Survivor Female Amalgam. Though I'd leave out Rupert. I just don't think I could place nodes accurately on his beard, and, I'm just sick of seeing him.
Another thought is to use the photocopy mode of my camera to get images from one of my yearbooks. I could composite myself with my friends. Or composite bullies' pictures. Or ex-girlfriends, though I'm not sure what the wife would think about that. Hmm, I wonder if I could get a yearbook from Alison's mom. I could make the freaky late 1940s dude and gal amalgams.
Chinese-er
Since having Nina as my daughter, I keep reading more blogs from people in China and seeking out Chinese stuff on TV. I also loved being over there. People just don't understand when you say it's totally different over there. We are majorly jingoistic here in the US, and we tend to assume when other countries do things different, they are wrong. But Modern China does have it's major flaws, but at least their govt didn't spent all the money that's supposed to go do my social security.
When Dishnetwork adds channels, the replaytv will add those to my listings, even though I actually don't subscribe to them. And there is always heavy turnover in the middle eastern and Indian channels. So, when I did a purge of them this last time, it didn't seem out of the ordinary that CCTV9 was there. I don't get it, so I deleted it.
But I do get it. I went to Dishnetwork today to change the debit card that they automatic draft off since it was on Alison's and that ends in January. When I was there, I decided to try to remove the Encore Movie Pack. It's a secret package they don't advertise. Seven movie channels for $5 a month, but all the stuff is old. We never watch it. I couldn't remove it, and then got sidetracked seeing what is the smallest package that I'd still have CourtTV and G4TechTV. It was then that I found out that my package, America's Top 120, has CCTV9 in it. Woot.
Me, Russian Mafia? Nyet!
I had a message on the machine when I got home. Visa wanted to check some unusual purchases I'd made. They were the two transactions with AllofMP3, which happened in Moscow. I'm glad they checked. It was interesting that they were not $10 and $25 like I had specified, but $10.10 and $25.26. I guess the exchange rate changed a little, since these were actually done in rubles really.
I am very pleased that I can get supercheap music, legally, by buying it in Russia and downloading it. Absolutely brilliant.
Tuesday, December 28, 2004
Chauffeur or Fur Trapper
I just found out that my nineteen meg Excel file has some pretty tragic flaws. Massively tragic. Like, maybe it would be easier to start over and make a new one tragic. It is too late to start my career as a highly paid rich person? Maybe a rock star or corrupt motivational speaker?
When I was in seventh grade, we had some bogus vocational aptitude test, but rather than looking at our skills, it asked what we liked to do. They ran the computer program based on my bubble sheet and it said I should be a Fur Trapper. Since I had been one of the first people to have their sheet taken, I did it again and took out some of the more loner-like answers. Then, it said I should be a Chauffeur.
What Ever Happened To Joey Ruey?
I was thinking the other day about people who were, not necessarily friends, but acquaintances at school when I was growing up. Some of my favorite co-workers in elementary school seem to have dropped off the planet.
Mike Sloup was a classic. I sincerely hope the story he told about doing a ventriloquist act in a talent show is true. He had a bowl of water, and sang Mammy's Little Baby Loves Shortnin' Bread, as he dipped the bread into the water and then fed it to the dummy. Oh, the horror, the horror. Also, Mike and I were in the Carmine Infantino hate club, though I really didn't read Flash comics. But you didn't need to read them to realize that Carmine's artwork totally sucked and was ruining a comic series.
Ann Wagner was a good co-worker in fifth grade. I probably had quite a crush on her, but don't really recall it taking up lots of my time thinking about her, so maybe not. But we sat opposite each other. She is a lot like Alison's mother. Very nice and polite, despite the random crap that goes on around. She was almost one of the popular set of girls, but alas, even though she did get her breasts early (which is better than being in the masons or a debutante as far as lifelong popularity goes) she didn't have that cheerleader air that, say, Stacy Hodges or Tracy Holiday or any of the other uberpopular gals had.
I actually think that Scott Nelson went to high school with us, but Dead Astronaut High School was so large you never really saw people. I was surprised when I ran into Hunter Johnson outside Atlanta Bread Company and found out that he did, in fact, go to high school with me.
And those twins, Mark and David Something, what ever happened to them?
As far a Joey Ruey, I think he must have moved or something around sixth grade. I don't remember much about him, but he was a pretty cool guy.
Oh, and I can't forget Dawn Tomlin. Very cool chick. I don't remember seeing her after around seventh grade. Wait...do I even have that name right. Not the short gal that was the new girl in fourth grade (and what a phenomenon that event was...a new person..holy cow!) but the sandy blonde headed almost-tomboy.
Before I met Matt Sisk, who was my best friend through all grades, my best friend was...crap...I just had her name and I've forgotten it. Jenny...Something. Connel? Conners? Crap.
I wonder how many tracking cookies Classmates.com will put on my machine.
Stunted Dream
I love little cars. Heck, it may be totally wrong, but I'd love to have a 1997 Geo Metro Lsi hatchback. I think they totally rock, but just aren't that sporty. And now, we're in kind of a Renassance of dinky cars. Suzuki got in the market early with the Aveo. Or is it Areo. Well, whichever, Chevy has the other one, which is a Daewoo. Toyota really raised the bar with the Xa and Xb Scions. I thought I'd really like the xB, but it ends up I am quite fond of the xA.
But what has me thinking about this total coolness, is that Honda is bringing the Fit to the US, but hopefully under a different name.
But there's the rub. Not only can I not justify buying a little dinko car for over $10k, but with the Miata, I've been totally spoiled. Other cars handle and accelerate like cows. Moo.
Sometimes I really think about biting the bullet (and the extra money it takes to change cars) and picking up something more dad like. The xA or an Echo. Ooh, or a 1994ish Civic and them modding the heck out of it.
But that's the rub, if I spent thousands dollars on modifications (and I never would), I might be able to get one of those cars to behave almost as good as my Miata is straight out of the box.
Also, if I didn't have the Miata, what matchbox cars would I have sitting under my monitor at work.
Monday, December 27, 2004
Nutshelly Christmas Eve
Friday, which would be Christmas eve, we went over to my parents house and Nina and my mom decorated Christmas cookies. It was a exercise in micromanaging, and Nina got a little frustrated.
The funniest part of that day was when my mom, not intending to string these words together since she was referring to her blowing her nose but Nina dancing, said "Dance around and blow your nose." Nina stopped dancing and proceeded to start blowing air out through her nose, as if she were blowing her nose, but sans tissue, and also with her hands by her side (because she never holds the tissue when she blows her nose). Once a tissue was rushed to her, she stopped this horrific display.
It was also that day she learned to say Bye-bye from my parents. It may have been that day when she said "take a bath" while taking a bath. On Sunday, when Alison told Nina that she was going to take a shower, Nina said "bath."
That night Nina opened her presents from us. Or we opened them for her, as she was a little scared of ripping paper. Her first attempts to eat the play food we gave her were pretty funny. Then she settled into walking around with her little red bowl with a few plastic Pringles in it. Yes, you have to buy name brand fake food.
Nutshelly Christmas
We woke up, got ready, and got over to my parent's house around nine. My sister showed up shortly after and we had a fingerfoody breakfast and then opened presents. Nina liked the marble run, really a ball run, that Kelley gave her the most. Nina got very tired toward the end and then fell asleep in the car on the way home.
After Nina woke up, we had a few hours until we needed to be at Alison's mom's house. Unfortunately, Nina didn't' want to take a bottle. By the time we were over at Alison's mom's house, starting around 5:15, Nina started going into full meltdown mode. She was tired, she was hungry, and she didn't want her bottle because, at least in her mind, she was having too much fun. Or really, the potential for having fun was all around her, but she was very frustrated with everything. We resorted to driving a loop in the car and having her take a bottle. She did, and the rest of the night was pretty good.
It was over there that Nina got her prized toy microwave. Now she has something to nuke her plastic food with. My parents, earlier that day, gave Nina a stove-eye thing, and now she had a complete cooking thingy. Well, no oven, but they are so non-interactive.
Nina flopped into bed when we got home.
The Day after Christmas
In theory, Sunday would be the day that Nina would be able to recover from the abruptions to her schedule. But such was not the case. She didn't fall asleep in the car on the way home from church. I think it was the sun in her eyes. And after starting her nap late, my parents then called up and invited themselves over at two. Alison hussled to get the house less cluttery, but I told her to stop worrying about it.
Nina woke up about 10 minutes before they showed up, crying. She had gotten tangled in her blankets and this may have caused nightmares too. She was really upset for while. We put on Baby Beethoven, and that pacified her. When Kelley, Corey, Tiana, Mom and Dad showed up, Nina was initially very happy to see them all. Tiana got Nina a great little baby stroller for her doll.
However, after about 20 minutes, Nina started to go into meltdown mode. Rather than being loud about it though, she wanted me to hold her. No one else but me either. Occasionally she'd want down to look at something, or to be handed to her Mommy, but that would be for less than a minute and then she'd want me to hold her again.
She fell asleep on the way to church and nearly slept all through the service. She woke at 5:45, and after we left, went by an ATM, got some McDonald's, and got home, she went straight to bed at 6:30. She slept until this morning at 5:20. And though Alison was too tired to want to get up, Nina was in a great mood.
What did I get?
Katamari Damacy (pronounced Damashi), Front Mission 4, Silent Bomber, and Gladius as far as Playstation games. Migraine by Oliver Sacks and Digital Photography Hacks, as books go. Literally pounds of Laffy Taffy and Bit-o-Honey's. The Black Hawk Down Soundtrack (which I feel a little bad, since the song I'd been wanting off that for years I had bought off AllofMP3 for 2.7 cents the day before). A clock radio with presets to take to work. And $100 from my parents.
And me, with a stack of even more playstation games, have no idea what I want to buy. I was going to get the Sandisk Cruzer Micro (512mb), but my lame old 128 mb drive is actually not too shabby. I mean, I have the best kind of coffee maker. Excellent coffee. Overflowing books I still haven't read. Ditto on the PS2 games. Several tactical flashlights.
I think I may buy blank CDs and a storage system. But there are only so many hours in the day I can listen to music.
Oh, and I forgot to mention, I got another fake suede shirt. This one is gray with just a hint of a mossy color.
Thursday, December 23, 2004
Yes, Virginia, There Really is a William Shatner
I probably won't update over the Christmas weekend. Or if I do it'll just be gloating about all the music I'll be importing from Russia via AllofMP3, which I signed up to last night.
Tomorrow afternoon, we'll go to my parent's house and socialize. They have a Vesper Service, which is odd as they are baptists and that's a Catholutheran thing, I think. And Vesperness starts at 5:00, so we'll be out of there by 4:30 or so.
We head back over there Saturday morning. I figure we'll be there around 8:30 or so, as my sister is supposed to show up at nine. That'll mean she had to leave her house at 4:30. Yuck. We'll head out around 11, and see if we can preserve Nina's schedule a little with her nap which usually starts at 11.
That evening, which I hope means starting at four, we'll go to Alison's mom's house and Tom et al will come over. Nina has been wanting to go to sleep earlier, but I'm sure since Brad, her favorite cousin, will be there, she'll have no trouble staying awake.
Oh, and I know there isn't really a William Shatner. We just pretend for the kid's sake.
Communication Breakdown
Yesterday afternoon, after I picked up Nina, was lots of fun. We watched some of a Play with Me Sesame and then played on the stairs. We played on the stairs for about 40 or so minutes. She really likes playing on the stairs, but, since it is tiring for us big people, we generally try not to do that so much. However, I have recently taken the initial steps in turning into a fatato pancake, so anything resembling exercise is a good thing. Especially when it's just sitting on stairs.
Nina didn't fuss, meaning saying "uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh", at all when it was just me and her. However, when Alison got home, Nina started being a regular pain.
She wanted in the cubbord. And she wanted picked up. We did both. Once the cubbord was open, she wanted to smell the spices. Sure, that's fun for a few minutes. But she was grunting displeasure that I wasn't able to instantaneously switch from cardamom to Jamacian Jerk seasoning to apple pie spice. So, forget it. There is less fussing involved in just not catering to her.
With hindsight, the puzzle peices fall into place easily. When we played on the stairs, she kept lying down. Her formula is stored in the cubbord and when we first opened it, she didn't point right away to the spices, but realized they were there and got sidetracked. It was only when Nina, after taking 3 oz of Ensure Plus, lay a blanked on the floor in front of the couch and lie down on it that Alison figured it out.
Nina wanted a bottle and to go to bed. At five. So, Alison put her to bed while I ran a frozen turkey over to Alison's mom's house. Nina did wake up within 30 minutes though. And even though she'd drank 7 oz at three, and then 3 oz at five, she then drank another seven ounces at 6:30. Hungry kiddy. However, since we played the entire time, we didn't eat apples or any of the stuff we normally do.
Backward Charity Giving
I had wanted to load up a lot of Nina's old toys and give them to charity before December started. I didn't get around to it. However, knowing Nina's relatives, and us for that matter, she's going to be swimming in new toys before the end of the week. It'll be then when we start ditching old stuff she's not interested in. So, I guess the needy kids will get some toys the week after Christmas.
Pagan Stuff
I heard that there was some school in New Jersey or somewhere that wouldn't allow a Christmas tree in their lobby. Now, really, I'm neither here nor there on wasting education funds on decorations, but the school administration said they couldn't have it because it was a christian thing. Uh, no. The tree is part of the good ol' pagan solstice stuff. You know, yule log and revelling, and gorging yourself. It was those rascally catholics who decided that the birth of the Christ was going to be placed there, to hijack the revelling holiday (which in our culture just moved back a week to the new year).
(Yeah, like, don't they watch the History Channel Christmas specials?)
I mean, besides calculation off the time that John the Baptist's dad served in the temple, etc etc, do you really think that the Roman govt was stupid enough to hold a census requiring attendance during the middle of the rainy season?
And the tree thing isn't a new thing either:
Jeremiah 10:2-4: "Thus saith the LORD, Learn not the way of the heathen, and be not dismayed at the signs of heaven; for the heathen are dismayed at them. For the customs of the people are vain: for one cutteth a tree out of the forest, the work of the hands of the workman, with the axe. They deck it with silver and with gold; they fasten it with nails and with hammers, that it move not." (KJV).
See, that's why I have a nine foot prelit artificial tree. Heck, I'd like to have one of those tacky white frosted ones, with fiber optic, and with a robotic Predator angel with motion sensing lazer pointer.
Wednesday, December 22, 2004
Face of Tomorrow
I followed a link to this guys work, and I'm really impressed. So much so that I spent a lot of my idle (driving, etc) time thinking of ways to use those cheap, free morphing programs to do this with different faces. However, it would be very time intensive, but I might eventually blend all Alison's and my immediate relatives into composite male and female faces.
Though arguably I think people would say that Miss Composite Bondi Beach Sydney or Miss Composite Pamplona Spain would be the most beautiful, my brain is most attracted to Miss Composite Amsterdam Holland. She just seems to have more personality.
I've always been fascinated with the faces that come from averaging. It removes the symmetry errors and any unfortunate facial features which some people may have. I know there have been tests on people's perception of averaged faces and the concept of beauty. Unfortunately, until Mike Mike (the artist) that was the only source of any of these interesting images. Well, besides that composite Betty Crocker they made a few years ago.
Hips and Boobies
My boss and I had a discussion about female bodies recently. It started with him railing against the provocative, and frankly near pornographic, advertisements that Victoria's Secret has on the TV. Actually, there is a Fruit of the Loom ad which has the apple using a metal detector on a underwear clad gal out now that makes my male brain go ouch too.
I've waxed philosophical here at work about the concept of the curse word recently. Many cultures don't have them. But in western culture, we feel a hierarchy of inappropriateness is needed in our symbology. While feces and bowel movements are considered clinical terms, crap is an extremely low level curse (only to be corrected when kids use it, and to be avoided in formal situations), where the S-word is one of the big seven curses.
But reaction to the image of the female body is different. There is hard wiring designed into our male brains that make us like the look of some good hips or breasts. (As I sometimes joke, I'm a torso man, myself.) Many men lust after the hot bods they see, usually on TV or in advertising, but it doesn't occur to them the root of this desire.
It's about having your babies taken care of. Hips must be wide enough, not just to allow the lil scamp out of it's gestation chamber and into the real world, but they're also handy for propping a kid up on while they're carried around. And while every male should know that breasts are, in fact, mammary glands, designed for the specific purpose of feeding little baby people, this fact is lost on the majority of them while they leer at a woman's chest as they talk to her.
Butterface and Britney
"Oh, oh," you say as you raise your hand. "Mr. Postagulous, how do you explain the butter face phenomenon, or why I can't stand Britney Spears even though she is a hottie?" One thing at a time, young padawan.
Butter face (meaning "everything is good looking but her face") phenomenon, and a man's disqualification as a mate of a woman with an amazing body but with a unfortunate set of facial characteristics, all goes back to the reproductive drive. Fugly doesn't happen in one generation. Those who fall well outside the definition of beauty usually have been separated from the mainstream genetic pool for a while, due to low IQ, antisocial behavior such as insanity, or sometimes just slim pickins as far as mates go.
Finding Britney Spears unattractive, which is much more common than Ms. Spears would like to believe, is due to the compositing of her personality and looks into one entity. She is a person, not just something to look at, and not just a disembodied personality. The package is undesirable, and thus we perceive her as being unattractive, which frankly is a difficult feat, considering she seems very capable of delivering and amply feeding many a happy baby. Meow.
I once worked with a contractor who, when you first met her, people thought she was drop dead gorgeous. However, once you got to know her, you could care less, or would actively avoid her due to her personality. The same is true for one of the industry contact alternates we have. She is a militant man hater without an ounce of tact. She should be considered beautiful, and both me and Labman felt she was strikingly beautiful the first time we saw her. But really, she's just a mean old biddy who hasn't gotten old yet.
Watch Your Face Change
Whey you're kid, and you make faces, meaning sticking out your tongue or whatever, your mom might have said "Someday your face will freeze that way" or some other phrasing of the same thought. It's true, in a way.
If you know someone who frowns constantly, and I do, it changes their face over time. You'll see someone who looks genuinely unpleasant in their 40's and if you see their high school photo, they'll be quite attractive. The same is true for people who look downtrodden, or as I sometimes say "like they were left out in the rain for a few years."
I know that I'm not all smiles, but I do try to have a pleasant expression, though I do tend to focus on sorrowful things in life (history is just full of bad stuff, and I like history). I think that Alison looks much prettier now what Nina is around. I think it's because she smiles more. I know I laugh more.
Sometimes I worry, when Nina is grunt-griping or being fussy, that she'll mess up the beautiful face she's been given with a default bad attitude.
Sometimes I'll joke, when Nina is doing something risky, "Be careful. You need to maintain facial symmetry until after you're married."
Spell Cheky
Blogger's spell check wants to change Postagulous to Postcolonial.
Monday, December 20, 2004
Walking Talking Nina
Walking, well, that’s old stuff, she’s actually able to run now, but what is new is that she will say certain things. And we’re not just talking about saying “mama, mama, mama, mama” like she does when she panics, she can actually say words to get stuff. And typically, it’s food words.
Tk’tcccc = Tic Tac. For some reason, despite the fact that she sometimes gets pieces of breath saver mints in the car, she has really latched onto the fact that, somewhere, hidden in the house from her view, are Tictacs. I think they are supposed to be peppermint, but to me they taste like Pepto Bismol.
Bbbkk = Book. Ok, not all things she says are food. She also wants books read to her and will say that too.
Stttstttsttt = Stairs. Her favorite thing to do, in the entire world...well, no, that would be brushing her teeth. In any case, one of her favorite things is to go up and down the stairs. Getting there is all the fun, as she really has no desire to be upstairs, she just wants to go up and down the stairs.
Booh-Bah (formerly Hmm-Aaah) = Booh-Bah. She still likes to “sing” Hmm-Aaah just for fun, but if you ask her to say Booh-Bah, she will. However, Booh-Bah does not necessarily mean the show Booh-Bah, it means “Could we watch some of my TV, rather than listen to Christmas music on the TV?”
Tee = TV. She only uses this when pressed for what she wants and is told to say TV. When just asked what she wants, she points at the screen and says “ght!” We had a bit of a misunderstanding the other day when she pointed at the remote and said “ght!” I thought she wanted to touch the remote, so I said, “Nooohooohooo.” She cried and then we taught her to say TV (or at least the T part) so there wouldn’t be a misunderstanding in the future.
Cek – Cake. Specifically, these are those hexagonal Little Debbie holiday cakes. I let her have one bite of one last week and she instantly learned how to say cake. On a side note, the dish we had go out to Moulton (we didn’t go since Nina was sick) was a baking pan layered with these. They were a hit, and with zero preparation time and only $4 for ingredients.
Ghaaaa! (rising tone) – Cat. How this happened I have no idea. But by yelling Ghaaaa every time a cat is nearby, it insures they’ll never let you touch them.
Dad Update
While I still thought that Dad was unemployed after being laid off the Wednesday before Thanksgiving, such is not the case. Dad went to a job fair that [Military Contractor with Acronym Name] was at and got hired on the spot making the same amount he did a few years ago (before being laid off the first time). Needless to say, Mom and Dad are much more amiable now. However, Dad’s new job involved traveling. He’s been in DC this last week. I should have gotten him a Gameboy for Christmas (as if he’d play with it).
I’m not sure what he’s doing now, but he did say that the new wave in militaryness is for the troops to be able to know enough about the enemy surrounding them to not engage if it is strategically better to just march on past. Sounds cool to me.
Oprah is a Freako
Almost as freaky as Barbara Streisand’s need for the petals of a dozen roses to be deposited into a toilet before she goes, so as to shield herself from her waste products (I wonder if she has the help wipe her too?), but Mom told me that Oprah is repulsed by chewing gum. In fact, Oprah said on her show that (1) she does not allow any of her staff to chew gum at any time and (2) she had someone over for a social engagement at her house and they put their gum on the side of the plate. After they were gone, she had the help throw out the plate since it was mentally contaminated.
I can’t help but notice that if Oprah was not a rich person, she’d be considered a lunatic.
Braille Update
Slim Smokey, former Temporary-Director and now Contractor Dragoon, visited this morning. While speaking with someone in the hallway, I heard my name mentioned. He was saying how we didn’t pay for the Braille signs that were put up since I found out they don’t say what they are supposed to (the lab is labelled classroom, the restrooms are offices). I was going to link to my write-up of it on my old blog, but for the life of me, I can’t find it.
Thursday, December 16, 2004
Protein (not Protien)
First off, I have been I before E challenged my entire life, and having words like protein spelled that way is just a cruel joke. It's like the word caffieiene. No one can spell that word.
Be that as it may, I ordered my protein today. And since someone (hi, K) inquired, here's what I got:
1 Eas MyoPro Whey Protein Banana - 5 Lb
ITEM#: CB470 PRICE: $21.80
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1 Prolab Pure Whey Protein Orange Vanilla Swirl - 5 Lb
ITEM#: PR182 PRICE: $23.95
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Subtotal: $45.75
Shipping Method: UPS GROUND RESIDENTIAL - $5.95
Order Total: $51.70
I've had the EAS Banana before, and about 3 lbs into it, you get a little tired of it. However, I've found that adding a spoonful of creamy peanut butter makes a protein drink taste mas bueno. Not only have I never bought the Orange Vanilla before, I've never bought that brand. I used to always get Ultimate Nutrition brand, which is good, but EAS's vanilla is much better than UN's vanilla. When Alison isn't eating those six packs of crackers for breakfast every day, back when she cared about nutrition, she had the two scoops in milk too. And she'd force us to buy EAS Strawberry every time.
So, I don't really pressure her into eating good, because I'm a little sick of strawberry. But you can always add some peanut butter to it.
And, K, this stuff won't really bulk you up. It's just better food. You'll feel better than if you eat junk. That's why I do it.
Oh, and I said it was DPInutrition.com...it's not, it's DPS.
Freaky Stuff I Did Not Know
From Crimelibrary.com:
The Millerites, founded by William Miller during the nineteenth century, interpreted the Bible to say that the world would end with the Second Coming of Christ on October 22, 1844, but it did not. They awaited the arrival of a comet as a celestial sign of the world's end. Instead they ended up marking the day as "the Great Disappointment." They fixed on several more dates, but none played out as predicted, which discouraged many members. Eventually the lack of veracity in these predictions shriveled the group's numbers. However, some former members then went on to form the Seventh Day Adventists.
In the 1930s, Victor T. Houteff initially led the Davidians, an offshoot of the Seventh Day Adventists who awaited the imminent final battle between good and evil. When it occurred, only the chosen would witness the return of Jesus Christ and be saved. Houteff purchased land for his group outside Waco, Texas, calling it the Mount Carmel Center. When he died in 1955, his wife Florence succeeded him and erroneously predicted that the world would end four years later. When it did not, another group broke off, forming the Branch Davidians, which was eventually taken over by David Koresh. He called himself the messiah and selected girls among his flock who would bear his "soldiers." He insisted that as God's "seventh messenger," it was he who would set off the chain of events that would bring on the Apocalypse. When the group began to collect firearms, the ATF tried to raid the place in 1993, and after a 51-day standoff, Mount Carmel went up in flames, killing Koresh and approximately 80 of his followers.
And to think most people are called crazy because of their low low prices.
America America
There's this Beethoven tune, and it's the national anthem, see. Yeah, that "my country tis of thee" one. And for the life of me, I can't find out what Beethoven song that's based on. I did find one website that said that Beethoven ripped off our national anthem (which is actually Holland's national anthem too). I highly doubt this. Beethoven was a stand up guy. It would be a little obvious if he stole from a national anthem of two different countries.
Low Temperature
I live in the south. Here, we have four distinct seasons: Fall, Rain, Spring, and Furnace. We don't really have a cold cold winter. But guess what the low temperature for Sunday is?
3
That doesn't even look like a temperature. It's just some random integer. Heck, it's one of the main prime numbers. I mean, once you get north of 17, all the prime numbers are just crap. One, two (overrated), three and five are the really heavy players as far as prime numbers go.
Breakfastyness
Normally, meaning every single day, I have powdered protein in milk for breakfast. It's about 430 calories and 60 grams of protein. This overloading of protein allows me to have a little flexibility as far as where my calories come from at lunch, such at drinking 700 calories of super low glycemic grapefruit juice.
But today, I'm out of protein and I haven't even ordered some off the internet. (I get EAS protein from DPI Nutrition.) And I didn't make up any grapefruit juice for lunch, which is just as well since without the protein in the morning, I should really eat peanut butter from a jar with a plastic spoon. Yes, I am a mutant.
To deal with breakfast today, I headed out with cash in hand and decided to stop by McDonald's and get one of their sad little breakfast burritos. Actually two. But Mickey D's was lousy with cars this morning, so I hopped down the road to Hardee's (or if you are from the other dimension, you'd see this as Carl Jr).
I got a Loaded omelet Biscuit. It was like eating food from some other country. It rocked, sure, but what the heck was it in there. A paste made of ham and bacon? Was that cheese mixed with bacon, into a paste? Well, it was very good. Nutritionally retarded, yes, but tasty. Mmm.
Nina
Oh, yeah, my daughter. She's sick. We ate some blueberry yogurt and apple and watched Baby Beethoven before Alison got home. Once Alison got home, she wanted to be held by Alison and was fussing about something. When Alison, holding Nina, walked into the bedroom, Nina arced away from Alison. She does this when she wants to go to be put in her crib, pronto. So, Nina went to sleep around 5:20 last night. I managed to get showered and dressed without waking them up, except for asking Alison if my black cargo pants (they're really super dark green) were clean. So, Neen slept at least 13 hrs straight.
Wednesday, December 15, 2004
Nina's Sick
Well, lil Neener has caught a cold. She's quite the trooper about it. Though it is obvious she feels lousy. This morning when Alison dropped Nina off at her grandmother's house, Nina didn't want to be set down. Then Alison asked her mom to look at Nina's face and see what she's doing. Nina had fallen asleep two and a half hours before her naptime, while being held.
Documenting Nina: Hygene
Nina is all about the hygene. She likes baths. She loves to have her hands washed, espcecially with germ-X hand sanitizing gel. And she absolutely adores to have her teeth brushed. In fact, it's not uncommon for her to throw a fit when, after a good five minutes of alledged teeth brushing, you eventually decide that the tooth brushing event is over.
Bathness
If you're giving her a bath, she likes to play with the running water, so filling the tub while she's in it is a good thing. You must put the little rubber ducky faucent cover on or she'll pull the shower activation stalk up, the shower will rain down on her, and she'll fuss, or if you keep fixing it and she keeps pulling it up, after the third time or so, she'll be crying since she definately wants that stalk up, but doesn't want it to be raining on her.
She has toys for the tub. Just a few blocks, really. They get played with more when she's not taking a bath, since one of her self imposed duty stations around this house it to throw all objects on the side of the tub into it. And last night, when Alison was bathing her, Nina obviously did something really funny or entertaining, since Alison laughed for about 20 seconds at some point. I was upstairs on the computer, so I don't know what happened.
Nina knows the words for different hygenic acts. "Do you want to wash your hands?" "Do you want to brush your teeth?" Both will always elicit a nod.
Hand Washness
When I wash her hands with the hand sanitizer gel, I'll wash mine too. And really, it's not really washing them, but making the dirt, snot, or whatever on them clean. Sometimes Nina will get to stand on the countertop while I squirt some germ-X onto my hand, rub it between my hands, and then put it onto Nina's hands. She'll rub her hands together for at least seven tenths of a second, and then smell her hands. She really likes hygene products that smell good. Though if you smell germ-X before it dries, then I think technically you're huffing it. You can tell when this happens, as Nina doesn't react positively to the inhilation of alchol fumes. She doesn't cry or anything that dramatic, but it's not her "aah" of satisfaction after smelling her hands you usually get.
Teeth Brushness
Brushing her teeth is generally done with her sitting. Specifically, she sits on the counter and has her feet in Alison's sink. I'm not sure if when Alison brushes her teeth she puts Nina's feet in my sink, but when I'm in there, I tend to use my sink, so Alison's is the dry one.
Nina has her own little tooth brush. And in typical 00's fashion it is covered in odd shaped rubber grips. The grips have teddy bears molded into them. I usually pretend to put some toothpaste on her brush, or barely touch the brush to the toothpaste tube. I'll brush Nina's teeth, the roof of her mouth, the insides of her cheeks, her gums, and I'll try to get her tounge, but she doesn't isn't up on the tounge brushing.
Alison puts too much toothpaste on Nina's brush, in my opinion. I've suggested that Alison do what Nina does, and actually swallow the toothpaste, so that she gets a feel for it. Kids aren't supposed to eat toothpaste, and while this isn't like a tablespoon or anything, it's still toothpaste.
After we brush her teeth, we let Nina at it. She does some stuff, ends up drooling all over her shirt, and then gets upset when we end it.
Overall, pretty clean and hygenic kid.
Tuesday, December 14, 2004
If I Was A Forwarder
Far be it from me to email huge videos of, oh, let's say cats being given baths or something that's supposed to be cute, but this one, hey, this video I really think is funny.
A lesson for caravanners: know your limits - Video - Autocar Online
Because, you know, all humor is based in tragedy.
Monday, December 13, 2004
Video Game Dronery
Those of you not interested in video games (dad) can skip over to the next part. Though I am not saying the next part will interest you either.
I'm currently playing Jak II which came out last year. It's been compared to Ratchet y Clank, and also GTA3. And oddly enough, it is like both of those. It's also very hard. If you are a gamer, and I mean not a casual gamer but one that plays games as an actual hobby and is good at these things, then this game rocks. I kick butt at most games like this, and this one I have to play each level around 10 times. Or, sometimes, when I think it's going to be hard, it's not and I breeze through it.
I think I'm 1/3 through right now. And even though I have a stack of games waiting for me to play them (Gladiator, Beyond Good and Evil, Ghost Recon, Kill.Switch, Mark of Kri, Splinter Cell, etc) I need to get Front Mission 3 back from my nephew Brad, who probaby isn't playing it or else he'd call me or email me telling me how good it is or asking how to do something. Front Mission 3 totally rocks. It's a PS1 game, so if you do pick it up used off Amazon/Half/Ebay, make sure to turn your PS2's texture smoothign on.
Accomplishing Saturday
While installing the new splash guards (aka mud flaps) and cleaning out the garage were things I wanted to do this weekend, instead I set up the ice maker for the fridge, painted the kitchen and dining area of the house, and...Hmm, something else. Oh, yeah, got my Bridgestone G009's installed on the Miata.
Documenting Nina
Alison really wishes she'd start a journal and keep track of what Nina does and her different little quirks. I have this blog, but I tend to flit around to what happens to catch me at the moment. So, here I'll document some of Nina's little things that are going on.
Sometimes Nina will pull one of her shoes off and then try to put it back on. However, the concept of shoe putting on is completely beyond her congnitive abilities. Not only will she sometimes try to put the shoe on the foot that already has a shoe, but she doesn't understand that, you know that big hole in the top of the shoe, yeah, that's where your foot goes.
Nina is currently in a fussy mode. Not a fussy mood, because she's generally very genial. But at any moment she might break into an stream of reaching or pointing at things and grunting for them. "Uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh!" But really, you can forget that exclamation point at the end, because it's never ending. Ditraction is better than compliance, as usually, Nina doesn't know what she wants, or wants something that in impossible. Such as, "Dad, I want the steering wheel. Hand it to me in my car seat here in the back seat."
One of the better car related things, and also a feeding thing, is that she'll now hold her own bottle in the car. I'm sure she could have done this long ago, but there are certain trust issues as far as throwing beverages in the car that I didn't want to deal with. But on Wednesday, Alison had to stay late for some hob-knobbing, elbow rubbing thing at her work. So, I had to babysit Nina for about 5+ hrs. (And really, babysit is the wrong word since I am, after all, her dad).
But on Wednesday, Nina and I went to church and Nina always gets a bottle on the way home from church. Especially on Wednesday, when we are 2 hrs past her bedtime. Since we were in the Miata, and it requires all my limbs to operate, she had to hold the bottle herself. She did wonderfully and then fell asleep before we got home. Alison was waiting for us and then hogged Nina, not letting me help get her ready for bed. And I'm really much better at Stealth Care for Infants than Alison is.
Nina understands a lot of what we say. In fact, if you say something in front of her, you better be prepared for her to understand it and remember it forever, because it's going to happen. It does not occur to her that she can talk, however. But her knowing what we're saying does help out quite a bit. We'll tell her where we are going, but I always choose not to mention how long it will be until we get there. And when dressing her, you can say "sleeve sleeve" to get her to put her arms through sleeves. Nina also totally ignores us if she's doing something more interesting at the time, like inspecting her cat block or just hopping around the couches with her hands in the air.
Nina's most confusing and confounding communication issue is when she rushes her answer and accedentally shakes her head No, when she means Yes. This causes more irritation on Nina's part than it does ours. To irritate us more, she needs to say Yes to something, and then, six seconds later when we've produced the sippy cup or tooth gel, she says No, that she's changed her mind. "Do you want" is a big phrase in the house.
Oh, and she's still using the toilet, but for the life of me, it seems that she only indicates she needs to go when we are in the car or at a store. At home, she's usually having too much fun and doesn't want to stop what she's doing, so she just wets her diaper. Slacker.
G009
The guy at Tirerack who indicated that the Bridgestone Potenza G009 had a soft sideway is pretty much spot on. They grip great however. Such great grip that I can tell they'll not last 20,000 miles, which is fairly irritating. I also got an overdue alignment, so the car handles much smoother, though I do miss the twitchy overreaction that I had earlier a little.
Friday, December 10, 2004
Get Fired Up
Slim Smokey is a guy who used to work for us. Actually govt employed. Now he's retired and working for a contractor, but his project is working for us. This contractor specializes at blowing smoke, really. They do good work, but like to confuse us as best they can. Before my job duties changed, I didn't really have much contact with this contractor and for some reason, others in our dept are content to let them just string us along with piles of data with no conclusion, when the conclusion is right in front of our face.
Slim knows what the Conclusion of the Matter is in this case. We have a very clear and distinct problem and there is one very clear and distinct solution, but it's not time for the contractor to tell us that.
But, if you get Slim a little fired up, get him talking about it in a debate type format, he'll just say flat out what needs to be done. And I, getting my first degree in rhetorical theory, hearing him spouting standard contractor smoke at the Director, popped out of my office and said presented a fragment of the truth that the contractor didn't want to reveal yet. Slim took my unrefined (I'm not a civil engineer) description, told me the points I was wrong about and then (big hurray) said in once sentence exactly what we needed to do, right in front of the director.
So, now, rather than spending $40,000,000 on two more years of analysis and a bloated project with that contractor, we'll spend around $5,000,000 fixing it either ourselves or with a different contractor we've used before and liked from Florida.
So, I just saved the city thirty-five million dollars.
And then they all went to lunch, and I got another cup of coffee.
U2's Bono is Whining Girl
Dang it, my favorite line from Beautiful Day, which I thought went something like "See the Tuna Fleets bringing the 'breen' now" is actually "See the tuna fleets clearing the sea out."
Bono, their Tuna. The pig of the sea. It's their purpose to make my tastebuds happy.
Speaking of Tuna
As you may or may not know, I don't eat like normal people do. My focus is generally on glycemicness or ease of preparation, well, both really, and not so based on taste. I had miscalculated how much peanut butter I had at work (which I eat with a plastic fork out the jar), so I was very hungry when I got home.
Two days in a row, I've gotten home and made tuna salad, much to Bono's sad whining protests.
Wednesday's tuna salad was fairly normal. Tuna, mayo, grey poupon, sweet relish, sweet red pepper, stir, eat with crackers. But yesterday, I was inspired by all the tuna salad recipes I'd seen on allrecipes.com and did a curry thing. Tuna, curry powder, sweet red pepper, some mayo, grey poupon, stir, put in pita. Tasted it and it was ok, but needed something (a strip of bacon and lettuce would be great, but I'm too lazy/hungry). I added the sweet relish and honey.
Honey + Tuna + Curry = makes the baby Bono cry, but I thought it rocked.
A Divided House
I'm an enviro guy. It's my job. I'm also all about the conservation of energy by not being too self indulgent in the auto size or utility bill size dept. Heck, if it weren't for the kooks out there, I might even be considered frugal too. And I linked to Treehugger and some other of the soy eating, dome home living, Volvo driving sites. I was about to delete Treehugger, but they had this gem today:
Our friend Design Sponge turned us on to these beautiful Looloo cushions, floor pillows, and blankets, which are so, so fine. Besides being incredibly soft and luxurious and looking totally modern and yet very casual, they are made entirely from organic materials
And this:
What comes around goes around, especially when it comes to records. So we can only assume that the crappy crooners whose unloved vinyl became these cool cuffs would rather have been reincarnated as a ladies' adornment than sent out with trash and buried forever in the landfill. At $24, they're a hit. Also available in black.
Oh, wait, yeah, you totally suck. Bye-bye.
Fambly
My dad who was laid off work the Friday before Thanksgiving is reading my blog. So I'm going to try to show what an alien I am for a while. I'll recap some TV shows and blather on about the control scheme of the Armored Core series being the worst thing working against it tomorrow or something.
Or talk more about Tuna, pop bands, and revile against internet enviro-hypocrisy. No, I'm over that. I sure hope. Since it even bores me.
Thursday, December 09, 2004
Shakey Shakey
I've shaken things up in the links that I have over on the side. This may mean little to nothing to you, but I actually use those links and they represent stuff that I check up on. I've added Dooce back in and also Girl named Bob. Now that a month has passed, they aren't freaking out about the election. Dooce has a little girl also, and I find it comforting to read that when she tells her daughter that her misbehavior is unnecessary, the lil tot claws at her face. I'm no sadist, it's just that Nina will lightly smack herself in the face when we tell her no.
Christian Finnegan is back in, but most of what he does is just promotions of what he's about to appear in. It was his addiction to Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas that got him back in. That and the Christmas photo.
I also added Beautiful Vacuum and Wednesdays Off, which I don't know much about the people, but they write well. I didn't re-add Wendy Darling, as she has stopped writing since she doesn't need to get fired from her movie gig because she talks about how Napoleonic Seth Green is.
Hey, do they have a Greg the Bunny DVD set?
You Beauty, You
Some of my favorite links over there are Hanzi Smatter, MoCoLoco, Gizmodo, and Daily Dinosaur. All are impersonal blogs however. Hanzi Smatter is dedicated to interpreting Chinese character tattoos that mean horrible things usually. My favorite is "The sun rises and the sun sets, but this boy is still ugly." MoCoLoco is modern contemporary design stuff. Gizmodo is new gadgets. And Daily Dinosaur is a minimalistic comic strip.
I'm also fond of Bevnet, but it makes me pine for sodas that I don't have access to. I want some Blenheim 1903 Hot Ginger Ale. And some Afri-Kola. And some Pepsi Holiday Spice, dangit. They shouldn't advertise that stuff it they won't sell it in our region.
Pointy Pointy Pointy Pointy
Meta-Efficient and Treehugger are about to get ditched. While I was thinking Meta_Efficient would be about, oh, being efficient. Say, like things are in China where you buy tea leaves and have a specialized cup for making hot tea with those leaves, rather than the US way where the leaves are ground, put in a little bag, with a staple, with a string, another staple, and a printed card.
Nope, Meta-Efficient is about buying electronic watering systems for your houseplants, wool jodfers, and today, it's LED Christmas lights.
Treehugger is worse. It's not just that they have double standards where they embrace a walnut tray as ecologically correct since it doesn't use plastic, then praise a plastic ice cream maker for not chopping down trees. But they also just don't make any sense.
Let me let you in on a secret. Money is Environment. If your car costs $45,000 to make, then it was $45,000 worth of energy required to make it. The workers ate food, drove their cars to the plant, the lights were on, ore was harvested, etc. Cost is cost. It's misleading to imply that using electricity as a fuel is better environmentally, as that coal you harvest is strip mined and burned to add sulfur, CO2, etc, to the atmosphere. And I know you aren't nukin' for that electricity. That's the biggest enviro-lobby there is.
You wanna be enviro-good? Put yourself on a strict budget. Buy only what you need. Is is mere enviro to fix a broken thing or replace it? Depends, which costs more. Do the cheapest.
It's definitely true that a 1978 Oldsmobuick is more environmentally better than a new Civic Hybrid. The Civic required lots of extra work: heavy metal mining, lots of new plastics, and disposing of those batteries is going to be horrible. The Oldsmo was made ages ago. The pollution it caused during manufacturing is already over. Sure, it burns more gas. But how many years until it burns the price of the Honda?
Wow, that rant just came on out.
In any case, you can't be more efficient by buying new Christmas lights. You can't be more environmentally sound by buying a walnut tray.
And I didn't even comment on Treehugger's infatuation with Green Celebrities. (barf)
Wednesday, December 08, 2004
Finally Someone Making Sense
I stumbled on Monolithic.com when I was looking for studies done showing the value of putting high heat capacity inside your house, rather than outside (brick house), like most people do. I found that information, and make sure to click to the next image if you follow that link.
And it looks like I've only scratched the iceberg, to mix metaphors. After reading the intro paragraph of R-Value Fairy Tales I realized this is something that I should share with others.
Though, hey, I have no intention of living in a dome home. How do you hang large pictures on the concave walls?
Houseyness
Alison and I painted the triangle wall last night, then wrapped nearly everybody's Christmas present. We also wrapped the 64"x44" canvas I recently made so it would look like a big present hanging on the wall. We didn't have a good bow for it though. The sheer green ribbon that Alison had wanted to use went brown with the red background.
No Mommy
I fly solo with Nina longer than usual today. Rather than Alison getting home at 5:20ish, she thinks it'll be around 8:30. I'm planning on a trip to Wal-Mart (for ribbon, Cambell's Chicken and Rice soup, and fresh Ginger), maybe a walk, a Play With Me Sesame, maybe a bath, and church.
If she falls asleep on the way to church, I'll just turn around. No more waking a sleeping baby for me. And one of the patterns we have is that she gets a bottle in the car on the way home from church, she's usually overtired on Wednesdays anyway since it's about two hours past her (self imposed) bedtime. We'll be in the Miata, so I'll see if she can hold the bottle herself. This could be interesting.
Tuesday, December 07, 2004
Grap On My Tired
Well, the Miata's old Dunlop SP Sport A2 tires are more than at the end of their life. Due to the constant raining, my lack of tire treads has been letting me know that they are present. (The lack is present. The treads are gone.)
You couldn't get Abe's head to barely touch my treads. If the penny test can get Abe's head touched, that's 2/32 of an inch, and you're barely legal. If you can't touch Abe's head, then you're illegal. And I'm pretty dang illegal. Oh, and I'll be picking up my 17 month old daughter later today. That's just plain scary to me. But at least it's stopped raining.
I wanted to get these tires:
They have tremendous ratings. All in the dark green of love for the tires. Plus, a terrific looking tread pattern. Four of these Goodyear Triple Whatever Who-Cares tires would run me $280, if they weren't back ordered with no date in the future expected for them to show up. In other words, they're over. I called Tirerack and asked to get that information. When he asked if I knew of another tire I was interested in, I said "Yeah, I guess I'll just get lame ol' Bridgestone Potenza G009's." He said that was a better tire. So, that's what I got:
I know I'll be happy with them. And I'm glad I have a better tire. He specifically mentioned better wet traction (which is not to be confused with hydroplane resistance) and that's something that I need. Or, I should say, driving in the rain and doing turns makes me nervous. And it should since I have no tread at all left.
But, man, look at that hella cool Goodyear tread pattern. It's like a tattoo for your car.
My new tires should show up on Friday or so. Alison and I will also be painting the kitchen and the "triangle wall" this weekend.
Monday, December 06, 2004
Frustrated Father
Nina is going through a stage where, if Alison is available, she'd rather have any action done by Alison. I don't feed her anymore and Nina doesn't want me to change her anymore. Well, when Alison is around. In the hour and a half that I'm with her alone at home after I pick her up from her grandmother's* house, we're pals, compadres, and I'm just the bestest best.
But when Alison comes home, I'm either fun fun fun or chopped liver. I think I'm suffering from the malady I let my parent's know they had, and they got ticked off, namely my comfortingness is low and my fun is too high. It's a yin and yang thing.
Alison's mom, who still has bad pain in her leg she broke in June due to her body rejecting the metal of the pins, keeps things really low key at her house, mainly because she doesn't move around much. She got a fence so Nina can actually go outside, but since she got it, it's pretty much been raining nonstop. But Alison's mom has very much comfortingness and very little fun fun fun. In fact, when I come to pick up Nina from her grandmother's* house, Nina makes a bee line, not for me, but for the car. "Let's go, dad. Let's have fun." And fun we have, unless Nina is sick, and then TV we have.
*The term grandmother is used for Alison's mom as my mother prefers to be called Nanny. And my dad is Papa. They chose these names because they felt that Grandma and Grandpa was too damning since they became grandparents at 40. I, being about to turn 37, cannot imagine already having a 16 year old kid. My sister, who is one year older than me, has a 17 year old kid. Yikes. Early breeders are scary, and they never get to see movies in the theater.
Never Wake A Sleeping Baby
Hey, remember how we screwed things up last week by eating at Pizza Hut even though Nina was asleep? Well, we went to target at nine in the morning and she fell asleep on the way there. We woke her, but despite her getting a halfway decent nap that afternoon, she's was medium grumpy the rest of the weekend.
Oh, but that may also have to do with her having three teeth coming in now (canines and a molar that's just getting started) and her being constipated again. The doctor told us to give her Ensure with Fiber, but the prime feeder in the house has slacked off, literally every week, and Nina lives in a 80% constipated state. That child has had more foot long poos than most people have had by the time they're 10 years old. It took summer camp to get my system to do that kind of freakish abnormality. But Nina is perpetually in a certain level of discomfort which makes her edgy.
Sunday, we did by the books, textbook perfect. So it was a real shock, and really pushed my buttons, when Nina screamed and cried on the way to church. And she loves church, as she usually gets to play with other kids. But the only other kid in the unmanned (besides Alison) nursery was the 3-year old Latin lover Alfonz. Who not only is too old to be in there, but dangit, quit touching my daughter, you lecher. I aught to give Nina her paint stirrer so she can beat you with it.
Migraine is Corn
What I didn't know was creeping up on me, triggered by lack of sleep, lack of food, and a three day lack of caffeine, was a migraine. It truly blossomed as I sat and listened to a strange, but good, sermon about the Salvation Army (I didn't know they were actually a church). I really needed Alison to drive home, but she had to give Nina her post-church bottle (a very deeply ingrained pattern).
The headlights were killing me. The sound of the wet pavement and tire interaction was horrible. When we finally got home, I rushed into the kitchen, took a Lortab 10, took out my contacts, got in my bed clothes, and went to bed.
Alison woke me, confusing the heck out of me, at around 8:00 or so. I don't remember what we were talking about, but I didn't know what we were talking about at the time either, as I was totally out of it. I managed to not wake Alison and Nina up this morning as I got ready for work. Even my throwing up in Nina's changing room/bathroom didn't wake them up.
Now, my headache is mostly gone. I have lots of fieldwork to do, and it's pouring rain.
For some reason, I'm craving ginger. I want Cambell's Chicken and Rice soup with ginger added to it. I think, on the Chinese food scale, I'm getting too much cold and yang. Heck, I think I'm a freakin' yang black hole I've got so much.
That, and I need sleep. The 11 hours I got last night was not enough. I dreamed lame dreams, nightmare lite, mostly about not having the proper supplies/conditions for Nina. I think this stems from her recent mama-centricness, and also that McDonald's self-flushing toilets have scared her into not using public toilets anymore.
Some Pictures (if Pbase will link)
Oh, and we went on the Mountain:
Friday, December 03, 2004
Absolutely Smashing
Alison is downstairs on the phone with her brother, Tom. He just had a gal with a Nissan Altima that she bought yesterday smash his old Mazda truck. It was parked on the street and she hit it so hard it moved the truck 30 feet. She didn't have insurance. Ouch.
Tom heard the noise and looked outside to see the Altima sitting in his yard with steam rising off it. The gal is obviously OK since Alison and Tom are almost joking about the whole thing. Or, well, they were, until they got on the topic they're on now, which is that Tom's truck is toast and there's no way he'll get any money out of the gal.
Too bad it wasn't Christine's 1987 Sunbird that she just bought for $200 a month ago and still hasn't had any road days.
Diversions
We were watching the DVD of Mystery Men when Tom called. It was 8:19 and both Alison and I launched from our respective loveseat and couch spots to get it, as Nina went to bed around 7:07. I'm just killing time writing this, and also I felt some sense of duty to write something since I hadn't since Wednesday.
I finished Ratchet & Clank III. Yeah, it's brilliant stuff. But I expected it to be. And it seemed short, or I totally rock, since I finished it in 23 hours. I did like that they took things they had in 2 out and gave us new situations. But I did miss my decoy glove. And I didn't mess with the online deathmatches. I'll have to run a CAT5 cable over to it and try that out, eventually. I think next in line will be either Mark of Kri, which I know is short, or Jak II. I have Armored Core II: Another Age, and Metal Arms, oh, and lots of stuff just plain piled up for me to play.
Today, I ordered Kill.Switch, Legend of Dragoon, and the DVD Home for the Holidays. Well, Alison is off the phone with Tom. I guess I'll finish Mystery Men now.
Blogness
You know...I'm not sure why I have a blog. But I've had a website or blog since, well, since the end of the BBS days. I never had a BBS though, but, ah, those were good times. Primitive ASCII...1200 baud modems. Dang, that's just scary.
Why doesn't blogger's spell check know the word blog? Isn't it in the dictionary now?
Wednesday, December 01, 2004
Possible Military Applications?
When adding up some numbers for a report, the song "I Want a Hippopotamus for Christmas" came on. As I flipped through the pages, sometimes adding 1000 to the number in my head and sometimes 2000, the song totally threw me off. It was literally impossible for me to count by twos on odd numbers with it playing. The song sucks in general, but I wonder if the military could use this against terrorist accountants or something.
TV Blurb
Besides Ratchet & Clank III, my spare time (when Nina has gone to sleep) CRT viewing has mainly been Venture Brothers (brilliant, so much so it'll be cancelled shortly, I'm sure) and Amazing Race. This season of Amazing Race is pretty close to perfect reality TV. Last night, Heroism was continuing on in the face of hopelessness, just because you don't want to let your sister down.
The challenge was unrolling hay bales and getting the clue out of them. There were 217 round bales and only 20 clues. The sisters were the second team to arrive at the challenge, but last to leave. The blonde one unrolled, by Phil's estimation, over 100 bales, and clearly has some of the worst luck ever. It took her over 8 hrs. Rather than finishing the challenge, Phil met them in the dark field, once the last of the other teams had checked in at the pitstop.
It just goes to show you that one challenge can challenge can change everything. And I completely figured that the old people and the professional wrestlers were gone after their horrible performance at IKEA.
You should watch both of those shows. If for nothing else, to know who Brock Samson (voiced by Patrick Warburton) from Venture Brothers is.
