Friday, 06 January 2012

We live on a street with no restrictions on parking. Unlike nearly every other street in the city, there are no annoying signs like “No Parking Tuesdays 2:30-6:15” or “20 Minute Parking on School Days” or “10 Minute Parking for Domestic Vehicles on Even-Numbered Days and 7.4 Minute Parking for Handicapped on All Days Except the Third Friday in May.” No sir, not on our street. Just go ahead and park along the edge of my property any time you want, day or night.

I think we have the only two parking spaces left in the city.

Anyway, I was rocking Isla to sleep tonight and, perched up on the second floor, I was looking out the window. A Subaru pulled up, slowed down, and then – despite there being twice the needed space – the driver decided to parallel park. She did a rather lousy job, too (was at least a foot from the curb).

After parking, four people exited the car: the woman driver, a man in the passenger side, and another man and woman in the backseat. The man in the front passenger seat got out, took a swig of some Rock Star beverage he was drinking, and then tossed the can right onto my lawn.

What a weasel-necked asswipe!

I mean, it’s too bad there weren’t any cup-holders in the car, or even a floor in the car where he could have tossed his can. And it’s too bad that loser couldn’t be bothered to carry that heavy, heavy can the three or blocks to his destination, or even just drop it in one of the many recycle bins scattered between here and the end of the block.

See? Here are three recycle bins between my home and the end of the block. (And that doesn’t even count the other side of the street.)

A few minutes later, I walked outside and picked up the can – it was still about 1/3 full. So that Neanderthal seemed to think it was okay if his concoction of chemicals just spilled out onto my lawn and killed my grass. I was going to bring the can inside, but then I figured I’d give the dick-brain one more chance. I gently set the can on the car’s roof, near the passenger door, hoping that when the sub-adequate knuckle-dragger returned to the car, he would think, “Whoa, there’s my Rock Star drink. I must’ve foolishly tossed it aside earlier. That was careless and insensitive of me. I guess I’ll bring it with me into the car now and dispose of it properly now that some benevolent soul has afforded me a second chance.”

The can, sitting on the car.

My wife tells me I let him off easily. She says I should have left a note. Man, she can be so heartless sometimes.

Saturday, 07 January 2012

When I went outside this morning, guess what I found sitting on the side of the road, near the curb?

If you guessed anything besides the above-mentioned can, then you’re too dumb to keep reading.

What kind of sad excuse for a homo sapien is this? If I went out somewhere with my friends, and I just threw some litter on the ground, they’d all look at me like I was some sort of smarmy ignoramus. I would think that this salamander brain would have been especially wary of impressing his friends, since they were all riding in an Impreza.

Yeah, that’s the kind of car it was. An Impreza. How pretentious is that? I, on the other hand, drive a Cavalier – a car name that is so self-effacing, you can’t help feel sorry for it.

Here’s the “Impreza’s” license plate, by the way:

…so please contact the owner if you happened to know who they are. I have a mostly-empty can of Rock Star they can come pick up.

I’m not sure if this fuckwit thought he was impressing his friends by carelessly tossing garbage onto the grass, but I think his friends should consider hanging out with less self-centered troglodytes.

Monday, 02 January 2012

Jennifer dictates a blog post:

Once upon a time, I was standing in the middle of the kitchen looking around aimlessly into space and then I told me wife, “I don’t know what to do.” And she said, “Do the dishes.” No, wait, I said: “I don’t know what to do. Tell me something to do.” And then she said, “Do the dishes if you don’t know what to do.”

And then I said, “I don’t know if I want to do the dishes.” And then, a couple minutes later, she saw that I was doing the dishes. And then I quit doing the dishes and I didn’t know what to do after that. And I was bothering the crap out of my wife & being obnoxious and so she said, “I’m ready for you to go back to work.”

The end.

But you’re not really publishing that, right?

Yeah, I am. Why would I bother typing all this if I wasn’t gonna use it?

Why?

*shrug.*

Tuesday, 03 January 2012

Well, as tangentially hinted at above, today was my first day at work since December 23rd. I don’t hate my job, so I really don’t mind being there; I was even kind of looking forward to coming in to work today because I had some stuff I wanted to get done.

My main problem with my job is the commute.

I’ve solved this problem by carpooling (to save money) and listening to books on tape (to enjoy the time). When neither of those is an option – and I thank the local libraries for systematically removing their audio cassette books from the shelves – I listen to the radio, usually NPR.

But, as they informed me about five times today, today is the “start” of the election season.

Oh, I’m sorry – I guess all that extended coverage about Michelle Bachmann running around Iowa and Newt Gingrich saying asinine things for the past several months must not have counted. From listening to NPR, I thought the election “season” got under way sometime last August. But I guess they are referring to their coverage, because at no point during my drive to or from work did NPR spend more than 10 minutes not talking about the Iowa Primaries today. They were practically tripping over themselves trying to find something to talk about regarding the candidates and their tactics and what level of hatred they all have towards gays, women, science, and poor people. And, of course, their unfortunate last name.

If NPR gets this worked up over the Republican’s Iowan Primary, I can’t wait to see how they act when the Democrats are looking for a candidate.

For more on the Republican primaries, CLICK HERE.

OR HERE.

OR HERE.

OR HERE.

Or just let me sum it up for you: It’s all boring nonsense designed to help you figure out which misogynistic asshole is the best man for the next of 49 more primaries.

Wednesday, 04 January 2012

I think I need to take my brewing know-how to the next stage (or “level,” if you prefer palindromes).

Whenever a co-worker discovers I brew beer, they get all interested and ask questions, like I’m an expert. But, I quickly exhaust my knowledge and refer them to THIS VIDEO, which then deflects the conversation onto my film-making hobby.

When I first joined Toastmasters, I figured I would give a speech or two about beer brewing, but then I learned that a few other guys in the club have the same hobby, so I don’t really want to give a speech about brewing in front of people that probably are better brew connoisseurs than I.

Finally, the co-worker who borrowed my brewing equipment last spring – just so she could see if she wanted to invest in the hobby – has now become the master. She’s whipping up yeast, concocting her own recipes, and – according to my wife – has way, way better labels.

Anyway, I received an Amazon gift card as an Xmas gift, so I’m gonna buy a copy of The Complete Joy of Homebrewing. And some caps. It’s always good to have some spare caps around.

Thursday, 05 January 2012

Today, as part of my commute home from work, I began heading east on a main street in St. Paul. As soon as I  made the turn onto this particular street, I noticed something was wrong. Traffic heading west was backed up a bit, and the cars were slowly swerving into my lane. I gawked as I drove by: there was a busted up bookshelf littering the road. Then, about two hundred feet later, there was a busted up changing table (or something similar – there are so many diapers in my life I guess I’m just assuming it was a changing table). Then, about 500 feet later, near an exit ramp, was a desk chair in perfectly good condition. Well, close – there was one caster wheel missing.

“Huh,” thought I. Someone must’ve lost a load out the back of their pick-up. I kept driving. The desk chair reminded me that we’ve been wanting one. Ever since we moved, we’ve been using the rocking chair at our desk. This doesn’t work too well. Sometimes, I fetch the big green exercise ball and sit on that. It works pretty decent, actually, but the height is not adjustable, and without back support, we can only sit there for a brief period. That desk chair lying there, tossed aside and forgotten, meanwhile, was exactly the sort of chair we need.

Now we own it.

Oh – and I found that fifth wheel, too.

Sunday, 01 January 2012

Jennifer and I rang in the new year by finishing up our office slash playroom:

I know what you’re thinking – “office slash playroom” is a lousy name for part of the house, right? Yeah, we’re still working on that. The problem is, we have so many areas of the house, I don’t know what to call them all. For example, we have a deck AND a porch. Worse, we have this area by the circuit breakers (down in the basement) and I’m never sure how to describe that area. It’s kind of a utility room, but not really.

We also have three landings. We’ve only ever had one landing before: in our townhome. For those who don’t know, a ‘landing’ is aplace in a staircase where it flattens out for a bit – usually to turn a corner. In our townhome, we just called that spot “The Landing.” But in our new mansion, we have three of them. What to call them?

We named them (in descending order from highest elevation to lowest): The Kent, The Tudor, and the Windsor. This allows us to speak with greater precision, as in, “Owen, pick up your toys and set them on the Tudor so I can vacuum,” or, “Hey, the cat just threw up on the Windsor.”

Other things requiring better names are the two car stalls of our garage (the East and West Wing?), the three ‘spaces’ in our basement that are not the bathroom or the laundry room, and, of course, that pesky office slash playroom. I’m also pushing for a name for our entire estate, too, though the main issue with that seems to be that Jennifer and I can not agree on a suffix: Shall it be a Manor? A Dwelling? Just plain Home? A Castle? Or (my favorite) a Compound?

Clearly, we have our work cut out for us.

Saturday, 31 December 2011

Here at the end of the year, let’s examine four areas of my life: the books I read, the money I found, my word of the year, and this blog itself.

1) The books I read

I finished reading 58 books this year. Well, actually, I probably read more like 100 books – but I don’t count those little kid books, and I am not including books I’ve already read.

Fifty-eight is the most books I’ve read in a single year since 2000, when I read 71 books. Last year, I only read 35 books, so this year is a 23-book improvement.

Many of the books I read this year were read aloud with my son. I decided shortly before his 6th birthday that I would begin reading him more mature books, so we read Black Beauty, Stuart Little, and the Mouse and the Motorcycle (all books I have read before). We also read several books that were new to me, including many of the A to Z Mysteries, the Harry Huggins series, and the Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane.

I read a few books for school, including a reread of Narrative of the Life of Fredrick Douglass. New books I read included Bartleby and Brokeback Mountain.

My choice for the best non-fiction I read all year is a tie between The Disappearing Spoon and The Matter with Us. Please check them out – they’re both worth your time. The biggest waste of time non-fiction I read was Ice.

My choice for the best fiction I read all year is The Knowledge of Good and Evil. The worst novel I read this year was Pride and Fucking Who Cares, by Jane Austen, which I read for a class I took last spring.

2) The Money I Found

As I noted back at the beginning of the year, I decided to keep track of the money I found lying around this year. Back on Wednesday, I found me a penny at the local Chipotle and, well, that happened to be the last bit of money I found this year, bringing me to a grand total of $13.68.

The most money I found at a single time was $1.00. The most money I found in a single month was in June ($2.03). The least amount of money I found in a single month was March (40 cents). The biggest gap between finding any money was the 13 days between August 16th and August 29th. Conversely, the most consecutive days during which I found money were September 9th through 13th (five days). The longest it took me to make it to the next whole dollar was a tie: it took me 46 days to get to the $3 mark, then another 46 days to get to the $4 mark. Howver, it only took me six days to go from $10 to $11 dollars.

I surpassed minimum wage ($7.25) on August 3rd, when I found a dime and my total racked up to $7.34.

My plan is to keep track of this again in 2012 and see if I can best this year’s record.

3) My Word of the Year

I’ll write more about this later – but look up at the top of the page. There’s a new tab labeled “Words of the Year.” Click on it, and you’ll have somewhat of an explanation as to what I’m talking about. I’ll drop in the actual words, and announce my selection for my personal word of the year, sometime next week.

4) This blog

Well, I didn’t quite meet my goal of writing about every day of the year here in 2011. In 2010, I heartily wrote about all 365 days. But this year, I copped out twice. First, I only wrote about 9 of the days in June (1-5, 11, 28-30), and just last week, I purposely mashed two days together since they were both the Zombie-god holiday and I had written a lengthy post. So, I only wrote about 343 days this year. Sorry about that. I’m gonna try harder in 2012, even though the goal this leap-year will be 0.273% more challenging.

And that’s my year.

Tuesday, 27 December 2011

Yesterday, I cut two small blocks of wood and Owen and I sanded them and rounded the edges. Then I drilled a hole in each one. Then he painted them Pollock-style. Today, they were fully dried, so I took them out to the garage.

When I was a teenager, my family and I moved into our first place with a garage. One of my dad’s friends brought over two tennis balls the day we moved in. When my dad asked him what they were for, he just said, “You’ll see.”

Of course, we were all busy moving boxes into the house and unpacking that day, but later, we went in the garage and saw the finished product: the two balls were each suspended from the ceiling by fishing line. My first thought was, “Yay! Tehter ball!” But it turns out that the balls were to be used to know how far to pull our cars into the garage. Once the windshield hit the ball…that’s where you stop. This, of course, maximizes your storage area in front of the car, while simultaneously ensuring you’ve pulled in far enough to allow the garage to close.

I really liked this idea, and I’ve since installed something similar in the three garages I’ve owned. You can buy ready-made garage parking stops, of course. But why waste the money? Just find something around the house, and string it up.

Wednesday, 28 December 2011

Owen and I filmed a movie today.

Okay, so we didn’t film the whole thing – I plan to film the rest sometime in the next few days – but we recorded the most important parts.

It was very important that I make a film this week because over 99% of the year has elapsed and I have not made a single film. Now, when I say that, I am excluding things I record for other people – such as weddings – and I am excluding home videos that are recorded just for sentimental reasons.

When I say “make a film,” I mean the whole thing – pulling out the tripod, purposely setting up a scene, having an idea in mind, then editing all the footage together with proper titles, transitions, and effects.

I’ve made at least one short film (“filmlet”) every years since 1992. Some years, such as in 1993 and 2008, I made over ten films. In other years, such as 1998 and 2006, I only made one film. But I’ve never let a whole year go by without making at least one.

Anyway, just thought I’d throw that out there. It will be a while before I edit it and make it available for public consumption, but at least I kept the tradition going. Twenty years strong.

Thursday, 29 December 2011

Here’s my wife blog post summing up everything we did for the holidays: CLICK HERE. Or maybe I should say “detailing everything we did,” since we did so much and we basically celebrated everything. Jennifer suggests we join a religion so that we only have to celebrate that religion’s holidays, instead of busying ourselves with all of them. I don’t know, I can’t find a flaw in that logic. I guess I’ll be a Presbyterian come New Year’s Day.

Jennifer and Isla took Owen to his grandparents’ house today. He’s gonna be there until Saturday. While they were gone, I filmed the remaining footage for the above-mentioned film. Then I imported it. I think it’s usable. I’ll start working on it soon – I just want to finish up a few home videos, first.

Friday, 30 December 2011

Today, with one of our kids away, Jennifer and I went out to get supplies, then came home to finish work on our office-slash-toy room. Earlier this week, we pulled the molding off of the ceiling. The previous homeowner thought it would be pretty to put up really thick molding around the extension area It wasn’t. So we tore it down.

Jennifer and I then filled in the many nail- and screw-holes, as well as a few places where chunks of drywall fell off. I cut one of the pieces of molding and nailed it above the window, so that it matched window frame that went around the other three sides of the window.

“Why,” you ask, “would someone only put molding on three sides of a window?”

Good question.

I think the molding above the window was removed for the butt-ugly curtains. We tore those down months ago. Anyway, the molding matches perfectly. It’s one of those improvements that you wouldn’t even know about unless I specifically pointed it out to you. Which I will do.

After taping and tarping, Jennifer got to work painting the ceiling and walls. It’s already looking better.

It’s amazing what we can get done when I am home from work all week and our son is off with his grandparents.