Saturday, December 31, 2005
Happy New Year!
I’m not sure if I will be back until “next year,” so I’ll leave you with the obligatory wish for a great one.
Oh yeah, I should add that I long ago gave up on making resolutions that have any degree of seriousness to them. It’s just a bummer when you can’t fulfill them.
However, if I have one this year, it’s to make more money, but that’s as much desire as necessity. I have some ideas and have been thinking of a post in which I seek input. It just didn’t happen today as I’d thought about doing.
36 and Pregnant… Look Out World!
Kelley is back! In a big way, you might say…
Finding Nemo: a very short review.
No pregnant woman should ever watch a movie that starts with your wife and 400 of your kids getting killed, continues with the one kid you’ve got left being kidnapped, and ends with you both narrowly escaping death thus necessitating a very touching scene indeed, even if you do get to go home and be happy and actually like each other after all of this is done.
Just sayin’.
(And no, I hadn’t seen it before. I know, I know.)
Received In E-Mail (Thanks Paul!)
YOU ARE A CRACKHEAD. WHY DON’T YOU OWN A CRACKPIPE?
I am an engineer. Do you ever see me shaking down bums in the Loin for a calculator and sliderule? No, you don’t. Because engineering is the main thing I do, I went and bought myself a calculator. The main thing you do is crack. How do you get by without a crackpipe? The other crackheads must clown on you non-stop. I mean, the fucking saw you used to saw off my sparkplugs is probably worth five or ten bucks. Why not sell or trade it for a crackpipe? You really haven’t put much thought into this, have you?
Please, Crackhead, please don’t tell me you sold your crackpipe to buy crack. Even a stupid crackhead such as yourself couldn’t possibly be that stupid.
Read it all. It totally cracked me up! No pun intended. Really.
Christmas Part 1
As planned, finally, here are some of the Christmas pictures in numbers greater than one or two at a time. I believe there will be three parts to this, corresponding to having filled and emptied the camera three times that day. Why yes, I do need a bigger memory stick. Heh.
The first one shows most of our cards received. They overflowed to the other doorway, as you will see in the second picture. This includes cards from Sharon, Jennifer, Wayne, Caltechgirl, and Kate. Others on our card list included Rob, Jeff, Chan, Ith, Dean & Rosemary, Kate, Jen, Rob, Frank & Sarah, John, and Joanie. Ian will get a one after he has moved and sent me his new address. I’ll undoubtedly try to add some other blog friends to the list next year. Then if I do this post again next year, I’ll have an excuse for even more gratuitous linkage.
The second picture shows the tree and the loot before Sadie was up and at it. I think we spent four hours with her unwrapping and then playing with stuff before moving on, with the two of us incidentally unwrapping Bo Bice, some cake pans, and some sweatshirts interspersed with Sadie’s spoilage. The third picture shows her Nemo floor pillow, which is so cool. That’s what came in the giant box we didn’t bother to wrap. Her great-grandmother also sent the super deluxe Finding Nemo DVD package.
Here Sadie is emptying her stocking, and then playing with one of the balls that made up the bulk of the contents.
Next she’s opening her butterfly bedtime book, which is totally cool. She agreed. Finally, she’s opening one of three wooden puzzles, which she is crazy about, even though she’s not clear on the concept of putting the pieces back in. She takes them out, then is thrilled of someone puts them back so she can remove them again. We put the hardest one, a train, away for future reference rather than have her lose pieces before she’s ready for it.
More later.
Comments Aren’t Meant to Be Broken
Since James has broken comments today (please do not access this page directly? WTF, over?), the following is my comment on this post:
Romney has zero chance of winning. I can’t even see him getting the nomination. He will probably be the cause of the great run of republican governors coming to an end in Massachusetts, and may as well be a democrat given his lack of appreciation of stuff like reality.
And yeah, sad indeed for him to be one of the more attractive potential candidates, but I could say the same thing for the Evil McCain.
I do agree about the religion issue, but that’s like adding gravy.
Friday, December 30, 2005
Sadie’s Tent
Thursday, December 29, 2005
Speaking of Food…
It’s so cool how Sadie does these discontinuous leaps that at least seem sudden and are usually forced or indicated by her, or at least result in an “it’s about time” reaction.
I bought a $9-something booster seat the week before Christmas, on the idea that we’d bring it to my sister’s, because my mother would forget to bring hers. That and we’d need it soon anyway. She did, predictably, but so did I, almost as predictably. It may not have helped Sadie’s disposition during dinner at my sister’s to be standing in the chair rather than having a place to sit. It certainly encouraged her to keep trying to climb onto the table.
Anyway, after the holiday, we took it down from where it had been and she latched onto it. She carried it around, sat in it in the living room, all excited to have a me-sized chair. I’m tempted to buy another for that purpose.
We strapped it to one of the folding chairs that pass for kitchen seating here, but that only heightened her excitement. She wants to sit in it regularly. As we’d planned, we started feeding her there and sitting with her to eat at the table. The reaction is essentially “yay, I’m a big girl now, what took you so long,” and she is only a fraction as messy as she was in the highchair. She ate chicken salsa fiesta with a shirt on and walked away clean.
At the same time, she’s made a leap toward mastering silverware. She can spoon the milk out of her cereal bowl and get it to her mouth now, with surprisingly modest spillage. She’s also gotten enthused about using a napkin to wipe what she spills and her face. She’s still awkward, but has the right idea and does manage to come out of meals with her face a fraction as slopped as before.
It’s so cool to watch.
Ick
I was a bit unsettled before then, but I’ve been stomach sick since “Christmas dinner” at my sister’s on the 24th. Thought it was gone apart from, well, being a bit unsettled, but it seems to be back in force.
At least it’s not like the night (I think it was Christmas night) when I went to bed with the worst stomach pain I have ever experienced, and in my sleep I moaned in pain between snores.
I think the pork roast that wasn’t a turkey also had the audacity to be undercooked, and I blame it. I tried to convince myself that the pink part must have been one of those “if you cook it long enough it turns pink and looks uncooked even though it’s overcooked” things, and that if it was really as undercooked as it appeared to me, multiple people with far more cooking and eating experience would notice. I was kind of grossed out when the bottom centermost part of my slice of pork was stone cold, but tried to convince myself that it must have been transported from my grandmother’s house and not stayed hot or been reheated enough once it got there. The logical alternative was that it had been frozen, cooked not fully thawed, and therefore not fully cooked because not everyone is as careful as I tend to be.
Or it could have been something else. I just know it needs to go away now. I should check whether anyone else who was there got sick. Deb and Sadie only had the ham.
Too Long For Just A Comment
Sharon posed this question
If organic food is so darn unprocessed, straight from the proverbial cow, why in the hell is it so damned expensive? It seems to me it would cost more money to"process" it and add shit to it then to just get it and throw it on a store shelf.
Anyone?
I wrote an entire post in her comments, which I thought I’d add life to and get more thoughts on by duplicating here:
I’d venture that it’s a combination of supply and marketing.
To get truly organic ingredients, you have to arrange for pure suppliers, who do it because more money can be made, and might be growing smaller, more intensive quantities, which also may require greater hand work or incur greater losses due to not using things like pesticides. Supplies that can be assured are more limited and iffy than mass produced, efficient versions of the same things. Agreeing to be an organics supplier is a great strategy for small farmers who need to boost their cash flow and not be just one of the herd.
On the marketing side, there’s perception in pricing. In general, higher = better in most people’s minds, especially if they haven’t thought a lot about it. All the more so if they are on a mission to encourage a particular product or line. If you are hot enough for organics, price will be less of an object than simply for someone who wants to take advantage of modern efficiency and mass production to feed their family well and affordably. Plus things like organics are more likely to be a “thing” among people with more money to burn, who are also surprisingly likely to lean far left and have a particularly strong anticapitalist, radically environmentalist streak and limited appreciation of economic reality.
So the combination of a willing market that will bear inflated prices as a matter of satisfying a perceived added benefit or emotional need, and genuinely higher costs in many cases (for instance, most corn grown in the US has been genetically modified and it takes real effort to get corn that isn’t) adds up to higher retail prices. Usually. I used to get the organic mini peeled carrots on sale at Shaw’s frequently for less than the other brand.
As for processing… If you are making, say, pasta, it still has to be processed into pasta. It’s just that the ingredients will be organic. Tortilla chips are still corn processed into chips, whether it’s cheap corn or organic corn. Maybe that doesn’t apply to a sack of whole wheat or rice that are organic, but most stuff is going to be similarly processed if it is an analog to a non-organic.
Science Fiction & Fantasy
There is a great comment discussion at Jen’s regarding what to read for fantasy and science fiction. What really started it off were the questions of whether she ought to read the sequels to Ender’s Game, and whether reading the first book of The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever, Lord Foul’s Bane, would be a good next read to get a taste of the fantasy genre. My answers were yes and no, respectively. The comments have turned into a broader discussion of books and authors in the genres. It’s not too late to influence Jen’s next purchases! Or at least borrowings.
Wednesday, December 28, 2005
Where There’s Smoke There’s Holes
I was trying to do some billing and the smoke was getting me down. After investigating, I thought it was time for a sealing project update. It’s quite a puzzle.
I have done some additional sealing with foam spray in the cabinets, including around the water pipes, where there were non-obvious opening under flanges that weren’t flush with the floor. Then we had clear indications that it was coming strong into the office around the heat pipe.
I filled around the heat pipes and it was like turning a valve.
However, the smoking seems to vary. For instance, he’s been here all day, or his car has, but it didn’t get really bad until a guest visited them. Then it subsided after the guest left. Then it got bad again, apparently around the time the guy on the 3rd floor got home. At least, that’s what seemed to have changed.
When it bloomed again, I turned off the air purifiers and closed the office door. It got no worse in the office, even better, but the kitchen remained bad. Apparently what was in the office a while ago was coming mainly from the kitchen.
Checking the kitchen as best I could, it appears the big weakness is behind or under the dishwasher. If we could completely seal around the dishwasher where it peeks out among the cabinets, it seems most of the remaining smoke source would be gone.
That’s not practical, so I am probably going to have to pull the dishwasher out, or arrange to have the landlord do it, in order to solve the majority of the remaining smoke problem.
Tuesday, December 27, 2005
Through the Looking Glass
This is Sadie communing with her mirror self on Christmas morning, before we started tormenting her to open presents.
Monday, December 26, 2005
Twas The Day Before Christmas
Here are some pictures from Saturday, mainly at my sister’s house. Sadie melted down uncharacteristically at the dinner table, and mostly wanted to climb on it and get the candles. It was frustrating for her that this was not allowed. Afterward, during a lull, she was fine. Then she was unhappy during the present opening commotion.
Immediately after dinner, my mother gave her this toy/stuffed dog. She latched on, carrying it around, giving it hugs and kisses, and so it’s in most of the pictures. Here’s when she first got it:
This is after we were home, watching TV:
Here’s Sadie with her grandmother and, of course, the dog:
This is a toy I can remember playing with when I was a kid. I’m noth sure if my mother had it with her, or if it wound up at my sister’s house somewhere along the line:
I almost forgot that I’d planned to have my nephew play piano for Sadie while we were there. The lights were out in the room with the piano, until later when some of the kids migrated in there. Ultimately we did have Marc playing for her, but initially my brother in law, Jim, grabbed Sadie and sat at the piano with her. She was fascinated, as you can see by how intently she’s watching what he’s doing.
Pictures from yesterday will be in another post(s).
Happy Birthday
To my artist friend Jennie in Connecticut. We really should go visit her sometime.
Sunday, December 25, 2005
Christmas
There will be pictures at some point. Probably a large number. Sadie was great fun this year.
It worked out unexpectedly well to have the thing at my sister’s Saturday, as we all slept excessively late today and Sadie took hours to open everything. The main complaint I have is false advertising. The turkey and ham at my sister’s turned out to be roast pork and ham. Had I known, I’d have bought a turkey and cooked it today. We even tried, but got to Hannaford after 6:00 Saturday night. So I couldn’t even get a pie and some eggnog as planned.
Sadie’s overwhelmingly favorite present was a dog from my mother. It’s not so much a traditional stuffed animal as a toy that takes batteries and is stuffed animal looking. She latched onto it in a way she never has for any other stuffed animal or doll. She also loved her Nemo floor pillow from her great-grandmother, and her tent from her grandparents. There were other hits too, and nothing she particularly dismissed. It’s just that she really got excited about those.
I got the Bo Bice CD for Deb. It sounds great! We played it twice in a row today. What’s funny is I went in Wal-Mart the day it was released, saw it on a one day sale for $4 off, said “oh, Deb will want this,” and grabbed it. When I got home, Deb suggested I should get it for her, and she had been thinking along those lines around the same time I was seeing the CD in Wal-Mart.
At any rate, the CD isn’t exactly what we’d expected, which is a courser, more southern rock style, but he just sounds amazing. Overproducing and commercializing doesn’t change that. When he’s an established seller, maybe he can dabble with his roots.
Anyway, sleepy now. More later.
Time Flies
Two years ago at this time I was thousands of feet in the air, about the heart of the United States, on my way to meet Deb in person.
Yay For The Landlord Again
I don’t recall ever having received a gift from a landlord before, not counting when my uncle was my landlord. Actually, I may have received something from my first landlord ever, Ray Clark. I don’t remember, except there was at least a card. Anyway, it’s a rare thing.
Christmas Eve morning there was a knock on the door. It was their daughter, delivering these:
The top part is Lindt truffles! I told her if I’d known she was coming, we’d have made them a plate of cookies. We did up two of those for the neighbors, being subversively nice. Now I’m really glad we included the landlord when we mailed cards.
Happy Birthday
To blogger Dave Schuler, who points out many other notable December 25th births.
Carnival of the Recipes Is Up
After you’re done, or in between your Christmas activities, check out the Christmas Eve Carnival of the Recipes, which includes the sugar cookie recipe Deb posted the other day.
Happy Birthday
To my cousin Sandy’s son Ruben in Texas. And thanks guys, if you see this, for the Christmas present you sent Sadie.
Saturday, December 24, 2005
Where I Should Live
| Secluded Hideaway You scored 8 out of 40 on urban-rural and 10 out of 40 land intensity. |
| People know you as: The Unabomber Quote: “Other people make me sad.” Let’s get something straight right off the bat: You don’t much like other people. Your score indicates that you prefer a rural atmosphere to an urban one and the very lowest land intensities possible. You would be happy in a little cabin in the middle of nowhere or on a tropical island with no one - not even a beautiful naked islander - to keep you company. Above all, you yearn just to be left alone. If you aren’t one already, you should consider becoming a hermit and moving to Montana. Examples of places you should live: Mount Everest, Siberia Secluded Hideaway / Farm or Ranch / Small Town / Little City / Suburb / Streetcar Suburb / Rowhouse ‘Hood / Downtown Loft |
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My test tracked 2 variables How you compared to other people your age and gender:
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| Link: The Where Should You Live Test written by TwelveFloorsUp on OkCupid Free Online Dating, home of the 32-Type Dating Test |
Via The UnaCracker
Giving It Up Für Beethoven
I found this entertaining conjecture while Googling on Für Elise, because in my nephew’s sheet music today I saw it spelled Fuer Elise and thought that odd: Beethoven Got Laid a Lot.
I’ll talk about the reason for the sheet music in another post…
Yay For Lowe’s
I started a King Kong review late last night. If I get a chance to complete it by then, I’ll post it before we leave, but in short it was fantastic. But I digress…
Yesterday I broke out the sealing materials I’d bought at Lowe’s. In the kitchen, I used canned insulating foam in three places under the counter, two of which I backed first with steel wool. The way the foam expands, that wasn’t strictly necessary. We haven’t gotten to see how that does at keeping smoke down, as smoking dude hasn’t been back. It appears as if he almost but not completely lives with a girlfriend, or something.
The bad thing is there are a lot of small cracks I might be inclined to suspect and seal, but the foam is way too much for them.
Then, completely unplanned except as an eventuality, I went in the huge bedroom closet that stays closer to outdoor than indoor temperatures, and used the clear tape designed for the purpose to cover all the cracks and man-made cuts in the ceiling and walls above the suspended ceiling. I also used foam around the window. Did that first and you could already feel a difference. Finally I squirted tiny bits of foam into some round holes in the wall, basically giant screw holes left over the years. Some of them you could feel a tiny little draft exiting. Unfortunately, the foam is overzealous, and stains the wallpaper. Oh well.
Last night we left the closet door open.
It is only the slightest bit cooler than the room.
Yay!!
I am so glad Lowe’s had that tape out where I could find it. The stuff was perfect for the job. It’s not going to be obtrusive if the landlord wants to do a major repair of the ceiling, but it puts off the need by making the closet usable and saving our heating bill.
The tough part will be figuring out where to seal in the office. The leak of smoke has to be up above the suspended ceiling somewhere, or completely unobvious. I’ll attack the ceiling area first.
Okay, coffee empty, time to shower and get moving toward getting out of here for dinner at my sister’s.
Friday, December 23, 2005
Going Ape
I’m going to see King Kong tonight with some friends, using discount passes from AAA to make it like going to a matinee showing. That should be fun. I still want to see Narnia more so, but Kong is reportedly so good that I couldn’t resist the invitation. Perhaps I’ll post what I think in the subsequent day. Since it’s the 9:00 showing, I won’t be home until well after midnight. Then with having to go to my sister’s tomorrow, posting may not happen until tomorrow night.
Why the words “Public Health” have come to give me blinding headaches.
This makes me really angry. Not because it’s a ridiculous and overbearing regulation, which it is. Not because it’s an insult to women everywhere, who are presumed to be too stupid to feed their own children. And not because I want the formula. I never used the sample from last time, ferheavenssake.
No, I’m pissed about the diaper bag. I was so looking forward to getting another one. That crappy cheap black eeeeevil-formula-company diaper bag has been my favorite bag for the last six months. I can’t imagine life without it. I was really, really looking forward to getting another one and thus having the continued existence of the bag ensured. It’s holding up pretty well, but it’s always good to have a backup, dammit.
Via Blogging Baby, where comments are running about half and half for and against.
Christmas Dinner and Stuff
For me, dinner on the holidays has always been at the traditional noon dinner time; after 12:00 and before 2:00. I’ve always thought it an oddity to encounter people who had holiday dinner as supper rather than lunch. Yet when I do these things at my own house, with my own family, they tend to be later, if not fully into the evening. Tomorrow when we have dinner at my sister’s, the time specified for being there was 1:00 - 1:30.
For Christmas it is normally turkey and/or ham. With so many of us, sometimes it’s both. Almost always turkey, at any rate. Rarely it can be a roast beef or a pork roast as a secondary meat. Then stuffing, mashed potato, gravy, butternut squash, sometimes sweet potato, of late most likely in the form of an apple & sweet potato dish, turnip, and maybe something green like broccoli. This year it’s going to be broccoli casserole. Oh, we can’t forget the cranberry sauce! Toto, I don’t think we’re in California anymore. If we’re having ham, sometimes there’s raisin sauce, though making that was my late grandfather’s specialty. There can also be cranberry relish and pickled beets. Normally there are rolls.
Afterward, when we eventually can stand to add anything to our bellies, there are always various pies, maybe some cookies or squares, sometimes other odd items like the “cranberry pie” that’s not very pie-like. Pies are usually pumpkin, apple, and one or two other kinds.
Favorite Christmas carol? That sounds familiar...
ROFL. Merry Christmas.
This had me laughing so hard that Jay actually came in here to see what had cracked me up:
Bethlehem, Judea - Authorities were today alerted by a concerned citizen who noticed a family living in a barn. Upon arrival, Family Protective Service personnel, accompanied by police, took into protective care an infant child named Jesus, who had been wrapped in strips of cloth and placed in a feeding trough by his 14-year old mother, Mary of Nazareth.
...The owner of the barn is also being held for questioning. The manager of Bethlehem Inn faces possible revocation of his license for violating health and safety regulations by allowing people to stay in the stable. Civil authorities are also investigating the zoning violations involved in maintaining livestock in a commercially-zoned district.
There’s more.
Via shrinkette posting at Kevin, M.D.
Sealing Project
At Lowe’s last night I bought three cans of foam sealer, each different. The stuff runs almost $5, and almost $6 for the version to be used around doors and windows. I actually had a crazy dream last night about using the stuff between the foundation and walls in the cellar, and each tiny squirt would completely fill about three feet of large gap.
Anyway, I also bought some clear tape made for sealing cracks, some steel wool to stuff in larger spaces to back the foam, and a box with 90’ of rope caulk for possible use in places, at least if we attack outside leaks too. They have all kinds of stuff in the insulation section, including insulation pads you put behind switchplates. If we wanted to get really carried away, we could mitigate leakage of cold air and/or smoke from outlets and switches.
Anyway, I’ll probably start experimenting any time. Lucky for us, smoking dude wasn’t around last night.
Good Little Car
I got the Sentra back yesterday, having spent at the top range of what I expected it to need to fix the exhaust and pass inspection. It has completely new exhaust pipe and muffler. It also needed a tune-up, which seems funny given its 30 MPG performance (at least until the weather cooled; haven’t had a chance to measure it lately), so it has new plugs, wires, cap and rotor. Plus wipers and oil change, for which it was thousands of miles overdue.
All for only two hours labor. Which apparently is more what the guy decided to charge than what it really took, kind of like I’ll often do if I think a lower amount is a more appropriate price for the work.
I figure even another 4 - 6 months use of the car is worth what I spent. It still needs brakes, but I already bought the parts and just have to have my brother put them in, which I was waiting until this was taken car of to do.
