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.

Monday, 26 December 2011

Yesterday, Jennifer made a point of declaring that today would be Lazy Day. I declared that I would let her have her Lazy Day and, for the most part, join in. Since I like to do something, however, I set up three goals to accomplish on this, my first of several, days off of work:

1) Organize Owen’s project cabinet
We keep Owen’s painting, drawing, coloring, and cutting supplies in an overflowing cabinet in our dining room. It’s time he thinned that herd a bit.

2) Get my garage door operating correctly again.
Yeah, for some reason, it only opens about 6 inches. I gotta figure out why and solve the mystery.

3) Get that crappy, annoying cabinet out of the bathroom.
The downstairs bathroom has a low-quality cabinet installed directly over the toilet. So when I sit down, I have to lean forward in order to not hit my head on the cabinet.

I’m pleased to say I accomplished all three of these tasks. First, Owen and I took about 45 minutes to clean out his cabinet. We organized everything into piles and bags, he filled up a bag for recycling, and gave extraneous art supplies to the Headed-for-Goodwill box. Second, it turned out one of the wheels on the garage door’s track had come out of the track. Not sure how this happened, but it was a relatively easy fix, and I think I’ve bent the track back in place so it doesn’t happen again. Third, that bathroom cabinet was really bolted and glued in place. I had to bang up the wall a bit, but I managed to get the cabinet out. I’m gonna take the shelves from the cabinet and hang them in the garage. The cabinet front, on the other hand, I plan to burn.

But for the most part, it was a lazy day. Here’s a photo journal depicting the remains of yesterday’s revelries:

Nothing says “Post-Xmas Breakfast” like leftover enchiladas and green and red M&M’s.

I decided to decorate this rather empty shelf in or kitchen with my take from last Thursday’s gift swap.

Here’s our Wall of Fame: cards we received wishing us happy holidays. The gap between the molding and the wall provides a convenient place to hang and display them.

Here’s one of Owen’s presents: a big-ass dinosaur puzzle. He must be guarding that candy, sitting off to the left.

Isla’s new xylophone is “Supplied with 2 beaters.” Wow. That’s great. Maybe we can get them to play “At this Moment” for us.

Isla spent quite a bit of time playing with her little dolls and furniture. Here, we see she made a dream bathroom: two sinks, two toilets, and three bathtubs. Question for the ladies: do you all go to the bathroom with your pants on and your legs straight out? Of course, I’m no woman…but I might have some suggestions on how to make life easier.

2:00 and he’s still in his brand new pajamas. Like most parents, we worry that our son does not spend enough time in front of a screen. We’re hoping this gift will fix that.

Isla – who never changed out of her pajamas all day – is sick of her lunch, which consisted of enchiladas and M&M’s.

Sometimes the dice game leaves us with things we didn’t know we needed: Owen walked away from the game with this bag, which can evidently only be used when wearing – or to store – maillots.

Owen also won some anti-monkey butt powder in the dice game yesterday. Oh that’s just great, make the kid fret over yet another ailment.

Another dice game issue is winding up with multiple copies of the same gift. I won two packs of wool socks, which I decided was one pack too many. So I swapped one pack for this multi-tool gadget. Turns out, my cousin-in-law’s boyfriend had won two of them, so he was looking to make a trade.

And finally, here are the wool socks I took home with me. After donning them, my wife declared that she had never been more attracted to me. Not sure if she said that because I was wearing the socks, or because I was wearing nothing but the socks. Either way, lucky her.