Tuesday, March 27, 2007

The Mrs., Straight Guy

I was just discussing with The Mrs. the algebra problem, and how surprised I was that Bozzetto didn't figure out from where it came, which was the opening of my post not long ago. She said she almost had figured out from where it came, but didn't understand how WoodyWoody's weight figured in. Then I said I was starting to get really worried if neither she nor Bozzetto could figure out from where it came.
Me, CherkyB: "But, I'm pretty sure Cavitation figured out from where it came, what with his big brain and all."

The Mrs.: "What was up with his solution? It was so inelegant. And the first two steps were useless. It's just a simple substitution. Stick it in and plug and chug."

Me, CherkyB: "Yeah. It's like my honeymoon all over."

A little bit of this and that

Bozzetto asked me today why I was thinking of this particular algebra problem. You know, the one where Cavitation had to show off his big brain on how to solve. I thought I had covered that here, when I said,
Yesterday, I spend half the evening writing up a big long post, and then I realize that buried in that post is an algebra word problem. So I toss out a little post with the algebra problem. And that post gets 8 comments, whereas the one that I spent all my time on gets zero.
Apparently, this was not explicit enough for Bozzetto. Now, Bozzetto, as some of you know, is a highly paid engineer whose primary job function is to figure out obscure and difficult-to-replicate failures on extremely expensive hardware, some of which is located in far off lands. And he's actually very good at his job. Possibly the best we have in our little section of The Company. So it troubles me that my algebra word problem was too obscure for him to figure out where it came from. I'm thinking, actually, that it may have been too obvious for him to have been able to figure out. Kind of like the old, "My computer didn't turn on. I'm suspecting it's the platform power sequencing microcontroller." "Uh, did you plug it in?" "MMmm....Oh shit."

Oddly enough, I seem to recall a trip to Carl's Jr. in which Bozzetto was expounding upon how this certain set of equipment had two power cords, but only one was ever plugged in, and it was possible that a certain failure might go away if they plugged in the other one, and no one knew for sure if the hardware was supposed to need both, or if one was supposed to be a redundant backup. So we have some history of him and the "did you plug it in?" business.

I'm guessing the rest of you guys figured out where the algebra problem came from. Or from where it came, in proper English.

I had kinda hoped that The JohnnyB would be back to life with the new compooter and its fresh load of commas. He had to stop posting for a while because he ran his old compooter completely out of commas. I bet you didn't know that was even possible, but it is.

I hope he doesn't smack me for that comment. It's a good thing I live 1000 miles away.

Though I hear he's moving here, except his wife is holding him back.

Speaking of moving here, I was describing for my boss today the shape of our deck and how replacement is imminent, and she says, "Is the deck gray?"

"Yes."

"I think we looked at your house when we moved here. Is there a trampoline?"

"Yes."

"Level with the ground?"

"Yes."

"We definitely looked at your house. I remember the deck being pretty rotted when we looked at it."

She moved here from Santa Clarabelle around a yearish before me. And the deck has not improved any in the ensuing time.

The Mrs. heard this story and said, "So, let's start moving with replacing the deck, then." I said, "With what money? I only make about $50/month off the blog." She said, "Put out fund raiser on the blog asking people to click a whole lot more until we have enough money to pay for the deck."

I explained how that would quickly be discovered and labeled as click-fraud, and then Google would not only not pay me for any of the clicks, but they'd probably cancel my account and take back all the money I've ever made. Which would be a pain now since I've already declared the income on my 2006 taxes.

That's right, folks, Me, CherkyB filed a Schedule C for ad revenue (actually, I think I ended up with a Schedule C-EZ since I had no expenses). And then I even had to apportion it for how much I accrued while in CA and how much while in CO. I spent some time wondering if I should declare the square footage of my bar as a home office and deduct it, but I decided against that. It really messes up your capital gains exclusion when you sell the house, plus I'm not sure the primary use of my bar is for blogging. Mostly, I drink and surf the web there, neither of which appears to be deductible.

About the fork joke, MaxieC made up a whole bunch of knock knock jokes that all involved something he could see and "your momma." Like, he told me "Carrot your momma." I just selected the fork one cuz it was the funniest. MaxieC thought they were all equally funny. He didn't get the "deeper" meaning. When he's older (like 7 years older), he'll look back on this blog and laugh at what a m-f-ing comic genius he was.

Which is more than any of you will do with your blogs.

I am dangerously close to running out of Yukon Jack. That drink is just so damned tasty. And not because it's 100 proof, either. I highly recommend it despite its Canadian origins. It really sticks to your ribs.

Speaking of which, we had ribs for dinner tonight. One of the nice things about having one of those indoor grilling cooktops (Jenn-Air-like, though ours is a GE knockoff) is that you can make decent babybacks inside. The Mrs. didn't make nearly enough, though. She made but one rack, and she got 5 ribs out of that, whereas everyone else only got three. That's right, MaxieC, a three year old child, got the same number of ribs that I did. And I am f-ing starving right now.

And dangerously close to being out of Yukon Jack. I'm substituting Maker's Mark, but it's not the same.

We now have five crickets. We gave up naming them after the first three. Number two is dead (drowned in the water dish), so only two of the five we have right now have names. They never seem to sing, though.

Monday, March 26, 2007

MaxieC, Comedian

An actual joke MaxieC made up today:
MaxieC: "Knock knock."

The Mrs.: "Who's there?"

MaxieC: "Fork."

The Mrs.: "Fork who?"

MaxieC: "Fork your momma."

Saturday, March 24, 2007

A Collection of Unrelated Pictures

Just so you know, this is my second post for today. Really. Just like yesterday. Only today, they're both crap. Yesterday, one of them was good. I've read all your blogs, though, so I know you all are really enamored with crap.

While I was gone, The Mrs. wanted me to get for her from Netflix a moovie that I had already seen but that she had not. She wanted to watch Butt Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest. See, I had seen that moovie on the flight to Boston last time I went.

Naturally, she didn't watch it at all while I was gone, so last night she wanted us both to watch it. Well, I needed a snack. I opened up the snack cabinet, and I saw this little setup. I like to call it, "A late-night snack disaster in the making."


On an unrelated note, after sleeping in until 8:30 this morning, The Mrs. was all cranky about something. I know not what. I think she had some kind of pain that required an ibuprophen, but I'm not really sure. Hmmm...I think it was that she bit her cheek and it was annoying the hell out of her. But anyway, right before she decided to get dressed, she started bitching at me.
The Mrs.: "Oh maybe I'll wear my new shirt. I can't believe you spent $20 getting me a new shirt. Like there isn't anything better I could do with [your] $20 than buy me a T-shirt. And you got three of them for yourself. What a waste of money."

Me, CherkyB: "What in the hell are you talking about?"

The Mrs.: "The blog shirt you got me."

Me, CherkyB: "I didn't get you any shirt. What blog shirt? I don't have blog shirts."

The Mrs.: "Hmmm...maybe my sister sent it..."
As it turns out, yes she did. Boy, and as soon as The Mrs. realized it wasn't our [my] money that was spent on it, suddenly it was a most profound of T-shirts. And the idea of there being CherkyB blog T-shirts is interesting. I know what everyone's getting for Christmas!


HannahC got new foofy things for her pigtails from Target. Here she is doing a pose we call, "Offspring, eat your heart out."


And what post would be complete without a comment on political strife. I call this shot, "The Balkanization of CherkyB's drink."

I should have learned by now

Yesterday, I spend half the evening writing up a big long post, and then I realize that buried in that post is an algebra word problem. So I toss out a little post with the algebra problem. And that post gets 8 comments, whereas the one that I spent all my time on gets zero.

I've noticed a pattern in the past where if I put up more than one post on the same day, a lot of people don't read the first one. They just read whatever post is at the top of the page when they load it up and never bother to see if the second post is one they've seen before.

I know this because I have discussed it with various readers over the year. But I keep hoping.

Maybe that first post just sucked ass. And yet, we manage to get six comments on a post about a guy who says "f$@&ing" a lot. How many of you missed "I'm Baaaaaaack"?


Did you not notice the "I'm Baaaaaaack" post?
Yes, I missed it. I am an idiot.
No, I saw it and it sucked ass.
No, I saw it and was not moved to comment.
You were away?
Free polls from Pollhost.com

Friday, March 23, 2007

Algebra

For some reason, I keep thinking this:

1.5*n = w
(1.2*(n+1.5)) = w

solve for n.

I don't know why.

I'm Baaaaaaack

Did you miss me?

Blogging has been light the last few days as I've been out of town in beautiful(?) Hudson, MA, where the other half of my project is located. I don't announce when I'm out of town on the old blog, as The Mrs. doesn't like it if the whole world knows she's home alone with The Childrens. I've offered to get her a holster so she can carry the piece around the house the whole time, but for some reason she just prefers I not tell everyone I'm gone.

Man, do I gots a lot to talk about. I'm not going to be able to capture it all today, especially given the magnificent thunder/lightning/hail storm we had right after I got home. I'll have to weatherblog that over on the other site.

Lemme start out with the funniest story of trip. I spent a lot of time thinking about whether I could make this a (finally) new installment of Duh or No Duh™, but it just doesn't fit quite right for reasons that will become apparent in a moment. It would be more appropriate as a Sentence of The Month, but I don't want to encroach on NavieA-B's turf. So, instead, it's just going to be a funny quote inside an otherwise mundane post.

I arrived in the Hudson area on Monday night. Shortly thereafter, while I was at the Lazy Dog having dinner and listening to The Artist, it began to snow. The next day, it was a bit slippery on the way in to work, but nothing out of the ordinary for a light snow. Later on in the day, a few of the locals were having a discussion about the snow, and I overheard this gem:
Just because it's four-wheel drive doesn't mean it's four-wheel stop.
Uh...ok. Normally, cars don't write "four-wheel brakes!" on the window sticker, given that every car sold in this country in many many years has had four-wheel stop. But, at any rate, the lady that said this has generally seemed to be intelligent enough at work that I chalked it up to that kind of generic anti-SUV blather you always hear when it snows, only slightly mangled in the word selection.

Then, on the way out, I saw her driving an SUV. So maybe it was just generic blather. Or, perhaps, she was giving a cautionary lesson to the I's and the C's who were out from the Santa Clarabelle site and had never driven in snow before. Dunno. The conversation went on behind me, and I just recognized the voice.

But, I found it funny. So funny that later in the evening I was sitting at the hotel bar with my old buddy WoodyWoody from Santa Clarabelle, and i felt compelled to tell the story. Then, WoodyWoody says, "All cars have had four-wheel brakes since Henry Ford put them on the Model A."

He said it with great authority. I checked wikipedia, and the Model A did, in fact, have four-wheel brakes. The Model T had a transmission brake, which only brakes the drive wheels. Wow. I didn't bother to verify the "all cars" part of it, but he got the Ford history right.

I think WoodyWoody is some kinda savant. I'm not going to say what kind.

Once again, though, he took me to school at the bar, outdrinking me by 50% according to the tab. And I've been training! However, the tab doesn't tell quite the whole story, as at one point the bartender poured me my nth Jack & Coke, and I looked at the tiny little bit left in the bottle, and I gave him the one-eyebrow raised look of inquiry.
Bartender: "What? Jou want that maign?"

Me, CherkyB: "There's not even enough for another drink in there. Youre not going to put it back on the shelf like that, are you?"

Bartender: "There's a lot more'n one drink in there."

Me, CherkyB: "OK. If you say so..."

Bartender: "Allright. Here jou go. Jou'll see"
The bottles had those little metered pourers on them that dispense only 1 oz per tip, and the standard pour was one and a half tips. I knew this very well by this time, because I am a very observant person or something. Well, he was right. It was a lot more than one drink. So, if we go by my "expert" estimation, that drink that he charged me regular price for what actually a 2.5. If we take that into account, WoodyWoody only outdrank me by 20% at the hotel bar. And he's probably close to 20% larger than I am, so I was out of my weight class.

Please, hold your applause.

Wednesday, March 21, 2007

Everyone's Favorite Post

Rhonda asked an intriguing question in the comments section of the last post.
Do any of us bloggers out here get to vote on the favorite post?
The answer is certainly. Here, I'll go first.

There are just so damned many good posts, it's really hard to pick a favorite. Especially since I only read through the first two months and had boatloads of candidates. But, since I am paid primarily to be decisive in the face of ambiguity, I will put my stake in the ground and vote for "A Made-Up Holiday." Wow, this post, which chronicles Mother's Day 2006, has everything. From breakfast in bed to a rattlesnake encounter. Keystone Ice to Fuzzy Navels. It is just a fabulous, side-splittingly hilarious post, and 100% certified true.

Some of my favorite passages:
  • "If The Mrs. wants nice flowers on Mother's Day, she should consider convincing her childrens to get higher-paying jobs. After all, she's not my mother."
  • "Then, for whatever reason, HannieC said something about Momma being funny. I said, 'Momma isn't funny. I can't even imagine what Momma being funny would be like.'"
  • "The Mrs. is sound asleep. Like completely, totally sound asleep. Too bad for her. If you wanted a nice Mother's Day, you shouldn't have had kids."
  • "This is also the main reason I try to avoid doing anything whatsoever for holidays. No matter what I do, it is an opportunity for martyrdom. So why knock myself out?"
And, of course, the endless stream of momma knock-knock jokes still cracks me up.

I also think that to get the full enjoyment of "A Made-Up Holiday" you need to read "Happy Father's Day" immediately afterwards.

A Year of Me, CherkyB

We here at Me, CherkyB have recently celebrated our one year Cherkyversary. It was actually yesterday, but I was otherwise engaged and didn't get a chance to post. My normal routine has been a bit disrupted this week due to some work stuff.

I had a grand plan for a retrospective post that highlighted my favorite posts from the past year, but that requires a lot more time to put together than I have right now. Maybe tomorrow.

Sadly, as I have noted before, the very first post to Me, CherkyB was so stupid I deleted it. But you can go back and read the first non-test post. You can see that my style, while rough, was basically in place already from the first day. I talk about alcohol, silly things my wife does, and I even complain about JohnnyB. Some of the names have changed since then. Like The Mrs. was named "CherkyD", HannahC was called "HannieC", and JohnnyB was "[redacted]".

Monday, March 19, 2007

True Artistry

A lot of people fancy themselves artists, but tonight I got to witness the real thing.

I was sitting in a little joint called The Lazy Dog enjoying a 22oz. beer and watching a little b-ball, and in came a couple guys who sat at the other end of the bar. The seemed to be regulars, as the bartender and waitress knew them. They were also construction workers of some sort. There was a lot of discussion about carrying shingles up ladders and driving bulldozers and backhoes.

At any rate, there was one fellow who did all the talking. I mean, he never stopped. From the moment he walked in until the moment I left, he talked non-stop. But he was truly an artist. I was so impressed, I actually had to keep score for a while.

He managed to use the word "f$@&ing" 14 times in the first 60 seconds I was counting. He sometimes wedged it into a single sentence three times.

I was in awe.

Sunday, March 18, 2007

The Mrs., Trooper

Some days, I sets and thinks.
Some days, I just sets.
And some days, I shake my head and wonder what in the hell just happened.

Yesterday was St. Patrick's Day. Probably this does not come as any great news flash except most of you are reading this on Monday and didn't bother to notice I wrote this Sunday night. If there's one thing my loyal fans are, it's not too bright. Otherwise, you'd be over at some other blog being really entertained as, honest to god, there is nothing funnier than head injury jokes. But here you are instead.

So, what is St. Patrick famous for? Anyone? Anyone?

You there - the lumberjack looking fellow... Green beer? No. Not green beer. Good try, though. Oh? Oh, I thought you were answering the question. Sure, I'll take one. Yes, large.

Anyone else? Anyone? Anyone?

Inventing basketball? Nooooo... Not, not parquet floors, either.

Wow, a bunch of winners here today. Yes, you - the manly-looking woman with the Subaru station wagon... Doing something nasty with snakes? Close enough.

St. Patrick is famous for doing nasty things with snakes. Things that would violate the tenets of
the left-wing of America today. That's right, folks. If you're a Democrat, you are required to disapprove of St. Patrick, the animal killer and disrupter of native species. If you're a Republican, you are allowed to think, "Man, wouldn't that have been cool to sit up on a berm with a scattergun when all those snakes came by? Woo Hoo!" But Democrats must tsk tsk about the whole episode and sit idly by while Republicans whoop it up on St. Patrick's Day. In your mind, substitute "Columbus" for "St. Patrick's" in case you are having difficulty understanding that your party has moved so far away from you that you are now required to shun a day dedicated to drunken ribaldry. Unless you live in San Francisco, and then the Folsom Street Fair is still OK, since it mainly celebrates the flamboyant homosexual lifestyle and not a lifestyle dedicated to God and to free a people overrun by serpents.

I wonder how many fish were killed when God parted the Red Sea for Moses?

But I digress. So the Denver Zoo gets into the St. Patrick's Day spirit by having a lot of special snake things. Like, you're allowed to pet snakes. And, since we bought an annual membership to the zoo last weekend, it was "free". So we went. The whole snake encounter thing is a bit oversold, as they have one and only one snake available for petting at a time. Hannah got to pet two snakes during the four-ish hours we were there.

Then, the kids started to get bored, so The Mrs. decides we should run next door to the Museum of Nature ans Science, where we are also members. There's a Ben Franklin exhibit there that she wanted to see. So we schlepped over there and saw that, despite both MaxieC and Me, CherkyB having had our fill of tourist stuff already.

Then we went home, and everyone took a nap, though not everyone admitted it, except Me, CherkyB. I had to drive. As my reward for all that driving, I drove right past the turn-in for our subdivision.

The Mrs. immediately says, "Are you going to the liquor store?"

Ahhh. I've become too predictable. I had been complaining that we were out of beer, and you have to buy beer at liquor stores in Colorado, and they aren't allowed to be open on Sundays. And yes, I was going to the liquor store.

The Mrs. then says, "I think I'd like to have some beer. What kind of beer do they have that I'd like?"

We decide on Beck's, as it is the only beer she drinks without complaining and has been for the last 5 years. I'm always surprised that she doesn't just ask, "Do they have Beck's?" But she would then argue that she also likes Sapporo. However, I have purchased her Sapporo, and she has complained about it. She only like Sapporo when it is at the sushi restaurant and is accompanied by hundreds of dollars of raw fish.

We get home, and I am watching The Childrens in the driveway while The Mrs. unpacks all the stuff we needed to go to the zoo. We look across the street, and the kids are out there playing in their driveways on their scooter. HannahC starts whining about how she wants to go play with them. So I say, "Fine. I'll walk you over." She hops on her scooter and zooms over there before I can even scoop up MaxieC. Then MaxieC starts complaining that he needs to ride his scooter over there, too.

Well, this is more work, as I can't just let MaxieC go over to the neighbors. He needs constant supervision. And his scooter is very, very slow. By the time we get there, the rest of the childrens are no longer interested in scootering, but have gone into the backyard. I follow.

After much playing, during which time MaxieC decided it was a great idea to shove pea gravel up his nose, and then took 10 minutes of digging to get it all out again, during which time he absolutely insisted that he did NOT have gravel up his nose, it was at long last time to head home. But the older neighbor child first begged for HannahC to stay for dinner, then for our whole family to come over. After some telephone negotiations between the womens (which went on after we had returned home) we headed back. This was great, as our famblies get along quite nicely.

A good time was had by all, but halfway through I noticed that The Mrs. was drinking something that was being referred to as "a martini". Now, I've known The Mrs. for an exceptionally long time, and never during that entire time has she liked a martini. Not once.

But this was no ordinary martini. No. It was something called a "lemon drop martini" (if I remember correctly), and it was more or less lemonade with lemon-flavored vodka in it. I've had lemon drop shooters at The Town Pump, and they are definitely tasty. I took a peek at the recipe for this martini, and aside from it having vodka (citrus vodka at that) in it and the glass in which it was served, I have no idea what classifies it as a martini. The Mrs. at one point asked for more ice, which she proceeded to float in the "martini".

I'm telling you, it was spiked lemonade.

But The Mrs. pounded them down like they were going out of style. Meaning she had two. After having had a beer prior. That, my friends, would normally be the recipe for a wonderful evening, except it was far too early for any such luck.

We eventually got the kids in bed, and then settled in to watch a moovie. The Mrs. requested a rum and coke to go with the moovie, as she wanted to keep the buzz alive. We can certainly accommodate that. Hell, I can make it a double.

About 40 minutes into the moovie, I look over and The Mrs. looks asleep. I talk to her. She is kinda half-awake, half-asleep. She claims not to remember anything from the moovie so far. We head to bed. I have to put HannahC to bed, as she was in the basement watching E.T.

When I get to bed, The Mrs. is still awake. She then utters one of the most wonderful things she has ever said to me for as long as I have known her:
If I pass out in the middle, go ahead and finish. I won't mind.
What a trooper.

Friday, March 16, 2007

I don't get it

I was on the way to Carl's Jr. for lunch, and I got behind a car with one of those bumper stickers that has a lot of hard-to-read words on it. It took me two stop signs before I could read it. This is what it said:
I'm sorry I missed church
I was busy studying witchcraft
And becoming a lesbian
Now, from behind, it looked to me like the car was being driven by a dude. But a lot of angry lesbians look like dudes when they're driving the car in front of you and all you can see is most of the back of their head. At a traffic light, I pulled up next to the car, and I confirmed it was definitely a dude.

So, now I'm trying to figure out exactly what in the hell message this bumper sticker was trying to convey. Plus, I'm trying to figure out why a dude would have it on his car.

"I'm sorry I missed church. I was busy studying [a different religion]." What is profound about that? And I think the lesbian reference is maybe trying to imply that church and lesbianism are incompatible, but my last church was chock full of lesbians, even having one as a pastor, so this implication is either made out of ignorance, or I've completely missed the point.

I know a bunch of my readers are left-wing wackos, so I'm going to do a bleg here. Can one of you please explain to me first, what this bumper sticker is trying to say, and second, what profound new meaning is given to it when it's on a man's car?

Thursday, March 15, 2007

Fat Camp Tonight

So no regular post.

However, like The JohnnyB and Cavitation, I've decided to start a dedicated-topic blog off on the side. JohnnyB has his political blog, Cavitation has his financial blog, and now I have a blog about the weather.

Go check it out if you like talk about the weather. [Well, OK, it's not really about the weather. It just says so to throw you off.]

Wednesday, March 14, 2007

Good Always Triumphs Over Evil

Depending on what the meaning of "always" is.

As you all know, we moved to our fancy-schmancy digs in Fort TomCollins back in August. One of the great joys of this house is its three-car garage and its 10+ foot high ceiling. It's a great place to pile junk.

But, it's also deep enough and tall enough that you can actually open the rear hatch of the minivan when it is parked in the garage even with the garage door closed. Neither of my previous two houses had this capability. So, when I park the minivan in the garage, I pull it forward enough for the hatch to clear the door when the hatch is opened. This has the added benefit of allowing the bicycles, wagons, tricycles, scooters, and bike trailers that are parked to the right of the van enough clearance to be able to be removed without opening the non-electric-lift door to the right.

However, The Mrs. has always hated on me for this. She complains like a Womyn's Studies major asked to provide some evidence that 70% of college women are raped during their 4 years of undergraduate. No, The Mrs. requires maximum clearance not behind the van, but in front, such that she has at least six feet of space between the front of the minivan and the refrigerator. I have never understood why, if one can open the refrigerator completely, one needs an additional 3 feet of clearance beyond that, but it involves something called, "Not feeeeeeling crowded."

So, The Mrs. has become an expert in pulling the minivan in just far enough to be able to shut the garage door behind it. I have quite begrudgingly adopted a similar habit, as if I do not there is more bitching than you'd get if you invited Code Pink over for a veal barbecuing, BB gun shooting, bikini-clad hot tub party.

Now, just a couple days ago I came home from work. I parked in the driveway, as I have 2-cars worth of crap piled in the 3-car garage. Suddenly, as if by magic, the minivan garage door opened. HannahC met me there. As I was walking in, I noticed how far forward the minivan was parked. I remarked to HannahC, "Hey, did you go for a bike ride today?" Then I looked over at where the bike trailer is stored, and I noticed it was connected to The Mrs.'s bike.

Ha! The minute it actually becomes her job to figure out how to get stuff out of the garage with the van blocking the door, suddenly we don't need so much space to get in the refrigerator anymore. Ha ha! All week it has been the same. The minivan is parked forward where I used to put it to great chastisement.

CherkyB reigns triumphant.

Tuesday, March 13, 2007

Meet the Fambly

Tonight, I was downstairs with MaxieC settling in for an evening of him watching television whilst I write the Great American blog, and I looked down at the floor and saw a cricket sitting there. There seem to be a lot of crickets around here, and the occasional cricket in the basement apparently goes with the territory as naturally as being able to smell Greeley.

My first inclination is to stomp it, then go get a paper towel to clean it up. But I figure, what the hell. "Hey, MaxieC. Look. A Cricket!"

Oh boy.

"Let's get something to catch it in."

I find an old cookie container and catch the cricket.

"OK, MaxieC. Let's go let it go outside."

On the way to the door, we see HannahC. Again, I decide to be The Good Daddy, which is generally the exact opposite of The Smart Daddy, "Hey, HannahC. Look what we've got."

"Oh wow, a cricket! Let's get something to keep her in!"

HannahC starts rooting around in The Mrs.'s Rubbermaid® containers. Again, I fall on my sword.

"I have the perfect thing in the garage. You childrens wait here."

They follow me.

I dig out the old 2.5 gal fish tank that Fishie and Bob used to live in.

So, with that introduction, I present to you the latest edition to our fambly, Tic TackieC.

Nobody cares

Except maybe Bozzetto and Cavitation. But I'm going to post this anyways. This is one of my "giving back to the blogosphere" posts, where I share my wisdom.

As many of you know, I prefer the Firefox browser to Internet Explorer. I'm not going to go into details of why, as this is not a plug for Firefox. However, for those of you who don't use Firefox, keep in mind it is the official browser of Me, CherkyB, and it is available via a big orange button on the right side of this page down below the monthly archive list. And I make big bucks if you decide to switch after getting it from my big orange button.

Big bucks that I have made only once. Thanks Rhonda.

Anyways, I switched to Firefox long before I became a (poorly) paid shill for it. Mainly because of the tabbed browsing that MS has now decided to kinda copy in IE7 (and that yahoo toolbar had available as an extension to IE6), and because its popup blocker worked better than IE6 + google toolbar + yahoo toolbar combined.

So I was chatting with Bozzetto about a week ago about how I was watching the UPS tracking page for my T-shirt delivery and hitting reload every couple seconds all day, and he was telling me how he liked this one feature of the Opera browser that automatically reloads the page and lets you know if there have been any changes. I said, "Hmm...I bet that feature is available as an add-on for Firefox."

I went browsing through the 5 bazillion add-on available. I came across this one called "Check4Change" that looked promising. I installed it and have been using it for almost a week now. It rocks!

It took me about a day to get the hang of it, but I now use it to track my AdSense total as well as to track my pageload activity at statcounter. It worked great for the UPS tracking, too.

Here are a couple of my "tricks of the trade". Maybe they are in the documentation, but I didn't really find any documentation.

First thing is that the default configuration is, to me, not particularly useful for pages that you expect to update more than once. If you poke around, you can discover that the default configuration is found under tools->add-ons->extensions-> Check4Change options. You're going to want to check the box for "don't stop monitoring after first change." That way, like it says, it'll keep monitoring after the page has changed until you tell it to stop. By default, it gives up after the first change.

I don't know why you'd want it to do that.

The second thing to figure out is what you want to monitor. C4C requires you to highlight something on the page, and then right click and tell it to check that for change. At first, I thought this was silly, so I highlighted the entire page and told it to watch that. Shortly thereafter, I figure out the deal.

A lot of pages have a timestamp on them that tells you the last time you refreshed the page. The UPS tracking website does it. So does statcounter. Every time you refresh the page, that time changes, and C4C reports a change. A lot of pages also have dynamic advertising that can change with every refresh. So you really want to figure out the minimum amount of stuff to highlight to accomplish your goal.

For AdSense, I highlight the "Total Earning" sum at the bottom of the table. For statcounter, I go to the "recent pageload activity" page, and I highlight the time of the top thing in the table. Both of those have worked very well for me.

This has been a great time saver for me, as I no longer have to fritter away countless hours checking my AdSense total over and over. When it changes, a window pops up to let me know, and it highlights the tab in the browser. Now I know for sure, for instance, that there's a pretty big time lag between when someone clicks on an ad and when the click is registered in the AdSense account, as statcounter tells me when there are people actively reading the site, and AdSense tells me when clicks show up, and they are rarely ever at the same time. Also, clicks seem to show up in bulk, like it'll go from 0 to 5 clicks all at once during a time when no one is at the site, and I know none of my readers ever clicks on five ads in one session as it triggers the fraud prevention algorithm over at AdSense and I don't get paid.

Anyways, give it a shot. I don't make any money at all off Check4Change. This is just a plug for something I like.

Monday, March 12, 2007

Oh, the Simpering

I learned something new today. I don't remember what it was. I'll let you know when I think of it.

It's finally over. There are two, annual awful events at The Company. The first is the annual performance evaluation time, where you have to do detailed writeup of everything you did over the last year, plus three things that are your strengths and three things that are your "developments". If your developments don't include at least one thing that you screwed up during the year, they get sent back to you for a rewrite. Unless your boss is a complete prick, then two of the three things have to be things you screwed up. You also have to write detailed information on other people, as every boss needs to get feedback from at least three people about everybody. If you are exceptionally popular, you may have to do 30 of these. I only had to do 12 because everything I say is certified true, which means there are only about 12 people in The Company about whom I will say nice things. (Well, this year there turned out to only be 11 - hee hee!)

But all that is over in January.

Then, they give you a one-month break, and it becomes company conference paper submission time. Everyone likes to submit papers to the company conference, as advancement in the company is largely dependent upon how many people in other groups know who you are, and the conference is a great place to schmooze. A number of years back, they started requiring you to write complete, properly-formatted-for-publication papers to even be considered. So the entire technical leadership workforce for The Company grinds to a halt for two weeks while they all write papers that are mostly going to be rejected.

Last year I got to be a reviewer for one of the more popular tracks. We had to accept 8 papers, and we got about 200 submissions. So 192 teams of 1-4 engineers wasted about 2 weeks of company time writing something that will ultimately be never looked at again. There are roughly 20 tracks. We're talking many thousands of highly-paid wasted hours. Well, "highly-paid" is rather subjective. We're not lawyers or dentists or plumbers, but we do OK.

The submission deadline was 6pm today. I was co-author of two papers, one of which went right to the wire. But now it is done.

Speaking of plumbers, my shower is still leaking. You may all remember that water dripped through my dining room ceiling witin a week of us moving in, and we spent $9k replacing the shower pan and two of the three walls and the door in the shower. Then it still leaked, and we just spent another $3k replacing the third and final wall. The whole thing is new.

And it still leaks.

The plumber dude was here today taking a look at it. Happily, The Mrs. and I had diagnosed the problem to being the track of the shower door. We did that Saturday night at 2am by running the various shower heads aimed in different directions and watching for water, then pouring cups of water in places that seemed to make water appear on the floor when we were running the shower heads. Other married couples could have maybe thought of something better to do at 2am on a Saturday night, but we've been together for 21 years, so pouring cups of water on the walls in the shower stall seems like great excitement to us.

Or, at least, to one of us.

We discovered that water appeared immediately after pouring water on the fixed panel of the glass door. If we poured water into the weep hole of the door track, the water flowed like a faucet out onto the floor. The guy from the glass shop who had installed the glass door after the first $9k had told me that a lot of time, people forget to seal up the ends of the tracks by filling them with silicone, and then it will leak out the ends. But the door had been removed and re-installed by the general contractor during the second $3k redo. So the plumber removed the door, and sure 'nuff, the silicone plug was missing from the end that was leaking. There were remnants of one having been there once, but it wasn't there anymore.

Everyone say a prayer for our shower tonight.

The plumber was here to fix the leaking hot water tank. He diagnosed the problem as being a bad expansion tank, so he replaced that. When I was googling my problem (water coming out the pressure relief valve when you had used a whole lot of hot water and then stopped using it), I found it was usually a bad expansion tank. When I read the manual for the furnace/water heat, it suggested this was most likely a bad expansion tank. So the $250 I spent to replace the pressure relief valve was wasted (and didn't fix the water problem).

I'm afraid to go into the utility room to see if it is dry. I'll go in tomorrow.

Sunday, March 11, 2007

The Devil and Her Eggs

Tonight, we had deviled eggs with dinner. As I sat there looking at the eggs, I was struck by the fact that we own a Tupperware container designed to hold deviled eggs. I remarked to The Mrs., "Wow. It's quite a statement of unabashed consumerism that we own a container just for deviled eggs."

She replied, "Every decent housewife has something to serve deviled eggs in."


So it got me to thinking. I said that my mother never had one, but now I remember she did. It was a glass plate with some kind of yellow floral design embedded in it that had egg-shaped indentations around the periphery. I poked on eBay, and deviled egg thingees seem to be pretty popular. Anyways, I figured, what the hell, I'd take a survey.

Do you have something made specifically for serving deviled eggs?
Yes, I do.
No, I do not.
WTF?
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On a different note, here's a little shot I took at the zoo yesterday. It was outside the rainforest building, where they have lots of snakes and fishies and lizards and the like. You are not allowed to take you stroller inside, so there is a giant lot-full of strollers just outside the door. Seems the locals like to take advantage of this. This dude was going down into the baskets of the strollers and coming up with snacks. He'd sit there on the rim of the basket and eat whatever he found, then disappear back down into the stroller for a bit and reemerge with a new treasure. It looked like popcorn to me.


MaxieC is turning out to be quite a showman. Here he gives us his, "Hey, how you doooooin' " look.


It was a beautiful spring day today, so we decided to go for a bike ride. The Mrs. googled up a bike path map for Fort TomCollins, and she selected one she thought would be great. Excepting, of course, she was looking at a bike lane on a road, not a path through a park like she wanted. So I poked around and found one up by the library in the Cathy Fromme Prairie Natural Area. The Mrs. packed up some snacks for the kids while I put the bike trailer and HannahC's bike in the back of the pickup, and then put the bike rack on the tuck and our bikes on that. MaxieC made a nuisance of himself most of the time by throwing rocks into the koi pond, and then he and his sister had a battle where they smacked each other with brooms. Then they decided to "help" me load up the bikes.

So it took forever.

Here is MaxieC enjoying his snack on the prairie.


And the view in the other direction towards HannahC. The trail runs along the outer edge of the natural area, and humans are not allowed into the middle. So you can see the houses a few hundred yards back from the trail. These houses "back to public open space" and thus cost way more than they should given their itty-bitty little Fort TomCollins "we're going to manage our sprawl and not let anyone have a lot bigger than 500 sq ft" lot sizes.

A big reason I don't live in Fort TomCollins proper.


We went a little over five miles in total. I pulled MaxieC in the trailer, and HannahC and The Mrs. rode their own bikes. HannahC did pretty well, though she had a hard time keeping up on the uphills given her single gear 16" bike vs. our 24" 21 and 24 speed bikes. We'll be needing to get her a new bike this spring (which means any day now), as she's mostly outgrown the 16".

The newspaper today had an article that DIY Network's Sweat Equity show is looking for people in Fort TomCollins who are wanting to either remodel a room or update their landscaping. While I was messing around in the back yard trying to replace the igniter on the built-in barbecue, I mentioned this to The Mrs. Now, she is all excited about me auditioning. I need to call the "researcher" tomorrow.

The deck is an amazing mess right now. I had to remove the BBQ to replace the igniter (which I was able to do just fine), and I noted that it calls for 14" on the sides and 16" on the rear of clearance to anything combustible. It is installed with two rows of fire bricks on either side (maybe 6") with wooden boxes next to that, and one row of fire brick in the back with a wooden deck bench up against that.

The wooden deck bench is mostly burned away. I got the grill working again, but The Mrs. declared that we shall not use it because "it's going to set our whole house on fire."

No. Probably just the deck. The Mrs. has much better sense than I do. Oh well. That's $15 and an hour of my life I'll never get back.

When I was futzing with the grill, one of the board on the deck bench seat felt a little squishy. So I pushed on it, and it crumbled. Much of the wood on the deck is like this. Luckily, the deck itself is that synthetic wood stuff that can't rot, but all the flower boxes, trim, and benches are wood of some sort. The bench is a weird pressboard with a wood grain stamped into the surface and what looks like a 1/16" plastic coating around the outside. I've never seen such a thing before, but it apparently rots quite nicely.

The problem now, of course, is that when we do not get selected for the TV show, I'm still going to have to redo the whole deck. The Mrs. has very grand plans. I'm afraid to even listen to them. There's a hot tub and an outdoor kitchen and a "serenity area" involved.

I'm going to need to put more ads on my blog.

Saturday, March 10, 2007

Bleaugh!!!

I know who not to leave in charge of the coffee.

As we were attempting to leave the zoo this afternoon, after maybe 4 hours of zoo fun, The Mrs. declared that she was going to run into the cafe near the exit and see if she could score some coffee for the hour-long drive back. It was fast approaching closing time, so this was not guaranteed. She, ever so kindly, asked if I would like one, too. I thought to myself, "Self, you've been up since 6:20am with a 3 year old boy, he has insisted that you carry him on your shoulders for the greater part of the last 4 hours, you're feeling kinda sleepy, and it has just begun to rain. You could really use a coffee." So I said, "Sure."

The Mrs. went in there for a good 15 minutes. We watched her running back and forth between those pump coffee dispensers that dispense hours-old, cold coffee and the condiment bar. Back and forth. Back and forth. I don't for the life of me know why. Happily, she was the only customer in the place (since they had stopped selling most of the food and put it away already), so when she stopped her frantic oscillations, she got right through the checkout.

She came out and handed me a sad little 8oz cup. I took a swig and cringed.
Me, CherkyB: "What is this?"

The Mrs.: "They only had decaf left."

Me, CherkyB (silently to self): "Well, there goes staying awake for the drive back."

Me, CherkyB: "How many sugars did you put in it?"

The Mrs.: "Two packets."

Me, CherkyB: "Was it two packets of real sugar, or was it a sugar-substitute?"

The Mrs.: "Two packets of Equal."

Me, CherkyB: "That's like 8 sugars!"
And it was horrible. Sweet Jesus, it was horrible. I think the underlying coffee might have been OK, but it was hard to tell. If there is any silver lining in this, it's that they had only 8oz cups.

I'm still dreaming of the double turbo I had at Coal Creek on Thursday. If I read the menu correctly, the double turbo is two shots of espresso in a cup of coffee. Damn, it was good.

I wonder if that is The Substance calling to me?

Saturday morning

With nothing to do
Get a load of sooper-geniuses
And take 'em to the zoo.

Friday, March 09, 2007

Did the Snow Truck Cough?

I had occasion to chat with StinkyJ today for work-related reasons, and he was kind enough to take time out of his busy day to note that he felt the quality of my blog was going downhill. I'm always happy to listen to criticism, so he proceeded to diagnose the problem as me feeling obligated to post something, even when I wasn't inspired.

I told him I wasn't sitting down at the bar and drinking so much every night to get inspiration anymore. Something many famous authors rely upon. I dunno. Maybe he's right.

But, hey, I've got a whole weekend of suffering ahead of me. I'm sure there'll be something to write about.

MaxieC, Philosopher

MaxieC: "What's a girl pilot called again?"

Me, CherkyB: "Uhhh...dangerous?"

MaxieC: "Oh, that's right. A 'flight attendant'."

Wednesday, March 07, 2007

He shoots!

He misses!

A metaphor for this post.

MoodyT has been depressing the hell out of me lately. He's been in one of his black moods, and I think we're going to need to have some kind of really big party at El Torito's house to snap him out of it. A party that has lots of booze and lots of single women.

In other words, we're doomed.

I tried to convince him that the solution to his mood was to go out and buy a couple expensive handguns (a technique that has invariably worked for me), be he got all nitpicky about it, and then Rico started flapping his yapper about how he should get a shotgun instead. Rico, despite being from Texas, doesn't seem to have any kind of feel for the perfectly healthy emotional attachment between a man and his piece. Shotguns are such brute force appliances. They get the job done quite well, and quite economically, but lack any semblance of elegance. Shotguns are the crack whores of firearms. Or the fat, drunken, sorority chicks who will throw up on you tonight and then have regrets and charge you with date rape tomorrow of firearms, if you pop for one of the fancy Italian models.

But Rico has to go on and on about how a shotgun is the best choice in home protection, like this is some kind of practical purchase. Like MoodyT had said, "I feel like I need some practical home protection," instead of, "I think it might be time for some change in my life." So the idea of affecting change through the purchase of fancy handguns is not even given any airtime. But if you aren't moved by a USP45 Tactical, then it may be time to consider a move to The Castro. Hell, this gun is so cool, it's banned in California as an assault weapon (God, the California legislature is a remarkable collection of idiots).

Anyways, with the idea of Happiness Through Handguns (™) irretrievably sidetracked, I proposed Happiness Through Alcohol. This was also given no real consideration. Well, I'm out of ideas. If any of you f'kers is messing with MoodyT, cut it the hell out.

This afternoon, we got Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan from Netflix. Oh boy. Rico tells me there's a wrestling scene to die for.

[Update: Holy smokes, that scene was disturbing. Though funny as hell. Probably the second-most funny thing in the move, after his reaction to the telegram.]

Tuesday, March 06, 2007

I put the duck on your shelf

I'm not sure why, but I feel compelled to write something tonight despite a complete lack of inspiration. I should probably just post some pictures, but the only picture I have of late is this photo I snapped with my cellphone last week. It's a picture of The Mrs. on her hands and knees washing the kitchen floor. There's definitely something quite primal that stirs in a man's heart when he sees a woman washing a kitchen floor, but this is a family blog.


Maybe I need to get MaxieC to shoot some more photos for me. The last time he did that, it was a raging success.

Today was a glorious waste of a day at work. I spent two hours working on a couple conference papers that will get rejected, and I spent two more hours in meetings discussing those papers. Then, I spent over an hour listen to some guys from the Steve Austin site describing a future product followed by 3 hours meeting with a subset of them and a couple of my coworkers to discuss a particular feature on which I am (along with my two coworkers) one of the company experts. The feature Tinfoil keeps telling me to kill but that my career depends upon. We have another two hours tomorrow. I suppose this counts as me influencing future products outside of my group, so I'll have to write it down under my career accomplishments.

So something very strange happened this evening. I got home, and there was a steak and a cheese-stuffed baked potato on my plate for dinner, and I said to myself, "Self, do you want a beer or a glass of wine to go with that?" Ok, so that's not all that strange. What's strange is that I decided on a Diet Mountain Dew. Thus, I am breaking rule #1 of blogging (never blog sober), and you can tell from the lack of quality. I'm just going through the motions here.

But I need to put up at least five new posts a week in order to keep the AdSense revenue rolling in. My readers are a fickle bunch, and if I go more than a day without a post, they don't come back for a week and revenue tanks.

I just got paid for my ads the second time a couple weeks ago, BTW. I've banked like $230 so far. That's nearly $20/month. Wow.

Monday, March 05, 2007

It Rhymes with "Christmas Elf"

Today at work, someone offered me parenting advice. I don't think I need parenting advice, but apparently after this post, others think I do. The parenting advice went like this:
"The problem is that your wife was there. The kids always misbehave if Mommy is there, and it's impossible to get any kind of regimen going with your wife constantly nitpicking you the whole time. It's a whole different dynamic if it's just you with the kids."
So I guess in some way, that serves as positive validation. I don't really need positive validation of my parenting skills, as I don't define my life around them. What I need is positive validation of my work skill, and, of course, I generally get just the opposite*. Apparently, I pretty much suck at everything.

It's a good thing I don't care what you think. Otherwise, I might get depressed.

(*OK, this is maybe not officially certified as true. Usually, I'm told I'm the greatest thing since sliced bread, but not great enough to deserve to be paid above the 50th percentile of my job pay grade. I'm like a dog. You can say, "Good dog," until you're blue in the face, but if you never open up the treat bag, I'm not believing it. Come to think of it, "CherkyB," is a great name for a dog.)

Today, Rico asked me to take my beloved snow blower over to his house to clear his driveway of the snow that has been there since before Christmas. I had to admit that my pickup is not big enough to fit the tractor and blower in the back, so I had no way to get it there. I felt very unmanly. It would probably fit in Cavitation's or Tinfoil's pickup, but mine I got whilst living in San Schmose, so it is not a fullsize. It made a lot of sense there, and it honestly does here, too. What I really need is a little flatbed trailer, though I have nowhere to park it.

Oh well. Such is life.

Sunday, March 04, 2007

Be careful what you wish for

There's always someone waiting to stick it to you. Much like Mr. Roarke, who always fulfilled only the letter of the law on the various fantasies of his guests, and somehow people found this to be just what they needed.

Well, The Mrs. Mr. Roarked me this morning. See, it was my turn to sleep in. But yesterday I made two tragic mistakes:
  1. I complained that I'd never be allocated time to seal the grout in the newly re-reconstructed shower.
  2. I told The Mrs. that rather than fritter the entire morning away with a sleeping in late and then having a big breakfast 2 hours later routine, we should get up early, have a normal breakfast, and do something useful.
Big mistake when it's my turn to sleep in. She got me up at what she claims was "more or less almost 8:00". I'm lying there, enjoying my precious few moments of MaxieC-less bed (he normally shows up around 2am, and he kicks and claws us until he has the vast majority of the bed to himself so he can sleep perpendicular between us), and The Mrs. pitter-patters in. She brushes my hair all sweetly and says, "Didn't you say you wanted to get up early to do get some work done?"

Mother F^@ker! I'm trying to sleep here.

But I did say that, dammit all to hell.

I got up. I accomplished the following today as a result of this:
  • I sealed the grout in the master shower. Two coats.
  • I hung the new bicycle winches up on the garage ceiling.
  • I cleaned the filter on two of the three ponds (the third pond has sprung a leak and no longer holds water - a job for the spring).
  • I skimmed seaweed out of the koi pond.
  • I inflated seven of The Childrens' toy balls.
  • I vacuumed the first floor of the house.
  • I "steam cleaned" the tile in the entrance-way, kitchen, and hallway.
  • I took MaxieC for a bike trailer ride to the park (along with the rest of the fambly and the fambly from across the street).
All in all, not a bad day for accomplishments.

I could have used another hour of sleep, though.

This post was inspired by Ketel One Bloody Marys. No Marys were harmed during the writing of this post.

Saturday, March 03, 2007

Cavitation is better than Me

Everything was going positively like a normal Saturday - The Mrs. slept in very, very late and then when she got up decided to get a bug up her hindquarters about an inflatable planetarium at the Children's Discovery Museum that had a show at 11:30, so after she had a leisurely cup of coffee and a long, relaxing shower, she sprang the announcement on the rest of us that we were leaving in 45 minutes, and so we better all get ready pronto. See, I hadn't been allowed to shower yet, as I had to watch The Childrens whilst The Mrs. slept in and then had her leisurely coffee and shower. If I try to shower while she's having her coffee, she throws a hissy fit about how her entire day was ruined because it started out with too much stress, and then she pouts all day.

When it is my turn to sleep in, I have tried the coffee trick. It doesn't work. The moment my feet touch the floor I have baby duty so that she can drink her coffee in peace. "You don't even liiiike to drink coffee in the morning. You're just trying to aggravate meeeeee."

Well, the Discovery Museum inflatable planetarium stunk. HannahC liked it, but MaxieC got bored and started to yell. Not an angry, crying tantrum or anything. He just started to yell whatever came to mind. He was trying to talk louder than the presenter. The Mrs. had to remove him. They packed us in like rats, and we had to sit on the floor without leaning on the walls (as "the walls are the screen") for about 45 minutes. My back hurt.

Then, The Mrs. dreamt up more glorious wastes of time for the Saturday. We would go to Culver's for lunch (an hour), we would go to the library (an hour), we would stop at Home Depot to get grout sealer because I went to take a shower in our newly re-reconstructed shower which this time is guaranteed not to leak, and she wouldn't let me because I didn't seal the grout, but then when we got home (4:30 - 5.5 hours after leaving for a 45 minute planetarium show), she made me play with The Childrens outside rather than let me seal the grout, so I won't be able to use the shower tomorrow, either, and the whole cycle will repeat tomorrow, and I'll be lucky if I'm allowed to use the shower before July.

Anyways, after playing outside, The Mrs. decided to dump both The Childrens into the big master soaking tub. This is nostalgia run amok, as The Childrens used to be able to sit at opposite ends of the tub, but as they've grown, they've taken to treating it like a swimming pool with all kinds of splashing and yelling and etc. It is always, without fail, a disaster when The Mrs. puts them both in the tub. I myself never do this as, being a man, I am capable of learning.

So I'm sitting down on my butt in the family room having a beer and enjoying my first moment of peace since getting up at 5:30am with MaxieC this morning when I hear The Mrs. hollering her head off upstairs. "Stop splashing! Stop throwing water! Cut it out! Get back on your side of the tub! Don't throw that water! Stop it!"

Really, the usual stuff that one can expect when putting both The Childrens in the tub together. But then I think to myself, "Self, a wife is not one to take responsibility for her bad decisions. She is one to find a way to blame her loving husband for the problem. You had best get yourself upstairs to pretend you care and see if you can help out."

At this point, if this were The Man Show, we would be seeing the "You Can't Win Theater" banner.

I go upstairs. I take my beer with me, just to make sure The Mrs. doesn't think I suddenly care a whole lot.

She is standing on the tile deck behind the tub wiping up a giant puddle of water with a towel. She looks angry.

"Wash MaxieC's hair," she barks like a drill sergeant.

I grab a cup, tell MaxieC to tilt his head back, which he pointedly does not as he thinks I'm like his mother and won't dump the water on him if I think he isn't ready, and I dump the water on his head. He yells, jumps up, and climbs out of the tub onto the deck. I tried to grab him, but he is wet and covered in Dove soap slime, and he squirts out of my grip like a greased pig.

The Mrs. begins having conniptions. "Grab him! He's going to fall! Why did you make him climb out of the tub! Blah-de-blah-blah-blah!"

I climb up there, pick him up, and plop him back in the tub. HannahC decides to help out and throws a cup of water in his face. "Don't let her throw water!" The irony of me having come upstairs in the first place because of all the hollering about her throwing water is lost in the moment. Or perhaps it is lost in woman non-linear thinking. I don't pretend to understand.

I begin to wash MaxieC's hair. The Mrs. disappears, leaving me now in charge of the bath. Very clever of her.

I rinse MaxieC's hair. He puts his head down and lets the water run over his face. He screams, stands up, and starts yelling for a towel. There is but one towel. I grab it. HannahC jumps up in protest. This her towel, and she gives not a rat's ass if MaxieC is screaming about water in his eyes, her towel is not, not touching him. She is now shoving MaxieC back into the tub to keep him away from her towel, and I'm trying to save him and stop her, and, perhaps I am hollering a bit myself.

The Mrs. re-appears with a fresh towel. As I dry MaxieC's eyes, she says to me this:
"Cavitation loved his time alone with his children."
Oh really?

"Cavitation loved his time alone with his children."
Yes, but it's these children that are the problem.
Well fine then. Why don't you go off and marry him?
He only said that because his wife reads his blog, and he's a total suckup.
Go f-k yourself.
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