In case anyone missed the transition, I'm now moving all blogging stuff to Facebook.
Well, seeing that I'm not a 14-year-old girl, I guess I'll be trading in Myspace for Facebook.
I was reading Lily a Valentine's Day book Jen had checked out of the library the other day, and when we flipped to a page with a Roman god lounging on a cloud, Lily said "Lupercus."
I said, "Who's Lupercus?" and she said, "That guy" and pointed to the picture.
I read the page, and sure enough, his name was Lupercus.
Later on, I was playing City of Heroes, and Lily wandered up and asked who the green lady was. I told her that the green lady was named Green Fuse, (after the Dylan Thomas poem The Force that through the Green Fuse Drives the Flower which is an awesome title) Lily asked me to make run around and make her look through binoculars and do jumping jacks .So I did that, and then it was time for bath time, so I shut down the game we had her bath.
Then, five days later, I'm playing again and Lily crawls up on my lap and asks, "Where's Green Fuse?" I mentioned the name once, and while she knows her colors, she certainly doesn't know what a fuse is. It's just amazing that she has such a specific recollection of new words.
My brother Jeff is up from sunny Florida. We've been trying to get in touch with my other brothers (including the one that lives three blocks away), but so far we've had no luck arranging a visit. We haven't done a lot (I've been pretty busy with work), but much like me, Jeff is pretty content to hang out with his computer all day. We might head to Peddler's Village/New Hope tomorrow. Anyone want to meet us there?
I was reading Lily a Valentine's Day book Jen had checked out of the library the other day, and when we flipped to a page with a Roman god lounging on a cloud, Lily said "Lupercus."
I said, "Who's Lupercus?" and she said, "That guy" and pointed to the picture.
I read the page, and sure enough, his name was Lupercus.
Later on, I was playing City of Heroes, and Lily wandered up and asked who the green lady was. I told her that the green lady was named Green Fuse, (after the Dylan Thomas poem The Force that through the Green Fuse Drives the Flower which is an awesome title) Lily asked me to make run around and make her look through binoculars and do jumping jacks .So I did that, and then it was time for bath time, so I shut down the game we had her bath.
Then, five days later, I'm playing again and Lily crawls up on my lap and asks, "Where's Green Fuse?" I mentioned the name once, and while she knows her colors, she certainly doesn't know what a fuse is. It's just amazing that she has such a specific recollection of new words.
My brother Jeff is up from sunny Florida. We've been trying to get in touch with my other brothers (including the one that lives three blocks away), but so far we've had no luck arranging a visit. We haven't done a lot (I've been pretty busy with work), but much like me, Jeff is pretty content to hang out with his computer all day. We might head to Peddler's Village/New Hope tomorrow. Anyone want to meet us there?
My little brother Jeff is visiting us and it's great to have him up here. He's only been up here for short little visits, once for our wedding when he was ten, once for a week after Lily was born. It's good to have him up here now that he's more or less all grown up. It was his first time seeing snow. It snowed on Friday morning and he took a picture with his cell phone.
Lily was shy around him at first, but she's warmed to him considerably. The other day she was coming out of the bathroom with Jen and she yelled "Daddy! Jeff!" and ran right past me to get to him.
Jeff was talking on my phone to his girlfriend and he said "Hey, baby," and Lily thought he was talking to me. "Daddy's not a baby!" she called from the other room. Heh heh heh.
She's been a bit sick for the past couple days. We've been pretty lucky in that she hasn't really had any major illnesses up to this point. She is getting better and she sounds fine, except when she gives a heartbreaking, hacking cough. We must look sad when she coughs like that, because she'll pat me on the head and say "Don't be sad, daddy. Don't cry."
We took her to the mall because Jeff needed to get his glasses fixed. She was playing on the cars they have for kids at the mall and a little boy sat down beside her and asked if he could play there. Lily nodded and smiled and then gave a big hacking cough right in his face without the slightest inkling this might be inappropriate. Jen hustled her away.
Also, we had our first love lovey. After we got her back into the car and buckled in, she asked sweetly, "Where's the Christmas Tree blanket?" (She's got this little white blanket and it, along with her Baby Bear and Ariel pillow, have become the trio of loveys that go with her everywhere.) So Jen drove around while I ran frantically through the mall backtracking to everywhere we'd been. I finally found behind the table we'd used at the Chinese restaurant and ran back to the car, trophy in hand.
Lily was shy around him at first, but she's warmed to him considerably. The other day she was coming out of the bathroom with Jen and she yelled "Daddy! Jeff!" and ran right past me to get to him.
Jeff was talking on my phone to his girlfriend and he said "Hey, baby," and Lily thought he was talking to me. "Daddy's not a baby!" she called from the other room. Heh heh heh.
She's been a bit sick for the past couple days. We've been pretty lucky in that she hasn't really had any major illnesses up to this point. She is getting better and she sounds fine, except when she gives a heartbreaking, hacking cough. We must look sad when she coughs like that, because she'll pat me on the head and say "Don't be sad, daddy. Don't cry."
We took her to the mall because Jeff needed to get his glasses fixed. She was playing on the cars they have for kids at the mall and a little boy sat down beside her and asked if he could play there. Lily nodded and smiled and then gave a big hacking cough right in his face without the slightest inkling this might be inappropriate. Jen hustled her away.
Also, we had our first love lovey. After we got her back into the car and buckled in, she asked sweetly, "Where's the Christmas Tree blanket?" (She's got this little white blanket and it, along with her Baby Bear and Ariel pillow, have become the trio of loveys that go with her everywhere.) So Jen drove around while I ran frantically through the mall backtracking to everywhere we'd been. I finally found behind the table we'd used at the Chinese restaurant and ran back to the car, trophy in hand.
So, we took Lily's temperature last night. I distracted her and Jen slipped the thermometer in. She looked very surprised for a moment, and then started crying. Afterwards, she was fine. We put a band aid with a picture of a horsey on her bottom and she found the thermometer (after we had cleaned it up) and asked me "Do you want me to stick this in your heiney?" I told her that I was okay, but suggested she stick it in her Baby Bear, which is what she did.
She was naughty earlier in the day, and we put her on time out, to which she said, "You're on time out."
It goes against my nature to say, "No, you're on time out." There is something fundamentally flawed about me that leads me to believe that I can reason with a toddler, so I hunker down to her level and lovingly but firmly say, "No, let me explain why you're on time out. I'll give my answer in five parts, with the first part last and the second part third..."
She was naughty earlier in the day, and we put her on time out, to which she said, "You're on time out."
It goes against my nature to say, "No, you're on time out." There is something fundamentally flawed about me that leads me to believe that I can reason with a toddler, so I hunker down to her level and lovingly but firmly say, "No, let me explain why you're on time out. I'll give my answer in five parts, with the first part last and the second part third..."
So, it looks like Obama has hit the ground running. In the first 48 hours he has released three executive orders: closing Gitmo in Cuba by the end of this year, using the Army Field Manual as guideline for fair and equitable treatment of detainees, and no tolerance for torture.
I think he's going to be a very good President. His approval is at 77%. That's pretty astronomical. A lot of the coverage is focusing on the fact that he's the first African American president, which is interesting and all, but I don't think it's relevant to the kind of president he's going to be. It's just one of the many traits that makes him who he is, and he is acting not as a black man or as a white man, but as representative of the most powerful nation in the world, and other people will be interacting with him in that capacity.
More Obama posts in the future, but now I'll be posting about Lily.
So the other day, I was sitting on the floor, playing with vast collection of multi-sided dice (you know, like normal people do) when Lily came up and said, "Whatcha doin', daddy?"
I said that I was looking at these dice, and that one was called a die and more than one were called dice. She pointed to the twelve-sided die, and said "What's that one called?" and I told it had twelve sides, so it was called a twelve-sider or a dodecahedron, which is an awesome word for a two-year-old. She's been reciting it all weekend in a little sing-song voice, "Doe-deck-a-hede-ron!"
I'd actually been familiar with the word since I was about 10. I saw it in an episode of Doctor Who ("Meglos", the one with the cactus Tom Baker) and I impressed the hell out of my math teacher later that year by knowing the word for a twelve-sided solid off the top of my head.
Later on, when building a line out of my dice, she paused to look up and say "You're the best daddy in the world," which I knew, of course, but it was nice to hear.
For a brief while , she was also saying, "You're a towel!", if somebody mentioned a towel or "You're a duck!" if somebody mentioned a duck.
I asked "Is that your new catch phrase?" and of course she replied, "You're a cat-phase!"
I think he's going to be a very good President. His approval is at 77%. That's pretty astronomical. A lot of the coverage is focusing on the fact that he's the first African American president, which is interesting and all, but I don't think it's relevant to the kind of president he's going to be. It's just one of the many traits that makes him who he is, and he is acting not as a black man or as a white man, but as representative of the most powerful nation in the world, and other people will be interacting with him in that capacity.
More Obama posts in the future, but now I'll be posting about Lily.
So the other day, I was sitting on the floor, playing with vast collection of multi-sided dice (you know, like normal people do) when Lily came up and said, "Whatcha doin', daddy?"
I said that I was looking at these dice, and that one was called a die and more than one were called dice. She pointed to the twelve-sided die, and said "What's that one called?" and I told it had twelve sides, so it was called a twelve-sider or a dodecahedron, which is an awesome word for a two-year-old. She's been reciting it all weekend in a little sing-song voice, "Doe-deck-a-hede-ron!"
I'd actually been familiar with the word since I was about 10. I saw it in an episode of Doctor Who ("Meglos", the one with the cactus Tom Baker) and I impressed the hell out of my math teacher later that year by knowing the word for a twelve-sided solid off the top of my head.
Later on, when building a line out of my dice, she paused to look up and say "You're the best daddy in the world," which I knew, of course, but it was nice to hear.
For a brief while , she was also saying, "You're a towel!", if somebody mentioned a towel or "You're a duck!" if somebody mentioned a duck.
I asked "Is that your new catch phrase?" and of course she replied, "You're a cat-phase!"
I 'll have a longer post up eventually, but I thought this summed up things nicely.
Rosa Parks sat so that Martin Luther King could walk. Martin Luther King walked so that Barack Obama could run. Barack Obama ran so that all children could fly.
My spell checker doesn't recognize Barack Obama, but that will change soon.
Rosa Parks sat so that Martin Luther King could walk. Martin Luther King walked so that Barack Obama could run. Barack Obama ran so that all children could fly.
My spell checker doesn't recognize Barack Obama, but that will change soon.
Lily's been...active, these past couple days. She wandered into our bedroom and started pulling the covers off of me. "It's light outside. Time to wake up,daddy."
In the bathtub, she found her nipples and asked, "What are these?" Fortunately, Jen was there to field that one.
Jen found some measuring tape and said "Lily, we're going to measure your little body so we can buy you a belt."
"Don't measure my little body!" Lily exclaimed.
The other evening, she want wanted to play on the computer because she saw daddy doing it. I put her on my lap and held her far enough away that she couldn't touch the keyboard.
Lily: "I can't reach it."
Me: "That's a feature, not a bug."
Lily: "I don't know what that means"
I think, as she gets smarter and more independent, the trick is getting her to behave without dampening her spirit. I've always thought the saddest song I've ever heard was Flowers are Red by Harry Chapin. It's about a boy who colored his pictures of flowers in all these different colors. The teacher punishes him until he gives in and tells the teacher that "flowers are red, and green leaves are green." When he goes to a different school, he continues mechanically painting flowers red and green, to the dismay of his new, kind teacher.
(In the live concert versions, Chapin extended the song's ending to: "There still must be a way to have our children say..." before featuring the little boy's chorus again and bringing the song to a better conclusion. A version of this is featured on his album Legends of the Lost and Found.)
According to wikipedia, The idea for the song came to Chapin when his secretary told him about her son who brought his report card home from school one day. The teacher had written a note in the card saying: "Your son is marching to the beat of a different drummer, but don't worry we will soon have him joining the parade by the end of the term."
And I'm happy to have a smart, inquisitive little girl. I just wish she didn't have a photographic recall of where I hide my cookies.
In the bathtub, she found her nipples and asked, "What are these?" Fortunately, Jen was there to field that one.
Jen found some measuring tape and said "Lily, we're going to measure your little body so we can buy you a belt."
"Don't measure my little body!" Lily exclaimed.
The other evening, she want wanted to play on the computer because she saw daddy doing it. I put her on my lap and held her far enough away that she couldn't touch the keyboard.
Lily: "I can't reach it."
Me: "That's a feature, not a bug."
Lily: "I don't know what that means"
I think, as she gets smarter and more independent, the trick is getting her to behave without dampening her spirit. I've always thought the saddest song I've ever heard was Flowers are Red by Harry Chapin. It's about a boy who colored his pictures of flowers in all these different colors. The teacher punishes him until he gives in and tells the teacher that "flowers are red, and green leaves are green." When he goes to a different school, he continues mechanically painting flowers red and green, to the dismay of his new, kind teacher.
(In the live concert versions, Chapin extended the song's ending to: "There still must be a way to have our children say..." before featuring the little boy's chorus again and bringing the song to a better conclusion. A version of this is featured on his album Legends of the Lost and Found.)
According to wikipedia, The idea for the song came to Chapin when his secretary told him about her son who brought his report card home from school one day. The teacher had written a note in the card saying: "Your son is marching to the beat of a different drummer, but don't worry we will soon have him joining the parade by the end of the term."
And I'm happy to have a smart, inquisitive little girl. I just wish she didn't have a photographic recall of where I hide my cookies.
Jen and I went down to Philly for the wedding of our friends Karen and Andrew. Along the way we stopped to visit some other friends.
First we stopped down where Jen used to work. We were expecting her friend Stacey to be seven months pregnant. We weren't expecting her to be a mommy already. She'd had her baby very early, but she's back at work already because the baby is in the hospital full time. (She's saving up her maternity leave for when she can really use it) And the baby is healthy, with none of the health problems that afflict preemies. She's just tiny. Jen and Lily plan to come down there one Tuesday to see them.
After that, we met Tom and Jen at the Plymouth Meeting Mall. We were planning on eating at Bertucci's, but they had put in a Dave & Busters in in the interim, so we went there instead. Tom was dressed up as Batman and kept telling us how Batman (and it was the Adam West Batman, he was very insistent about that) could beat up Superman with nothing more than a sock filled with kryptonite soap. (See also, this comic) Dave & Busters had a very disappointing selection of games, however, we had a fun time on the seven player trivia game. Jen won 104 tickets in one game. She bought two kazoos and some Dora temporary tattoos.
After Tom was removed by mall security for waving some lime rock candy at a guy in a Superman shirt, Jen and I walked around the local IKEA for a bit, then Jen went into the store to change into her wedding dress. Somehow she left her wedding dress in the car, so she just changed into it in the parking lot.
We set out for the wedding from there, but there was a car accident on the road we needed to travel, so we spent almost two hours traveling twenty miles. When we got to the intersecting road, we turned left, as the google maps directions instructed us, and not right, as we actually needed to. So we wound up at a prison and not at a country club. Hilarity ensued. But really, who among us has not made that mistake?
We finally got to the country club, entering the room literally less than a minute before they started playing the wedding march. The ceremony was nice. It was short, which is always good. Weddings are one thing that don't need any padding, and I think this was a good one. The had what they needed to make it great, and nothing more. Also, no reading from Corinthians. It was quick, it was fun, and it was appropriately dignified.
After the ceremony, we went to get our seating card. Ours says "You are seated at table thirteen." Jen did a quick count and noticed twelve tables, none of which were labeled. So we picked one at random and sat down and ate appetizers, and discussed which lies we wanted to tell people at our table. We figured since we didn't know anyone there, we could just reinvent ourselves. I decided that I had come from the future and I was there to ensure that the wedding went off successfully. I had accomplished my goal early on, so now I was relaxing and there to enjoy the party. Jen decided that she was in the US Marshals, and she was there as part of the witness protection program.
Then they moved us all to another room, one that actually had thirteen tables, and we abandoned all our carefully laid plans.
Even though we didn't know anybody, the wedding reception was very fun. Our table-mates were fun and friendly. Karen looked like she was having a HUGE amount of fun.
I am enormously fond of Karen not in the least because she shares my bleeding heart sensibilities and my untidy stew of neuroses. I've only hung out with Andrew a few times, and I mostly know him through Karen. They clearly make each other very happy. When I first met them, I was afraid that they were going to be one of those couples who live together forever, but never get married. I am pleased beyond words to have been wrong about that.
Karen and Andrew are a very good couple. I want to say that they deserved the happy ending they had this weekend, but there are no happy endings, because nothing ever ends. It's just a beginning. Tim was the best man at our wedding, and he had a nice quote on the topic. For the life of me, I can't remember the exact words, but the sentiment was that "Every step each of you has taken has been towards this, and now every step you take will be taken together."
So here's to a happy marriage and a happy beginning, Karen and Andrew!
First we stopped down where Jen used to work. We were expecting her friend Stacey to be seven months pregnant. We weren't expecting her to be a mommy already. She'd had her baby very early, but she's back at work already because the baby is in the hospital full time. (She's saving up her maternity leave for when she can really use it) And the baby is healthy, with none of the health problems that afflict preemies. She's just tiny. Jen and Lily plan to come down there one Tuesday to see them.
After that, we met Tom and Jen at the Plymouth Meeting Mall. We were planning on eating at Bertucci's, but they had put in a Dave & Busters in in the interim, so we went there instead. Tom was dressed up as Batman and kept telling us how Batman (and it was the Adam West Batman, he was very insistent about that) could beat up Superman with nothing more than a sock filled with kryptonite soap. (See also, this comic) Dave & Busters had a very disappointing selection of games, however, we had a fun time on the seven player trivia game. Jen won 104 tickets in one game. She bought two kazoos and some Dora temporary tattoos.
After Tom was removed by mall security for waving some lime rock candy at a guy in a Superman shirt, Jen and I walked around the local IKEA for a bit, then Jen went into the store to change into her wedding dress. Somehow she left her wedding dress in the car, so she just changed into it in the parking lot.
We set out for the wedding from there, but there was a car accident on the road we needed to travel, so we spent almost two hours traveling twenty miles. When we got to the intersecting road, we turned left, as the google maps directions instructed us, and not right, as we actually needed to. So we wound up at a prison and not at a country club. Hilarity ensued. But really, who among us has not made that mistake?
We finally got to the country club, entering the room literally less than a minute before they started playing the wedding march. The ceremony was nice. It was short, which is always good. Weddings are one thing that don't need any padding, and I think this was a good one. The had what they needed to make it great, and nothing more. Also, no reading from Corinthians. It was quick, it was fun, and it was appropriately dignified.
After the ceremony, we went to get our seating card. Ours says "You are seated at table thirteen." Jen did a quick count and noticed twelve tables, none of which were labeled. So we picked one at random and sat down and ate appetizers, and discussed which lies we wanted to tell people at our table. We figured since we didn't know anyone there, we could just reinvent ourselves. I decided that I had come from the future and I was there to ensure that the wedding went off successfully. I had accomplished my goal early on, so now I was relaxing and there to enjoy the party. Jen decided that she was in the US Marshals, and she was there as part of the witness protection program.
Then they moved us all to another room, one that actually had thirteen tables, and we abandoned all our carefully laid plans.
Even though we didn't know anybody, the wedding reception was very fun. Our table-mates were fun and friendly. Karen looked like she was having a HUGE amount of fun.
I am enormously fond of Karen not in the least because she shares my bleeding heart sensibilities and my untidy stew of neuroses. I've only hung out with Andrew a few times, and I mostly know him through Karen. They clearly make each other very happy. When I first met them, I was afraid that they were going to be one of those couples who live together forever, but never get married. I am pleased beyond words to have been wrong about that.
Karen and Andrew are a very good couple. I want to say that they deserved the happy ending they had this weekend, but there are no happy endings, because nothing ever ends. It's just a beginning. Tim was the best man at our wedding, and he had a nice quote on the topic. For the life of me, I can't remember the exact words, but the sentiment was that "Every step each of you has taken has been towards this, and now every step you take will be taken together."
So here's to a happy marriage and a happy beginning, Karen and Andrew!
Resuci Annie is out of the office today, which is good news, because working with her is like having a Caesarian section every day.
Jen bought our sister-in-law a gym membership for Christmas and she got three one-month passes for herself. She gave two away and she's using one for herself. Since the clock is running on them, she's trying to go to the gym as often as she can.
I asked Lily what she thinks mommy does at the gym. I expected her to say "She runs around", because that's how she answers me whenever I ask what she did at preschool.
Instead, she thought about it and said "Umm...plays with monkeys?"
Heh.
Speaking of monkeys, we saw The Forbidden Kingdom, which is an interpretation of the Chinese Epic, Journey to the West. Journey to the West was formally set down in the 16th century, but it existed in folk tales for easily twice that long. The central figure, the Monkey King, is a trickster figure as old as human myth. The story has been told and retold since before there was an America. But in none of these interpretations is there a goofy white kid from New York City. Jesus Christ, Hollywood. You've got Jet Li and Jackie Chan in your movie. Do you really need an audience identification character?
Other than that, really good. The two leads are undeniably appealing, (and they did spend a lot of screen time abusing Whitey, so bonus) Yuen Woo Ping always choreographs great action scenes, and it had the appropriate mythic feel.
Lily's new thing is lining things up. She'll dump out all her toys, and then spread them in a long row. She calls this "Doing her work".
Last night, Lily was in the bath tub, I was upstairs and Jen stepped into the kitchen to do some dishes. She could still hear Lily splashing around in there, and would poke her head in to check on her every couple minutes. After Jen had wrapped up the dishes, she went back to the bathroom and found that Lily had pooped in the tub, and then arranged the little turds in a neat little line along its edge.
Blech.
"Are your hands clean, Lily?"
"They're pretty clean, mommy."
New Who
So, we saw the Christmas episode of Doctor Who, "The Next Doctor". Pretty decent. Easily the best of the Christmas episodes. David Morrissey was having a lot of fun with the role, and David Tennant gave a nice, understated performance.
In other news, it looks like 26-year old Matt Smith has been cast as the 11th Doctor. Not only is he barely out of diapers, but his previous acting experience has primarily been opposite Billie Piper. Fuck! This is a slap in the face to all Doctor Who fans! A SLAP IN THE FACE!
Ehhh....seriously, I'm not thrilled about the choice, but we'll wait and see. Right now, it seems like a bigger line of turds than one on our bath tub.
Jen and I went to New York last Tuesday. It was nice. We did all the touristy things, Central Park, FAO Schwartz, watching the skaters at Rockefeller Center, walking up Times Square. It was neat. I wanted to see MOMA, but they're closed on Tuesdays.
Jen bought our sister-in-law a gym membership for Christmas and she got three one-month passes for herself. She gave two away and she's using one for herself. Since the clock is running on them, she's trying to go to the gym as often as she can.
I asked Lily what she thinks mommy does at the gym. I expected her to say "She runs around", because that's how she answers me whenever I ask what she did at preschool.
Instead, she thought about it and said "Umm...plays with monkeys?"
Heh.
Speaking of monkeys, we saw The Forbidden Kingdom, which is an interpretation of the Chinese Epic, Journey to the West. Journey to the West was formally set down in the 16th century, but it existed in folk tales for easily twice that long. The central figure, the Monkey King, is a trickster figure as old as human myth. The story has been told and retold since before there was an America. But in none of these interpretations is there a goofy white kid from New York City. Jesus Christ, Hollywood. You've got Jet Li and Jackie Chan in your movie. Do you really need an audience identification character?
Other than that, really good. The two leads are undeniably appealing, (and they did spend a lot of screen time abusing Whitey, so bonus) Yuen Woo Ping always choreographs great action scenes, and it had the appropriate mythic feel.
Lily's new thing is lining things up. She'll dump out all her toys, and then spread them in a long row. She calls this "Doing her work".
Last night, Lily was in the bath tub, I was upstairs and Jen stepped into the kitchen to do some dishes. She could still hear Lily splashing around in there, and would poke her head in to check on her every couple minutes. After Jen had wrapped up the dishes, she went back to the bathroom and found that Lily had pooped in the tub, and then arranged the little turds in a neat little line along its edge.
Blech.
"Are your hands clean, Lily?"
"They're pretty clean, mommy."
New Who
So, we saw the Christmas episode of Doctor Who, "The Next Doctor". Pretty decent. Easily the best of the Christmas episodes. David Morrissey was having a lot of fun with the role, and David Tennant gave a nice, understated performance.
In other news, it looks like 26-year old Matt Smith has been cast as the 11th Doctor. Not only is he barely out of diapers, but his previous acting experience has primarily been opposite Billie Piper. Fuck! This is a slap in the face to all Doctor Who fans! A SLAP IN THE FACE!
Ehhh....seriously, I'm not thrilled about the choice, but we'll wait and see. Right now, it seems like a bigger line of turds than one on our bath tub.
Jen and I went to New York last Tuesday. It was nice. We did all the touristy things, Central Park, FAO Schwartz, watching the skaters at Rockefeller Center, walking up Times Square. It was neat. I wanted to see MOMA, but they're closed on Tuesdays.
Golly, my little corner of the world finds itself in the news again. What is wrong with this place?
In other news, Toyota has reported its first operating loss since 1941. Since they seemed to have turned a profit in every other year they've been in operation, including the year we dropped nuclear bombs on them, I can't help but see bad things ahead for the industry.
Lily said to me the other day "You've got a monster in your nose!" She had previously found a ladybug up there. I know it's not the most attractive nose in the universe, but sheesh! I told her that I was going to make a blog post about all the weird things she's said about my nose and she said "You're ka-razy!"
There are things that make you proud of your kid, and then things that remind you that kids are sometimes very selfish. We told her that Santa was flying around the world and giving presents. "For me?!" "For you and every little girl and boy!" "Not for them!" she said and maintained this, to the point where she said that she'd rather have nobody get any toys if she had to share them with other girls and boys. Isn't that precious? Fortunately she forgot all about this in the morning.
I got Jen Birdscapes, a cool shirt (hers is a pink baby doll though), a sun jar and another nature book. Lily got a ton of stuff. She got me a tube of toothpaste. My friend Dave got an X-Box 360. I feel a little bit cheated.
Lily's new word is going to be defenestration because she keeps throwing her dollies out the window of her dollhouse.
EASTON, Pa. – A supermarket is defending itself for refusing to a write out 3-year-old Adolf Hitler Campbell's name on his birthday cake. Deborah Campbell, 25, of nearby Hunterdon County, N.J., said she phoned in her order last week to the Greenwich ShopRite. When she told the bakery department she wanted her son's name spelled out, she was told to talk to a supervisor, who denied the request.
Karen Meleta, a ShopRite spokeswoman, said the store denied similar requests from the Campbells the last two years, including a request for a swastika.
"We reserve the right not to print anything on the cake that we deem to be inappropriate," Meleta said. "We considered this inappropriate."
The Campbells ultimately got their cake decorated at a Wal-Mart in Pennsylvania, Deborah Campbell said Tuesday.
A Wal-Mart spokesman told The Associated Press on Wednesday that in light of the incident, the company would review its guidelines regarding cake decorations and other requests.
"It's clear that in serving this customer, some people were offended," spokesman Greg Rossiter said. "As a result, we're going to review our policies."
Heath Campbell said he named his son after Adolf Hitler because he liked the name and because "no one else in the world would have that name."
The Campbells' two other children are named JoyceLynn Aryan Nation Campbell, who turns 2 in a few months, and Honszlynn Hinler Jeannie Campbell, who will be 1 in April.
Campbell said he was raised not to avoid people of other races but not to mix with them socially or romantically. But he said he would try to raise his children differently.
"Say he grows up and hangs out with black people. That's fine, I don't really care," he said. "That's his choice."
He said about 12 people attended the birthday party Sunday, including several children of mixed race.
Delightful. Karen Meleta, a ShopRite spokeswoman, said the store denied similar requests from the Campbells the last two years, including a request for a swastika.
"We reserve the right not to print anything on the cake that we deem to be inappropriate," Meleta said. "We considered this inappropriate."
The Campbells ultimately got their cake decorated at a Wal-Mart in Pennsylvania, Deborah Campbell said Tuesday.
A Wal-Mart spokesman told The Associated Press on Wednesday that in light of the incident, the company would review its guidelines regarding cake decorations and other requests.
"It's clear that in serving this customer, some people were offended," spokesman Greg Rossiter said. "As a result, we're going to review our policies."
Heath Campbell said he named his son after Adolf Hitler because he liked the name and because "no one else in the world would have that name."
The Campbells' two other children are named JoyceLynn Aryan Nation Campbell, who turns 2 in a few months, and Honszlynn Hinler Jeannie Campbell, who will be 1 in April.
Campbell said he was raised not to avoid people of other races but not to mix with them socially or romantically. But he said he would try to raise his children differently.
"Say he grows up and hangs out with black people. That's fine, I don't really care," he said. "That's his choice."
He said about 12 people attended the birthday party Sunday, including several children of mixed race.
In other news, Toyota has reported its first operating loss since 1941. Since they seemed to have turned a profit in every other year they've been in operation, including the year we dropped nuclear bombs on them, I can't help but see bad things ahead for the industry.
Lily said to me the other day "You've got a monster in your nose!" She had previously found a ladybug up there. I know it's not the most attractive nose in the universe, but sheesh! I told her that I was going to make a blog post about all the weird things she's said about my nose and she said "You're ka-razy!"
There are things that make you proud of your kid, and then things that remind you that kids are sometimes very selfish. We told her that Santa was flying around the world and giving presents. "For me?!" "For you and every little girl and boy!" "Not for them!" she said and maintained this, to the point where she said that she'd rather have nobody get any toys if she had to share them with other girls and boys. Isn't that precious? Fortunately she forgot all about this in the morning.
I got Jen Birdscapes, a cool shirt (hers is a pink baby doll though), a sun jar and another nature book. Lily got a ton of stuff. She got me a tube of toothpaste. My friend Dave got an X-Box 360. I feel a little bit cheated.
Lily's new word is going to be defenestration because she keeps throwing her dollies out the window of her dollhouse.
So, I've gone off my diet a bit in recent days, and I've been partaking of some of the delicious cookies my mom sent up. I tried to sneak one out of the tin, but Lily caught me, and I couldn't eat one and not offer it to her, so I said "Close your eyes and daddy will give you a treat." She squinted her eyes shut very tightly and she looked like a little baby tree shrew. I gave her the cookie and she thoroughly enjoyed it. Then as soon as she was done, she squinted her eyes shut again, and said "Daddy, I'm closing my eyes!", thinking that it was this act that got her the cookie.
I wonder what goes on in her little head. She got up early the other morning and she was calling "Mommy! Daddy!" across the room. When we didn't come over fast enough, she clarified, "It's me, Lily!", and I'm just surprised that such a little kid understands that other people might not have share her viewpoint. I think that will be a healthy trait for her.
I'm ready for Christmas. I'm taking off from the 25th to the 5th, so hopefully my batteries are recharged. I want to hit NH, to visit Tim and have that delayed visit and Jen wants to go to NYC.
It's bitterly cold right now, with wind chills below zero. I skipped my company Christmas party, because traffic was going to be so terrible during the ice storm. Weather wasn't bad in the morning and I was wondering if I made a mistake, but by noon, we had over three inches of ice and snow. So I stayed home and baked cookies with Jen and Lily. (Check out the video section of the myspace page for a video of Lily helping out with the cookie dough)
I wonder what goes on in her little head. She got up early the other morning and she was calling "Mommy! Daddy!" across the room. When we didn't come over fast enough, she clarified, "It's me, Lily!", and I'm just surprised that such a little kid understands that other people might not have share her viewpoint. I think that will be a healthy trait for her.
I'm ready for Christmas. I'm taking off from the 25th to the 5th, so hopefully my batteries are recharged. I want to hit NH, to visit Tim and have that delayed visit and Jen wants to go to NYC.
It's bitterly cold right now, with wind chills below zero. I skipped my company Christmas party, because traffic was going to be so terrible during the ice storm. Weather wasn't bad in the morning and I was wondering if I made a mistake, but by noon, we had over three inches of ice and snow. So I stayed home and baked cookies with Jen and Lily. (Check out the video section of the myspace page for a video of Lily helping out with the cookie dough)
Lily threw up over the weekend. I felt so bad for her, because she did it overnight and we didn't find it until the morning. We usually keep the doors between our rooms open, but we happened to have them closed that night.
So I wake up, and I see Lily sleeping on top of her blanket in front of the gate we have in the door jam to her room. I figured that she must have woken up during the night and fallen asleep there when she couldn't get out. She woke up a short while later, in a very good mood. She asked for her Baby Bear, so I picked her up and carried her over to the bed, where I saw that she had thrown up. She got her sheets, her blankie, her whale and Baby Bear.
"Oh," I said, "You threw up" and she answered in the smallest little voice, "I'm so sorry" and I felt terrible because she thought this was all her fault. I tried to explain that it was okay and it was an accident, but she just kept saying "I'm so sorry."
We did wind up washing Baby Bear, so that was a good thing. She takes Baby Bear everywhere and the thing was getting more than a little scurfy.
At work, a friend asked which holiday movie I'd be watching with Lily on Christmas Eve. I said it would probably be Dora saves the Mermaids.
Two months ago, Lily had two favorite videos. One was the Little Mermaid and the other was Dora the Explorer. Jen was out one Saturday morning, and we had watched Dora three or four times. I really couldn't stomach another viewing just then, so when Lily started begging for Dora during the closing credits. I said "Hey, let's try this other Dora video" and I unwrapped the plastic and popped it in the DVD player.
In a way, I feel sorry for Lily, having found her ideal movie so young. It's got Dora and it's got mermaids. It has Dora turning into a mermaid. Her joy is complete.
Speaking of peaking, I was thinking about two things I like that has seen their peak and aren't really suited to the world in which they now find themselves. I'm talking about comic books and role-playing games. For a while, they were both pretty mainstream. My old boss at Dreamscape said that if you had the money to open a comic book store in the early 90s, then you would make a profit. . Everyone thought that their Death of Superman was going to fund their retirement, so they bought ten copies at time. But it had an initial print run of 4,000,000 copies and something like that is never going to be collectible. When people caught on to that fact, the speculator boom started to die and as the industry had adapted to serve that segment, a good percentage of comic shops took heavy hits as well.
Role-playing: Odds are that if you went to college in the late 70s/early 80s you probably played at least one game of Dungeons & Dragons. People on a message board I frequent point out that Barack Obama went to school during that time frame, and it's possibly, even likely, that he was exposed to it. But the niche it occupied has been replaced by video games to a very large extent. You can slaughter orcs at your kitchen table with twenty-sided dice or you can do it in front of your 50 inch TV in surround sound. I'm as enthusiastic an RPG partisan as you're likely to find, and I know which one I'd prefer. There are fewer people being introduced to RPGs every year. The hobby has fallen below that critical mass where people recruit their friends into the game. There are some things tabletop RPGs do better than video games, but you'll never know that if you're never exposed to them in the first place.
Both of them are slowly dying. As the current customer base ages out, they'll shrink down even more. I don't think they'll die entirely, at least not within my lifetime. They'll be kept alive if for no other reason than that they serve as a source of intellectual proprieties. Which comic book can fuel the next summer blockbuster? How can we package D&D as a new video game?
Maybe this is just bleak and my natural pessimism is showing. What do my fellow geeks think?
So I wake up, and I see Lily sleeping on top of her blanket in front of the gate we have in the door jam to her room. I figured that she must have woken up during the night and fallen asleep there when she couldn't get out. She woke up a short while later, in a very good mood. She asked for her Baby Bear, so I picked her up and carried her over to the bed, where I saw that she had thrown up. She got her sheets, her blankie, her whale and Baby Bear.
"Oh," I said, "You threw up" and she answered in the smallest little voice, "I'm so sorry" and I felt terrible because she thought this was all her fault. I tried to explain that it was okay and it was an accident, but she just kept saying "I'm so sorry."
We did wind up washing Baby Bear, so that was a good thing. She takes Baby Bear everywhere and the thing was getting more than a little scurfy.
At work, a friend asked which holiday movie I'd be watching with Lily on Christmas Eve. I said it would probably be Dora saves the Mermaids.
Two months ago, Lily had two favorite videos. One was the Little Mermaid and the other was Dora the Explorer. Jen was out one Saturday morning, and we had watched Dora three or four times. I really couldn't stomach another viewing just then, so when Lily started begging for Dora during the closing credits. I said "Hey, let's try this other Dora video" and I unwrapped the plastic and popped it in the DVD player.
In a way, I feel sorry for Lily, having found her ideal movie so young. It's got Dora and it's got mermaids. It has Dora turning into a mermaid. Her joy is complete.
Speaking of peaking, I was thinking about two things I like that has seen their peak and aren't really suited to the world in which they now find themselves. I'm talking about comic books and role-playing games. For a while, they were both pretty mainstream. My old boss at Dreamscape said that if you had the money to open a comic book store in the early 90s, then you would make a profit. . Everyone thought that their Death of Superman was going to fund their retirement, so they bought ten copies at time. But it had an initial print run of 4,000,000 copies and something like that is never going to be collectible. When people caught on to that fact, the speculator boom started to die and as the industry had adapted to serve that segment, a good percentage of comic shops took heavy hits as well.
Role-playing: Odds are that if you went to college in the late 70s/early 80s you probably played at least one game of Dungeons & Dragons. People on a message board I frequent point out that Barack Obama went to school during that time frame, and it's possibly, even likely, that he was exposed to it. But the niche it occupied has been replaced by video games to a very large extent. You can slaughter orcs at your kitchen table with twenty-sided dice or you can do it in front of your 50 inch TV in surround sound. I'm as enthusiastic an RPG partisan as you're likely to find, and I know which one I'd prefer. There are fewer people being introduced to RPGs every year. The hobby has fallen below that critical mass where people recruit their friends into the game. There are some things tabletop RPGs do better than video games, but you'll never know that if you're never exposed to them in the first place.
Both of them are slowly dying. As the current customer base ages out, they'll shrink down even more. I don't think they'll die entirely, at least not within my lifetime. They'll be kept alive if for no other reason than that they serve as a source of intellectual proprieties. Which comic book can fuel the next summer blockbuster? How can we package D&D as a new video game?
Maybe this is just bleak and my natural pessimism is showing. What do my fellow geeks think?
Lily says funny things
She was singing her ABC song. A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V dubble U X Y and Z. Now I know my ABCs. Next time won't you sing with robot.
Then I was giving her a bath last night. She scooped up some bubbles, rubbed them on one of the lenses of my glasses and said "You're a pirate daddy!" Any time any one covers an eye, she says "You're a pirate."
She was at craft show with Jen where an Amish man was showing off his handcrafted baskets. Lily took a look at his hat and announced out loud, "Mommy, he's a cowboy!" Heh heh heh.
I was supposed to go up to New Hampshire this past weekend, but work was like "We need you to come in! It's the most important thing EVAR!" (Pause) "What, you've canceled your plans? Nevermind."
We made the best of it, and managed to have a reasonably nice Sunday at least. Our family movie was Ever After (Yay, Angelica Huston! Boo, Drew Barrymore!) and we made some hummus with the food processor we had received for the wedding and were just now unboxing. If you are the considerate person who gave us that gift, it's holding up wonderfully!
She was singing her ABC song. A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V dubble U X Y and Z. Now I know my ABCs. Next time won't you sing with robot.
Then I was giving her a bath last night. She scooped up some bubbles, rubbed them on one of the lenses of my glasses and said "You're a pirate daddy!" Any time any one covers an eye, she says "You're a pirate."
She was at craft show with Jen where an Amish man was showing off his handcrafted baskets. Lily took a look at his hat and announced out loud, "Mommy, he's a cowboy!" Heh heh heh.
I was supposed to go up to New Hampshire this past weekend, but work was like "We need you to come in! It's the most important thing EVAR!" (Pause) "What, you've canceled your plans? Nevermind."
We made the best of it, and managed to have a reasonably nice Sunday at least. Our family movie was Ever After (Yay, Angelica Huston! Boo, Drew Barrymore!) and we made some hummus with the food processor we had received for the wedding and were just now unboxing. If you are the considerate person who gave us that gift, it's holding up wonderfully!
I haven’t written a lot lately because things have been so toxic at work. I went in on Monday, half-expecting to be informed that I’d be gone before the end of the year. But Monday was tolerable and on Tuesday I had a brief meeting with my boss’s boss, Lord British. Things turned around literally overnight. One day they were bad, the next day one of the reports I had written had been sold to a client, I uncovered enough material to complete my current project and learned that Lord British was tapping me to head up our database improvement program. Today is also my one year anniversary here at my job.
Also this morning, I met my weight loss goal. I’m down sixty pounds, to 160 from 220. I’m a little sad that I’ve reached it. I’m happiest when I’m striving towards something and marking my progress on the calendar gave me a little pick-me-up in the AM.
Thanksgiving. It was okay. We split it up, with my side of the family in the morning, Jen’s mom in the evening. Lily had a good time.
We’re continuing movie night. We split the Jungle Book into two Sundays because Lily fell asleep the first time. She got really scared by Kaa, the constrictor snake, who hypnotized Mowgli and then coiled him up. She was watching nervously, then blurted out "I don't like this!" And I can’t blame her. I think the only thing more disturbing than a snake that pacifies a little boy and takes him smiling to his death is a snake WITH THE VOICE OF WINNIE THE POOH who does it. I mean, Jesus Christ. Where there really no other voice actors available?
That’s enough to give me nightmares. Though I was amused by how Shere Khan dealt with Kaa. Kaa tries to hypnotize Khan, who smacks him down with his free paw. “I can't be bothered with that, I have no time for that nonsense.
I was driving to work last week and listening to National Public Radio, as I often do. National Public Radio, where integrity washes over you like lava, with the pleasing familiarity of a medium-roast coffee and a sensible muffin.
NPR has commercials, even though they don't call them that and they take a different form than the usual 30 ads you find on commercial radio. The host of the show will say,( with pleasing vocal cadence and unmatched enunciation), that this program was made possible in part from a grant from the Archer Daniels Midland Company. "Archer Daniels Midland, Supermarket to the World." And then they go into the news or traffic reports or whatever.
But then there is the occasional disconnect, like the ad wound up on the wrong station. I heard Carl Kassell telling me about Twilight, the movie about sparkly emo vampires in love with high school girls. I mean, WTF? Do they think this is the best way to reach fourteen year old girls?
I did like this bit from an interview with the actor who played the lead vampire though:
Heh.
NPR has commercials, even though they don't call them that and they take a different form than the usual 30 ads you find on commercial radio. The host of the show will say,( with pleasing vocal cadence and unmatched enunciation), that this program was made possible in part from a grant from the Archer Daniels Midland Company. "Archer Daniels Midland, Supermarket to the World." And then they go into the news or traffic reports or whatever.
But then there is the occasional disconnect, like the ad wound up on the wrong station. I heard Carl Kassell telling me about Twilight, the movie about sparkly emo vampires in love with high school girls. I mean, WTF? Do they think this is the best way to reach fourteen year old girls?
I did like this bit from an interview with the actor who played the lead vampire though:
"When you read the book," says Pattinson, looking appropriately pallid and interesting even without makeup, "it's like, 'Edward Cullen was so beautiful I creamed myself.' I mean, every line is like that. He's the most ridiculous person who's so amazing at everything. I think a lot of actors tried to play that aspect. I just couldn't do that. And the more I read the script, the more I hated this guy, so that's how I played him, as a manic-depressive who hates himself. Plus, he's a 108-year-old virgin so he's obviously got some issues there."
Heh.
We had quite a busy weekend this past week. I took off Friday (I have a lot of vacation time to use) and dropped my car off for repairs, and then Jen drove me to the dentist. I told Lily that I was going to the doctor and Jen said she cried until she fell asleep. Later on, we asked her why she had been crying and she said "Because I love him very much." Awwww...She hates going to the doctor and she's worried about her daddy too.
I like my dentist. He's from Puerto Rico and he told this story about how when he was opening his practice up here, the woman at PNC wanted to see his Puerto Rican passport before they would let him open an account with a $20,000 check. He tried to explain to her that he was in fact an American citizen and that a Puerto Rican passport was just a normal American passport, but he just couldn't get her to understand. So he went across the street and opened an account there.
The hygienist is a really nice woman from Russia. She always wants to talk about my weight loss. Go me!
After my mouth denumbed, we used a gift card and went to the Olive Garden. Lily loved the bread sticks, taking at least one bite out of four of them, and I had chicken and soup and Jen had soup and salad.
We watched Don't Forget the Lyrics, which was was terrible, but fortunately I had a lot of beer. Also, China Grove is the theme, and I was surprised to learn that Jen had apparently never, ever heard it before. For Jen's part, she was amazed that I grew up in the 80s and never heard Michael Jackson's "P.Y.T. (Pretty Young Thing)".
On Saturday, we dressed up Lily in her pretty Christmas dress and took her to Sears for a photo. She was cute, but she was all over the place and she eventually got very cranky. We were supposed to meet my friend Amy and her baby, but Lily was getting so upset that we had to cancel. She kept saying "I'm not sleepy!" and then fell asleep before we even got out of the mall parking lot.
After that, our friend Karen came over. Lily seemed a little shy at first, but after bath time she started saying "Karen's my best friend" and "I love Karen so much", so I guess she made a good impression.
On Sunday we continued with week two of our new recipe and family movie night tradition. We made coconut soup and Thai curry tofu. I liked the soup and had seconds, something I rarely do these days, but I didn't especially care for the entree. The movie we watched was Toy Story. Lily liked it, but some of Sid's toys were a little bit scary.
At bedtime, I asked her what she wanted for a bedtime story and she picked up "Green Eggs and Ham" and ran around the room saying "Sam I Am! Sam I Am!" which answered that.
I like my dentist. He's from Puerto Rico and he told this story about how when he was opening his practice up here, the woman at PNC wanted to see his Puerto Rican passport before they would let him open an account with a $20,000 check. He tried to explain to her that he was in fact an American citizen and that a Puerto Rican passport was just a normal American passport, but he just couldn't get her to understand. So he went across the street and opened an account there.
The hygienist is a really nice woman from Russia. She always wants to talk about my weight loss. Go me!
After my mouth denumbed, we used a gift card and went to the Olive Garden. Lily loved the bread sticks, taking at least one bite out of four of them, and I had chicken and soup and Jen had soup and salad.
We watched Don't Forget the Lyrics, which was was terrible, but fortunately I had a lot of beer. Also, China Grove is the theme, and I was surprised to learn that Jen had apparently never, ever heard it before. For Jen's part, she was amazed that I grew up in the 80s and never heard Michael Jackson's "P.Y.T. (Pretty Young Thing)".
On Saturday, we dressed up Lily in her pretty Christmas dress and took her to Sears for a photo. She was cute, but she was all over the place and she eventually got very cranky. We were supposed to meet my friend Amy and her baby, but Lily was getting so upset that we had to cancel. She kept saying "I'm not sleepy!" and then fell asleep before we even got out of the mall parking lot.
After that, our friend Karen came over. Lily seemed a little shy at first, but after bath time she started saying "Karen's my best friend" and "I love Karen so much", so I guess she made a good impression.
On Sunday we continued with week two of our new recipe and family movie night tradition. We made coconut soup and Thai curry tofu. I liked the soup and had seconds, something I rarely do these days, but I didn't especially care for the entree. The movie we watched was Toy Story. Lily liked it, but some of Sid's toys were a little bit scary.
At bedtime, I asked her what she wanted for a bedtime story and she picked up "Green Eggs and Ham" and ran around the room saying "Sam I Am! Sam I Am!" which answered that.
I've been so busy at work that I haven't had much time to blog recently. Working under Rescusi Annie just sucks the life out of me. I've never had a cesarean section, but I am imagine it feels something like a conversation with her. Even thinking about it exhausts me, so posts about work will be sparse for the foreseeable future.
Also, though I'm happy about the outcome of the election, I find that I don't have a lot to say about it. I think Obama will be a better President than McCain. I never quite understood why John McCain considered maverick-hood for its own sake to be a virtue. His embrace of the "maverick" label failed, in part, because it's one of those terms that loses currency when one applies it to oneself. It might have seemed kind of edgy and cool to have the campaign's surrogates describing McCain as a maverick, but when he used the word to describe himself it came across as a bit too eager to please. It reminded me of Pee Wee's Big Adventure -- "I'm a loner, Dottie. A rebel."
Finished up My Name is Legion on audiobook. Someone converted a bunch of books for the blind from audiotape to MP3 and I've been listening to those. It has two short stories and a novella. One story is good, one is meh, but the novella justifiably won a Hugo. I'm listening to Belle & Sebastian while I try to figure out which story I want to listen to next. One interesting thing about listening to books for the blind was the bit at the end where the reader said "If you experienced any difficulties with this recording, tie a piece of string to the tin, braille side up."
Had a very nice evening with Jen and Lily on Sunday. We made pumpkin soup, which was really tremendously delicious, along with sesame-ginger baked tofu squares and watched the Incredibles on the couch, all three of us together. (The Incredibles is such a great movie. I can't think of a single thing I don't like about it.) We're going to try to do this every Sunday, trying a new dish followed by a movie. I think Lily was a little too young for the Incredibles, so we're going to try to go for Toy Story nest week.
Also, though I'm happy about the outcome of the election, I find that I don't have a lot to say about it. I think Obama will be a better President than McCain. I never quite understood why John McCain considered maverick-hood for its own sake to be a virtue. His embrace of the "maverick" label failed, in part, because it's one of those terms that loses currency when one applies it to oneself. It might have seemed kind of edgy and cool to have the campaign's surrogates describing McCain as a maverick, but when he used the word to describe himself it came across as a bit too eager to please. It reminded me of Pee Wee's Big Adventure -- "I'm a loner, Dottie. A rebel."
Finished up My Name is Legion on audiobook. Someone converted a bunch of books for the blind from audiotape to MP3 and I've been listening to those. It has two short stories and a novella. One story is good, one is meh, but the novella justifiably won a Hugo. I'm listening to Belle & Sebastian while I try to figure out which story I want to listen to next. One interesting thing about listening to books for the blind was the bit at the end where the reader said "If you experienced any difficulties with this recording, tie a piece of string to the tin, braille side up."
Had a very nice evening with Jen and Lily on Sunday. We made pumpkin soup, which was really tremendously delicious, along with sesame-ginger baked tofu squares and watched the Incredibles on the couch, all three of us together. (The Incredibles is such a great movie. I can't think of a single thing I don't like about it.) We're going to try to do this every Sunday, trying a new dish followed by a movie. I think Lily was a little too young for the Incredibles, so we're going to try to go for Toy Story nest week.
So I had my 34th birthday on Friday. I can't even say that I'm in my early thirties any more. Lily knows it's my birthday, and when I ask her how old I am, she says "Two years old!", so I think that's what I'm going to start telling people.
We had a nice Halloween. Lily was a pink dinosaur and roared at everyone she saw. We spent half of our time trick or treating and half of it giving out candy and Lily enjoyed both activities. Lily is getting to be really sharp. She was holding two spoons at breakfast time and I asked her "What color are those spoons?". She looked at them both and then showed me one "This one is green," then she showed the other "and this one is purple", which I thought was a very sophisticated sentence and reflected more complex underlying though process than I would have expected. I was expecting her to say something like "Green!" or "Purple!" or "Green and Purple!" but she discussed the two separately, compared the two and even connected the two clauses using "and".
Also, she likes to tell me what to do when we first wake up in the morning. "Go downstairs, see mommy." When we were walking down the stairs together, she issued me two or three commands and I said "Okay, bossy," and she said "I not bossy. I Lilyan Dessa Nisko" which is an awfully big name for such a little kid.
I'm actually pleased when I'm able to outsmart her. She's a very fussy eater sometimes, so one morning I grabbed an ice cream cone, stuffed it full of cottage cheese, sprinkled a couple sprinkles on top and let her eat ice cream for breakfast. Go me! I'm smarter than a two-year-old! Sometimes!
On Saturday, Tim came down to visit and we had an excellent visit. Early on Saturday, we bought a lot of food, Tim, Ancker and Frederick showed up and we played Unknown Armies. Everyone gave me presents too! Frederick bought me a zombie t-shirt and a remote control zombie, Tim brought me a zombie manga and Ancker stole some M&Ms out of Lily's bag and threw them at me.
The Unknown Armies RPG was fun, but not quite in the way that I intended. I was hoping for a serious game of mature horror and instead we had character sheets reading"the magical retard" and "the halfling hooker". I'm a kind of terrible tabletop GM (though I kick ass in play by post games and I didn't convey the themes of the game very well. So it turned silly rather quickly. Here are some quotes from the game.
In Gauntlet Announcer Voice: "Mechanic has shot the hooker."
Josh: "He does not grab your testicles at this time."
Dave to Jen, who was sitting nearby: "Sure you don't want to play?"
Cultists: "Want some shrooms, man?"
Tim's character, Joe the Plumber: "No, thanks. I'm high on Democracy."
Since we finished up early, we still had some time to hang out, so we went to rent a movie. We got Teeth, a bizarre revenge fantasy thing about a teenage girl who goes around castrating men with the teeth in her girl-parts. (In fairness to her, every man in the movie is utterly despicable. As Tim said: "This movie takes a dim view of men. I have hung out with women without trying to drug, rape or fist them.") The mutation was apparently caused by the nuclear power plant that towers over the house in the establishing shot, and indeed, in every shot of the house. The tenth time they showed it, I was like, "That was subtle," and Frederick's like, "Yeah, it's practically subliminal."
It was fairly well reviewed on metacritic and had apparently won a few awards at Sundance. We were all sitting with our legs crossed by the time it was done. As Tim said as the credit's rolled: "Who knew a movie about dicks being chewed off could make for uncomfortable viewing?"
Frederick and Ancker took off and Tim and I turned in a couple hours later. We went looking for a coffee place when we woke up and finally had lunch at Arby's and coffee at the stand in the Palmer Park mall. I enjoyed my chicken, bacon and swiss sandwich, and Tim certainly enjoyed his meal, as it was spoonfed to him by the teenaged cashier. Coffee was crap though.
After that, we dropped off our junk and walked down to the parade to meet Jen and Lily. We hung around for a bit, leaving before the parade actually started. Tim napped and I played video games. If we had stayed, we might have gotten our pictures in the paper too! Jen saw a photographer and started hamming it up, and the guy came over and took some pictures of her and Lily.
They came home, Ancker showed up, then he took off. We watched "Thank You for Smoking" which was just brilliant. Jen went to bed, and Tim and I watched some Wonderfalls. Forget Firefly, Wonderfalls is the archetypal "killed before its time" show. I can't wait for the Wonderfalls/Pushing Daisies crossover later this year. Woot!
Tim and I got up early. He got a cute video of Lily dancing to the Monster Mash on his phone. Then we went to breakfast in Clinton. The waitress asked if we were brothers.
It's very strange. I turned 34 this week and we could see the video store in Clinton where we would try to rent R-rated movies when we wer 17. (And we succeeded. We just confidently handed our drivers licence to the clerk, who wasn't paid enough to do basic math in his head.) It's strange to think that was literally half a lifetime ago.
We had a nice Halloween. Lily was a pink dinosaur and roared at everyone she saw. We spent half of our time trick or treating and half of it giving out candy and Lily enjoyed both activities. Lily is getting to be really sharp. She was holding two spoons at breakfast time and I asked her "What color are those spoons?". She looked at them both and then showed me one "This one is green," then she showed the other "and this one is purple", which I thought was a very sophisticated sentence and reflected more complex underlying though process than I would have expected. I was expecting her to say something like "Green!" or "Purple!" or "Green and Purple!" but she discussed the two separately, compared the two and even connected the two clauses using "and".
Also, she likes to tell me what to do when we first wake up in the morning. "Go downstairs, see mommy." When we were walking down the stairs together, she issued me two or three commands and I said "Okay, bossy," and she said "I not bossy. I Lilyan Dessa Nisko" which is an awfully big name for such a little kid.
I'm actually pleased when I'm able to outsmart her. She's a very fussy eater sometimes, so one morning I grabbed an ice cream cone, stuffed it full of cottage cheese, sprinkled a couple sprinkles on top and let her eat ice cream for breakfast. Go me! I'm smarter than a two-year-old! Sometimes!
On Saturday, Tim came down to visit and we had an excellent visit. Early on Saturday, we bought a lot of food, Tim, Ancker and Frederick showed up and we played Unknown Armies. Everyone gave me presents too! Frederick bought me a zombie t-shirt and a remote control zombie, Tim brought me a zombie manga and Ancker stole some M&Ms out of Lily's bag and threw them at me.
The Unknown Armies RPG was fun, but not quite in the way that I intended. I was hoping for a serious game of mature horror and instead we had character sheets reading"the magical retard" and "the halfling hooker". I'm a kind of terrible tabletop GM (though I kick ass in play by post games and I didn't convey the themes of the game very well. So it turned silly rather quickly. Here are some quotes from the game.
In Gauntlet Announcer Voice: "Mechanic has shot the hooker."
Josh: "He does not grab your testicles at this time."
Dave to Jen, who was sitting nearby: "Sure you don't want to play?"
Cultists: "Want some shrooms, man?"
Tim's character, Joe the Plumber: "No, thanks. I'm high on Democracy."
Since we finished up early, we still had some time to hang out, so we went to rent a movie. We got Teeth, a bizarre revenge fantasy thing about a teenage girl who goes around castrating men with the teeth in her girl-parts. (In fairness to her, every man in the movie is utterly despicable. As Tim said: "This movie takes a dim view of men. I have hung out with women without trying to drug, rape or fist them.") The mutation was apparently caused by the nuclear power plant that towers over the house in the establishing shot, and indeed, in every shot of the house. The tenth time they showed it, I was like, "That was subtle," and Frederick's like, "Yeah, it's practically subliminal."
It was fairly well reviewed on metacritic and had apparently won a few awards at Sundance. We were all sitting with our legs crossed by the time it was done. As Tim said as the credit's rolled: "Who knew a movie about dicks being chewed off could make for uncomfortable viewing?"
Frederick and Ancker took off and Tim and I turned in a couple hours later. We went looking for a coffee place when we woke up and finally had lunch at Arby's and coffee at the stand in the Palmer Park mall. I enjoyed my chicken, bacon and swiss sandwich, and Tim certainly enjoyed his meal, as it was spoonfed to him by the teenaged cashier. Coffee was crap though.
After that, we dropped off our junk and walked down to the parade to meet Jen and Lily. We hung around for a bit, leaving before the parade actually started. Tim napped and I played video games. If we had stayed, we might have gotten our pictures in the paper too! Jen saw a photographer and started hamming it up, and the guy came over and took some pictures of her and Lily.
They came home, Ancker showed up, then he took off. We watched "Thank You for Smoking" which was just brilliant. Jen went to bed, and Tim and I watched some Wonderfalls. Forget Firefly, Wonderfalls is the archetypal "killed before its time" show. I can't wait for the Wonderfalls/Pushing Daisies crossover later this year. Woot!
Tim and I got up early. He got a cute video of Lily dancing to the Monster Mash on his phone. Then we went to breakfast in Clinton. The waitress asked if we were brothers.
It's very strange. I turned 34 this week and we could see the video store in Clinton where we would try to rent R-rated movies when we wer 17. (And we succeeded. We just confidently handed our drivers licence to the clerk, who wasn't paid enough to do basic math in his head.) It's strange to think that was literally half a lifetime ago.
The skies they were ashen and sober;
The leaves they were crisped and sere--
The leaves they were withering and sere;
It was night in the lonesome October
Of my most immemorial year;
The leaves they were crisped and sere--
The leaves they were withering and sere;
It was night in the lonesome October
Of my most immemorial year;
Before Lily was born, Jen and I used to read a chapter a night every October from Roger Zelazny's A Night in the Lonesome October. (It's not to be confused with a bog standard novel of the same name, though both obviously take their title from Poe's Ulalume). I found it on mp3 and I've been listening to it on my walks around the lake. I timed it very well, having finished listening to the final chapter at about 1:30 today.) The book has thirty one chapters, each corresponding to a day of October in 1887.
Night in the Lonesome October is narrated by Snuff, the dog who is Jack the Ripper's familiar. (I lent the book to Dave when we first met, and he said "If anyone asks, the narrator is Jack the Ripper's dog, okay?")
It is revealed as the story progresses that once every few decades, when the moon is full on the night of Halloween (Apropos of nothing, apparently I was born on a Halloween of the full moon, something I learned just now.), the fabric of reality thins, and doors may be opened between this world and the realm of the Elder Gods. When these conditions are right, men and women with occult knowledge may gather at a specific ritual site, to either hold the doors closed, or to help fling them open. Should the Closers win, then the world will remain as it is until the next turning... but should the Openers succeed, then the Elder Gods will come to Earth, to remake the world in their own image. The Openers have never yet won. These meetings are often referred to as "The Game" or "The Great Game" by the participants. I think Zelazny called it that specifically for the purposes of the following exchange:
Last night we obtained more ingredients for the master's spell. As we paused on a corner in Soho the Great Detective and his companion came out of the fog and approached us.
"Good evening," he said.
"Good evening," Jack replied.
"Would you happen to have a light?"
Jack produced a package of wax vestas and passed it to him. Both men maintained eye contact as he lit his pipe.
"Lots of patrolmen about."
"Yes."
"Something's afoot, I daresay."
Get it? Get it?! Heh heh heh.
Anyways, it is just such a fun book. Zelazny reads it on the version I have, and while he seemed incapable of getting through a sentence without parsing it on the Amber audiobooks, he sounds like he's having a blast reading this one. I wouldn't say it's his best written book, though it's certainly the most fun. I'd say it even beats out Neil Gaiman's Study in Emerald for the best Sherlock Holmes/HP Lovecraft/Jack the Ripper crossover (which admitedly is not the most crowded field.)It's not the easiest book to find any more but any book that throws together Jack the Ripper, "The Count", "The Good Doctor" and his "Experiment Man" a Werewolf, a Witch, a crazed Vicar, a druid, and a Mad Monk, each with their animal companions and works as a serious novel is really worth seeking out.
It's been quite a busy week and I haven't had much time to blog. The owner of the company came in and I had to give a presentation about a project I had inherited. That went pretty well.
In accordance with Tim's advice earlier, I will be referring to me coworkers with code names. Present at the meeting were: Saucy Jack, Lord British, the Autistic Robot, and Resusci Annie.
We had our nephew Christopher over on the weekend and that was a lot of fun. Lily loves him so much. Most of the people who read this blog are on my Lily picture mailing list and will have seen the picture from Chris's visit where Lily has her hand on his shoulder as they both look at the computer game he's playing. That's one of my new favorite pictures. But Chris had a great time hanging with me and Lily. Lily had a great time. Jen had a great time. I'd assume Chris's mom had a nice time too, and I had a great time. We played the new Rampage game on the PSII, and if you press the buttons during the loading screen, it makes a fart sound effect. Chris thought it was the funniest thing imaginable.
We also played some Marvel: Ultimate Alliance, which Chris had played, but I hadn't. It is an awesome game, though it's silly in parts. "I'm Doctor Doom. I've got a freakin' dragon on my team, but first I'm going to throw Bullseye and Evil Bucky against the Avengers. That ought to slow them down." And what was up with MODOK? "I see you have Reed Richards, the smartest man in the universe on your team. I'm going to paralyze you and make you answer some general knowledge trivia."
The problem with not keeping up with my blog is that I will compose or copy something interesting (I usually save posts-in-progress in the drafts folder in gmail) and then find it's no longer topical by the time I get around to putting it up. For instance, this piece of Sarah Palin's wardrobe.
In accordance with Tim's advice earlier, I will be referring to me coworkers with code names. Present at the meeting were: Saucy Jack, Lord British, the Autistic Robot, and Resusci Annie.
We had our nephew Christopher over on the weekend and that was a lot of fun. Lily loves him so much. Most of the people who read this blog are on my Lily picture mailing list and will have seen the picture from Chris's visit where Lily has her hand on his shoulder as they both look at the computer game he's playing. That's one of my new favorite pictures. But Chris had a great time hanging with me and Lily. Lily had a great time. Jen had a great time. I'd assume Chris's mom had a nice time too, and I had a great time. We played the new Rampage game on the PSII, and if you press the buttons during the loading screen, it makes a fart sound effect. Chris thought it was the funniest thing imaginable.
We also played some Marvel: Ultimate Alliance, which Chris had played, but I hadn't. It is an awesome game, though it's silly in parts. "I'm Doctor Doom. I've got a freakin' dragon on my team, but first I'm going to throw Bullseye and Evil Bucky against the Avengers. That ought to slow them down." And what was up with MODOK? "I see you have Reed Richards, the smartest man in the universe on your team. I'm going to paralyze you and make you answer some general knowledge trivia."
The problem with not keeping up with my blog is that I will compose or copy something interesting (I usually save posts-in-progress in the drafts folder in gmail) and then find it's no longer topical by the time I get around to putting it up. For instance, this piece of Sarah Palin's wardrobe.
What $150,000 Could Buy in Your Community
According to my nefarious sources, $150,000 will get you:
37 People With Health Care for One Year OR
180 Homes with Renewable Electricity for One Year OR
3 Public Safety Officers for One Year OR
2 Music and Arts Teachers for One Year OR
12 Scholarships for University Students for One Year OR
2 Affordable Housing Units OR
47 Children with Health Care for One Year OR
24 Head Start Places for Children for One Year OR
2 Elementary School Teachers for One Year OR
2 Port Container Inspectors for One year OR
Sarah Palin's wardrobe!
The median monthly mortgage payment in the US in 2007 was about $1500. In other words, Sarah Palin spent very nearly as much on clothing in a single month as the typical American family will spend on housing over the next ten years.Profile
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