Tuesday, September 30, 2008

Lazy Daze of Blogging

Today, I am filled with too much anger to actually write many words. So, instead, I treat you to a photoblog.

You all remember the rock garden project? Here's a picture I posted right after the planting completed:


Here is what it looks like now, after just short of four months of growth:


Only two plants didn't make it, and if we dig them up and return them to the nursery, they'll give us new ones.

Now it's fishy time. This is the back pond:


Whitey and Charles in the front pond. Whitey is the white one. Racists.


And the school room that I threatened to make The Mrs. paint by herself but that I ended up mostly painting (despite her help). Those are the curtains she sewed with HannahC's sewing machine. I suspect that "Santa" brought the sewing machine to the wrong person last Christmas.


The Childrens pose on our non-prize-winning pumpkins. These things actually grew out of seeds from the ones we grew last year that didn't ripen in time for Halloween and just got mashed up in the garden.


A statue I like to call "Happiness is..."


MaxieC cleaned the driveway after I got the mulch for the pine tree project. He learned to clean from his mother, obviously.


If only we had a pressure washer. The kind that Paula's husband would recommend if he had any way to actually recommend something to me.

Monday, September 29, 2008

Doesn't that just beat all?

If you figure out what, let me know. All I know is rock beats scissors, and scissors beat paper, but paper beats rock.

And don't say "the shocker" you bunch of perverts. It is so hard having a conversation with you people. Right to the gutter, do not pass go, do not collect $200. Sheesh.

Martinis really lose something when served in an on-the-rocks glass. I don't know why.

The pressure washer I picked out yesterday got terrible reviews. As did all the alternative models at the same price point. One of the ones up $100 did pretty well. Perhaps I'll hold on for a while, though. I've lost all my money in the last couple weeks. Poor kids. Looks like state school for them.

Saw another National Lampoon moovie last night - Van Wilder 2: The Rise of Taj. It was no Beerfest, but it had its moments. Exactly two of them. I'd say skip it. It was a really lame sequel that starred exactly one person from the original, and he kept making forced references to the first one in order to try to establish relevancy. You should just see Van Wilder twice.

But honestly, I couldn't take any more of those dreadful Helena Bonham-Carter period pieces that The Mrs. has been getting. Someone shoot me, please. Conversations with Other Women? Please, yes. Bring on other women. What? You mean a whole moovie with the same woman? How is that other women?

I guess I have a different definition of "other women". One that means "more women than just your ex-wife."

I think we may be trending towards this guy, though by no means am I comfortable with an engine made by Subaru. They make lesbian crap.

Some times I think back at how I was able to bang out a blarg every night. I wonder if my standards were lower then. Hard to imagine.

How are you all doing?

Sunday, September 28, 2008

The Blogging of the Chores

I learned something this weekend.

I learned that if, on Saturday morning, you wife is in the kitchen, and she starts slamming things onto the counter and yelling, "I'm so sick of having to prepare every single meal all by myself without any help!" that the proper response is not to yell, "I'm so sick of earning every dollar we spend all by myself without any help!"

I'd say that would be something not to do, excepting that would require a whole different format for this post, and I'm not really feeling up to that right now.

The thing is, I don't really eat breakfast. Eating early in the morning makes me feel sick to my stomach.

So anyways, having learned my lesson, bright and early Sunday morning, I made breakfast. Bright and early for me is around 9:30, cuz the smell of breakfast earlier than that will make me want to hurl.

Sheesh. I feel like Ellie with all the commentary about feeling sick and wanting to hurl. Poor Ellie. She barfs a lot. I blame her mother.

Now, the problem with me making breakfast is that I never really know what we have in the refrigerators (two of them) or freezers (three of them), so I root around until I find something that looks interesting, and I start cooking it while I root around for something else. And this goes on until I have enough stuff going that the smell starts to make me nauseous.

This morning, the first thing I laid eyes upon that looked good was a big Sam's Club-sized bag of Ore-Ida crinkle fries. Wow. I just realized that Ore-Ida was like Oregon-Idaho, the two states from where the potatoes come. I didn't think you could trademark a contraction. I bet the rest of you knew that all along.

Bizarro!

So I said to myself, "Self, I bet you could make hashbrowns out of fries of you chopped them up." I proceeded to try to chop them up, but they were frozen like bricks.

Hookay, into the pan for a little frying to soften them up.

Root around a little more...Ahh Briwn'n'Serve breakfast sausages. I bet they'll taste good chopped up in the hashbrowns.

On the counter is a basket of produce harvested from the garden (last big harvest before next week's frost). Couple of chopped tomatoes and some green onions, into the pan! The fries are soft enough to chop, so I do that.

Salt. Pepper. Bullseye Original barbecue sauce - new recipe contains no high fructose corn syrup! (Which, I believe, strains the definition of "original", but who really gives a rat's ass, eh?)

I located our last jar of turkey gravy. Heated that up in a saucepan and umped it over the top of the hashbrowns, which are now not really hashbrowns so much as they are just hash.

Fried up some eggs, sunny-side up, and served them on top of a big spoonful of the glop. Top it off with a little Frank's Original red hot sauce.

Yum.

That should hold her for a while.

We then went off shopping. I dropped The Mrs. and HannahC off at JoAnn's Fabric to do whatever wacky stuff it is that women do at fabric stores, which is kinda the dual of what men do at Lowe's. Except Lowe's, sneaky bastards that they are, has a big plant section from which my wife always manages to fill up a cart while I'm off doing my man thang. I have never, ever filled up a cart at JoAnn's. I bought some string there once for our blinds, but that's pretty much it.

MaxieC and I headed to Liquor Max, which is MaxieC's favorite liquor store on account of it has his name in the store name.

That, plus they always give him a sucker.

I fulfilled my duties as requested here. I managed to 'splain to my fambly how the title of that post was actually a Motörhead song, but that I was pretty sure I was the only one who got the reference (show of hands?), though online opinions differ as to whether the song was named "999 Emergency" or just "Emergency," and I'm all settled in for the night and don't feel like checking the CD. Plus, I 'splained how in Europe, 999 is what you dial for emergencies, their version of our 911.

Yes, I just can't seem to get very far through life without pontificating on something. My genius is just so damned large that it needs to come out all the time. It must be so difficult to live with me.

After the liquor store, we hit The Home Depot on account of I gots $100 in gift cards, and I've been jonesing for a pressure washer, which I figure I owe to myself now, having forgone the bass boat. I also have about $100 of Sears gift cards, so I was checking what the Depot had to compare to Sears (which I did online later). If'n you decide that you don't really need a commercial grade washer to wash pigeon poop off the stucco, wasp nests off the eaves, and maybe clean the deck a bit before re-staining it once a year, then HD wins hands down. Even considering Sears has almost all their stuff on "clearance". Sears has a model that's $250 off, and that brings it down to the same price a slightly better model is at HD. But if you go another hundred bucks upscale, Sears is winning right now.

I borrow the neighbor's brother's air compressor again this year to blow out the sprinkler lines. Normally, I'd wait like two more weeks to do that, but we turned the sprinklers off about three weeks ago given how much rain we've been having, and The Mrs. swears we're going to have snow next week.

35 zones. Each one takes about one minute to blow out, which doesn't seem too bad. But the flow rate of the compressor is such that you need to let it recharge the tank for 5 minutes for every one minute you actually blast it. So this ended up taking like 3-4 hours. That's shorter than it took last year, as last year I had a leak in one of the supply pipes that bled off pressure constantly. That has been fixed twice now, once by a plumber, and then once again by me yesterday after the old fix came loose.

The Mrs. finished making curtains for the window seat of the school room. I hung them up today. It went about as well as could be expected. When she finished the window seat cushion, I'll post a photo.

OK, that's all.

Getting Religion

HannahC: "Momma, why do people have middle names?"

The Mrs.: "So they can tell themselves apart from all the other people with the same name."

HannahC: "Does everybody have a middle name?"

The Mrs.: "No. Some people only have two names."

Me, CherkyB: "Yeah. And some people just have a middle initial."

Me, CherkyB: "Like Jesus."

MaxieC: "Yeah. His middle initial is G for Geeeeeeesus!"

HannahC: "No it's not. It's H."

Friday, September 26, 2008

999 Emergency

Dearest CherkyB,

I, your liquor cabinet, am in dangerous peril of running low on supplies. Unless immediate and decisive action is taken, the foundation upon which your blogging empire is built is in imminent danger of collapse. Your supplies of the following items are in a critical state and will soon be depleted to where demand cannot be satisfied:
  • Vodka
  • Gin
  • Crown Royal
  • Southern Comfort
  • Port
  • Yukon Jack
  • Tequila
Without your immediate attention, your blogging will soon find itself running on nothing more than cognac, brandy, Captain Morgan, and Jack Daniels. We all know how painful that will be.

Thank you for your prompt attention to this matter,

BaryC

Wednesday, September 24, 2008

Well, Folks

Remember how I promised to start blogging in a way that doesn't suck soon?

Your wait is not over.

Sorry.

I'm just going to give you a horrible mishmash of ideas that come to me as I type.

First off, I got really pissy today in a phone meeting at work. I felt bad about it, and right in the middle of my rant, I said, "I'm sorry. I don't mean to be pissy at you, cuz this isn't your fault," cuz it wasn't. But it was the fault of a couple other people in the room who have been sitting on their thumbs for nearly a year now on something, and suddenly it has been "discovered" and is a crisis.

Then, I had to send a follow-up email in which I included another apology. Misdirected anger is unprofessional.

Then I apologized to the meeting chair via an IM in which I explained how people underestimate my capacity for petty and vindictive behavior. Which is odd, because you'd think by now, they'd have a good gauge of that. I'm hoping to have this worked out of my system in another month or two. No promises, though.

Today, I called my wife from work, and MaxieC answered. He asked me who I was. I felt kinda hurt that he didn't recognize my voice. Then, he handed the phone to The Mrs. and said, "It's your husband."

Yesterday, I had to go break up an argument between The Mrs. and HannahC. Poor HannahC. Only eight, and already having her teenage conflict with her mother. After The Mrs. left the room, I had to chat with HannahC about responsibility and doing what she's told, and she said, "Wait! You're taking her side now? I thought you were on my side!"

I think that $700 billion is a lot to just give up to bail out people who made a big bet and lost. I'm most upset that I seem to be in agreement with Chuck Schumer on this. I've lost $100k on the value of my house since I bought it two years ago, despite dropping almost $100k more on repairs and upgrades. But I have to just suck it up and keep working at a job where they appreciate neither me nor my genius.

Speaking of which, I am starting to get really offended at not being considered a "working man". I mean, WTF? I go to work every day. I work long hours. I stay up at night trying to solve difficult problems. How does this somehow make me less respectable than if I was some guy doing manual labor? And why is it that I should have to support that guy through a big tax raise so that he can have a big tax cut?

Oh, and your momma.

Monday, September 22, 2008

A Two Martini Evening

That seems to be all I have time for before dinner.

However, I am almost out of both gin and vodka, and thus it may turn into a whiskey evening.

I promise to start blogging in a way that doesn't suck real soon. This weekend was my anniversary, so I was busy with the kind of romantic things that your anniversary requires you to do.

Like buying a new carpet cleaner.

Wednesday, September 17, 2008

The Ever Supportive The Mrs.

MaxieC: "Mommy! I pooped my pa-ants!"

The Mrs.: "Of course you did."

Tuesday, September 16, 2008

Ramble on

Today was a day of great excitement and yet mundanity.

It was a day in which I got absolutely faaabulous news at work and yet found myself noplussed.

It was a time for a large, dry martini, yet with olives.

In short, it was a day like any other day, yet like no other day.

A day in which my blogpost would suck.

Well, with that out of the way, I can get straight on to the crap. Today I did not go to the grocery store. In fact, I did not go to any store. The only place I went was to lunch at a sandwich shop where I am getting pretty sick of the sandwiches. But, they have punch cards where after you buy five, you get one free, and I got one free. I opted for the 8" Steak Grinder.

Yes, I realize that that sandwich makes most of you think about prom night all over again. But I'm going to let that slide without even trying to make a joke about it. It is, after all, that kind of night.

They don't have sausage, after all, so it's kind of a stretch.

The Mrs. and HannahC just showed up in their bathing suits, heading to the hot tub. I guess that's your loss, as I won't have time to complete my masterpiece tonight.

Oh well. Too bad for you. Last night's masterpiece only made 89 cents, so I'm kind of in a mood where I don't really care to try too hard.

Something Not to Do 17

Normally with an SNtD installment, there is a clear protagonist and a clear antagonist. Here, I'm not really sure exactly how this would have come to unfold. Purely hypothetically, though:
The Mrs.: "You know, I'm done with breasts. I think I'm just going to have them cut off."

Me, CherkyB: "OK. Make sure you file the divorce papers while you're out."

The Mrs.: "You mean you'd rather have me dead than have my breasts cut off."

Me, CherkyB: "Hon, you're my wife. I'd rather have you dead than just about anything."

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Monday, September 15, 2008

Sports Highlights by The Mrs.

Continuing the lazy photoblogging trend of yesterday, I'm going to do a little sports highlights reel today that covers the goings-on over the last couple weeks. All of these photos were taken by The Mrs., which you'll be able to tell pretty quickly once we get into it.

Remember this post? Well, here's a picture of HannahC working up an appetite at the Windsor Harvest Festival about 15 minutes before the barfing incident.


HannahC had her very first real gymnastics competition about a week ago. We spent most of Saturday in a hot gym watching her compete. She came in nearly dead last (but, hey, it was her first competition, and she had just moved up a difficulty level so was competing against more experienced girls). Here is a photo of the team awards ceremony. The Mrs. took four photos, and this is the best one.


The Mrs. has not yet learned that when she stuffs this camera into her purse or the backpack that the little knob on the side that selects between auto and manual mode may get turned, and if it gets turned, then who knows what the manual setting will do to the photo. She has also never mastered turning it back to auto, even when she knows something is wrong.

This past Saturday, MaxieC had his first ever ice skating lesson. Here he is all excited and ready to get out on the ice:


And here is the best photo that The Mrs. captured of him out on the ice:

Sunday, September 14, 2008

Barfing up a Post

I finally got The Mrs. to tell me where the camera was (in her purse), so I can sit back and do the laziest of lazy - photoblog. We have lots of catching up to do.

First, let me start out with that fateful trip to Rocky Mountain National Park. Way up at the Alpine Vistors' Center, where there is a little trail that doesn't look very long at all that runs from the parking lot to a sign that is at 12,005 ft. so youse can take a picture at 12,000 ft.

Here is a picture I took of The Mrs. along with someone she calls The Brother and, of course, little MaxieC. The sun was very bright, so they're wearing funky high-altitude shades that protect your sensitive retinas from UV mind rays. Or something.


Your author, however, is Joe F'ing Cool in his ice-blue mirror shades, gun club camo hat, and snarky T-shirt. Oh yeah. You all wish you were me.


This is a look back from the signpost to the parking lot. You see how it doesn't look very far at all? I climbed about 2/3 of it with MaxieC on my back. That would have been a piece of cake, if'n there was any damned oxygen at all. I had to do the whole thing on one giant breath of minivan air, cuz, of course, the minivan has a pressurized cabin. It is a Honda, after all.


Slightly out of sequence, this is three shots I took at the first rest stop where Gordy was feeling woozy. The camera has a photo stitch-assist mode that lets you line up each shot with the edge of the previous one, and then you use this photo-stitch utility on your compooter (comes with the camera) to hook them together. You really have to click on it to see it bigger to get the full effect. You can see faint vertical bars in the sky where the different frames were stitched, but overall, it was pretty damned painless.


On to some more mundane tasks. This weekend, I completed the saga of the pine tree mulch bed that I began last week and so painfully detailed in this post. In fact, I completed it twice. First, on Saturday, when MaxieC and I got up early and went outside to lay down the landscape fabric and mulch.

It went pretty well, except I ran out of landscape fabric pins. This required a trip to two hardware stores, as the stuff is out of season. I then measured up the area (39' x 10') and calculated that I'd need 2.4 cu yards of shredded redwood mulch. I rounded it up to three, as they sell it cheaper by the full yard, and we've got plenty of flower beds that need some topping off.

We went off to our favorite dirt place just outside Windsor and came home with the first load (the bed of the pickup holds but one cu yd). As I began unloading, I saw what seemed to be largish chunks of mulch falling out of the bed. Except they seemed to be more jumping out. Moments later, MaxieC is yelling, "A toad! A toad!" and sure 'nuf, there's a small toad on the driveway in front of MaxieC.

Then I notice one just a couple feet behind him as well.

Uh oh. Our mulch came with toads. I started to poke around a bit and quickly found two more.

Well, I'll tell you, nothing slows down the unloading of a yard of mulch from the back of a pickup than a couple of little kids and a load full of toads. By the time I finished unloading it, we had found seven. It was too many for even HannahC, so we managed to let a few go. She and MaxieC corralled about four of them on the front porch to play (where the big, giant toad that lives in our front yard is often found hanging out under the porch light at night).

I went back for the second load. Only one toad in that one. Same with the third - just one toad. HannahC kept the very last one. She named it Alexis. It now lives in the 2.5 gallon fishtank on the bar next to the 10 gal. cricket tank.


I got the mulch all spread out and was enjoying the happiness that is completing a job when The Mrs. came out to admire my handiwork. I'm gonna paraphrase a little here, cuz I don't remember the exact, exact words.

The Mrs.: "Ooooo...that looks nice."

Me, CherkyB: "Thanks."

The Mrs.: "Uhhh...WTF is this?"

Me, CherkyB: "That's landscape fabric."

The Mrs.: "You put it under the mulch?"

Me, CherkyB: "Yep."

The Mrs.: "Why?"

Me, CherkyB: "So we don't have to spray for weeds all the time."

The Mrs.: "With no edging?"

Me, CherkyB: "We talked about this and agreed we didn't want edging."

The Mrs.: "Well, I didn't know you were going to put landscape fabric down. After you mow the lawn, this's gonna look like shite."

Me, CherkyB: "Grrr....."
Which is how it came to pass that on Sunday, we all found ourself driving out to get 60 feet of 4" snap cut flagstone and seven 50 lbs. bags of sand. And how I got to finish the same project two days in a row this weekend.

Here is a picture of me most of the way through the project.


The Mrs. had been in a funk all day because some parent had sent her via email a complaint about our daughter, and she just wanted to sit around and whine about it all day. I, instead, suggested that there's nothing like a little hard physical labor to take your mind off petty conflicts, and The Mrs. agreed.

So she came outside and sat in the shade, first on her porch swing, then on the bench, and watched me work. Whenever I noted that perhaps she might like to help, she said, "I would, but I've been coughing." And then she did a little teeny fake cough.

Finally, I persuaded her to go fetch the camera and take a couple pictures, and she begrudgingly admitted that she could do that as a way to help me.

Here's the last run excavated and awaiting sand and their final resting place:


A look back at pretty much the whole afternoon, what with all the chasing around to buy the materials. I would note how in this picture you can see how patchy the lawn is next to the mulch bed as opposed to how thick it is in the above two pictures. This is what prompted me to move the sprinkler heads out from behind the trees. They were watering the lower branches of the trees and not reaching the grass in front of the trees.


I don't believe The Mrs. has ever taken the camera outside without having taken a picture of her precious dog. Here's FreddyC doing the new trick he learned from The Mrs. - "helping." He didn't really master the cough, so every couple minutes he let a big snort out of his nose, like he had some dust up there. Or maybe some shredded redwood bark.


I'm still working away in this picture. I don't have a picture of the completed project, as The Mrs. got tired of "helping" and decided to invite a bunch of the neighborhood kids over to play instead.

The end.

Thursday, September 11, 2008

The Right to Privacy

Overheard while lying in bed trying to go to sleep for the night:
HannahC: "Momma, I don't feel very good. Can I sleep here with you?"

The Mrs.: "No. You have to sleep in your own bed. Why don't you feel good? Do you feel like you have to throw up?"

HannahC: "I already did. In the basement in the toilet."

The Mrs.: "Well, why didn't you say so?"

HannahC: "Cuz it didn't seem like it was any of your business."

The Mrs.: "Noooo. You have to tell us when you throw up."

HannahC: "But, I just don't see why that is any of your business at all."

Tuesday, September 09, 2008

Well folks

We got us a horse race.

But enough about political blogging. Today, the guy in the cube adjacent from mine talked me out of buying a bass boat. Instead, he said, "You should take that money and hire a maid."

But enough about immigration reform.

In an effort to protect my bass boat dreams, today I vacuumed the ledge thingies in the master bedroom. I'm not really sure how exactly to describe them, but I can't find the digital camera, so a description you will get.

Imagine that you had a bedroom that was styled kinda Santa Fe, only, of course, it was indoors. We have vaulted ceilings, but then little things like the walk-in closet and master shower are framed as boxes with a normal-height ceilings below the vaulted ceiling. So they literally form boxes placed at the sides of the room, and the top of the box (at about 9'6" above the floor) collects quite a bit of dust. Plus, there is a "beam" that divides the sleeping area from the bath/shower/toilet/dressing area that is nothing more than a big rectangle running through space from over the fireplace to the top of the closet, and then, for effect, along the wall around the corner and over the sinks.

I don't believe I have ever cleaned the tops of all this stuff. There were spots where the dust was 1/4" thick, but in most places, it was more like 1/8". I had to get a ladder to reach it. It took me over an hour to get it, plus the area under the gas fireplace, all cleaned up.

As I was cleaning under the gas fireplace, I had to lie on my back on the "deck" around the tub. It turns out I accidentally bumped the cold faucet and turned on a trickle of water. There were towels draped over the edge of the tub from MaxieC's shower earlier, and they got a bit wet.

Naturally, when The Mrs. came in, all she did was complain. "Hey. How come my nice clean towels are all dirty?"

"They're not dirty, they're just wet."

"But I just cleaned these towels!"

"They got wet, not dirty. They're towels. Towels get wet. Then they dry."

"But I just cleaned them, and now it was a complete waste of time, cuz they're all messed up!"

Then I said some things which I'm not going to repeat here. But, suffice it to say that the reason I cleaned the ledge thingies was because The Mrs. has been having some asthma problems, and I know she is deathly allergic to dust mites, and to the best of my knowledge, she is not in any way shape or form allergic to damp towels.

I also did the dishes. This, to save The Mrs. from having to throw one of her precious towels over them.

Did you see that? With one sentence, I managed to take a shot at both The Mrs. and Blogauthor. God, I'm good.

I should go into politics.

Monday, September 08, 2008

HannahC, Feminist

HannahC: "Hey Dad, how do they make hand sanitizer evaporate so quickly?"

Me, CherkyB: "They make it based on alcohol instead of water."

HannahC: "Oh."

Me, CherkyB: "The rubbing alcohol kind, not the drinking kind."

HannahC: "Well, duuuuh! Of course not the drinking kind."

HannahC: "I mean, Jack Daniels isn't going to clean your hands at all."

Me, CherkyB: "You'd be surprised at what Jack Daniels can clean."

HannahC: "And anyways, if they made it out of Jack Daniels, then adult men would always be licking their hands. And no woman is going to want to be with a man who is licking his hands all the time."

Sunday, September 07, 2008

Even More Pain

Speaking of immigration reform, today I dug 20 feet of trench in order to move two sprinkler heads out from behind the pine trees. My HOA requires me to have a minimum number of pine trees of the Blue Spruce variety, so napalm was out of the question.

The digging was a major pain, as the sprinkler heads were literally underneath the trees, and these trees turn out to be quite pokey in the needle department. I had to tie the lower branches back in order to get in there, and even so, I was unable to swing the pick at all and had a hard time just getting a shovel in there. It took about three hours to dig out the old heads and trench to the new locations.

The Mrs., ever the supportive wife, commented on the work:
The Mrs.: "I don't understand why you didn't just cap off the sprinklers."

Me, CherkyB: "Then the grass in front of the trees would die."

The Mrs.: "No. I mean cap off the sprinklers in the old locations, and then just dig holes in the new locations."

Me, CherkyB: "Huh?"

The Mrs.: "I don't see why you wasted time trenching when you could have just capped them off and dug holes in the new spots."

Me, CherkyB: "How would I connect them to the water?"

The Mrs.: "From the pipe in the new holes."

Me, CherkyB: "But the pipe is at the old location! That's how they got water. They run the pipes to the sprinklers, not just at some random spots around the yard. I needed the trenches to bring the pipe to the new spots."

The Mrs.: "Ohhhhhhh...I get it. I thought you were just wasting time."
Then, of course, I needed to buy the supplies to connect up the new locations to the supply. This involved getting some 1" compression fittings, some hose clamps, and some more 1" flex pipe. See, I ruined the remainder of my old spool of 1" flex pipe by parking the tractor too close to it, causing it to melt when it got too hot from the muffler.

Boom! Muffler.

I decided to take MaxieC with me, cuz he was hanging out getting under foot while I was digging. MaxieC insisted we go to Ace Hardware to try to get the stuff, even though I assured him the wouldn't have the pipe. He 'splained to me he wanted the free popcorn. Well, when we got there, they were out of popcorn, and the didn't have the pipe, and they only had about half the fittings I needed. So it was off to Lowe's.

Seemingly an hour later, we were back home, and I went to start the install.

Argh!!!!
MaxieC: "Mommy, we're going back to Ace."

The Mrs.: "Why?"

MaxieC: "Cuz Mr. Stoopidhead forgot to get the very first part he needed."
HannahC had to come along this time, too, as she had finished her schoolwork. Ace had fresh popcorn, so it was worth the trip.

Everything went together quite without incident, and MaxieC and I filled in the trenches and packed them down. I didn't worry much about cosmetics, as next weekend we'll be covering the area under the trees with landscape fabric and then shredded redwood bark mulch.

I'm kinda sleepy.

Friday, September 05, 2008

Odor

Pleased to meet you. I'm Art Vandelay, power architect.

Yesterday, my darling son and I spent quite some time watching Nanny 911. He really enjoyed it. It may have been the heady thrill of being behind enemy lines. Or, he may have missed the point. This morning, he asked me, "How did they get those kids to be so bad for the TV?"

This weekend, I plan to move two sprinkler heads out from behind trees (maybe16 feet of trenching will be involved), rip out the sod amongst the trees, put down landscape fabric, and then cover it with mulch. I expect almost none of this will happen, though, as we'll burn almost all the day in Snoraura at a gymnastics meet with HannahC.

Today, I nominated Cavitation at Apostrophe Abuse for this post. He probably won't make the cut, given his pretty darned low statcounter count. Poor kid. I tried to call him at work today to make sure he was doing the right thing (i.e., what I wanted), but he was already gone.

I don't get the Obama thing. I really don't. When, at 3am, the red phone rings, is it OK to just vote present? It's remarkably puzzling to me that other people who are seemingly intelligent can be so swept up in the emotion of the moment and so fervently project their own fantasies upon such a blank slate. But then again, I'm largely a single-issue voter, and that issue has nothing to do with whether Euro-trash socialist namby-pamby wussies think I'm an OK guy. So that pretty much by itself disqualifies me from understanding the Obamania.

I never understood Beatlemania, either.

Or Breasts not Bombs [nsfw], for that matter, which on the surface sounds like such a good idea, but in the end turns out to be kinda, uh, not as well executed as you might have hope for.

So I have now made it through two political conventions without having watched any of either on TV. With those plus the Olympics, which I also did not watch, behind me, I'm wondering if there's anything I can't miss on TV. I guess I'm lucky Hurl! isn't on every day.

Well, not unless we have company.

Tuesday, September 02, 2008

We went to the parade

And only one person barfed.

Poor HannahC.