Gourdo

Today was the great pumpkin carving day. We decided on today because it was pretty warm and because HannahC has classes that run pretty late on Monday and Tuesday, so we wouldn't have time after today.

MaxieC claimed the largest of the three giant pumpkins from the garden, and he drew up a picture of how he wanted it carved. HannahC was at first livid that he claimed the largest, but she was OK once it was decided that she could have the other two.


We lobotomized the pumpkins out in the yard next to the garden where they grew. This way, we avoided the sticky mess on the kitchen floor we have most years.


To HannahC, everything is a potential gym apparatus.


The Mrs. raked up a pile of leaves for The Childrens to jump in. Unfortunately, she did not clean up the dog poop from the yard first, so when MaxieC jumped in, he landed in a pile of poop. Not to worry, as he had his dog poop cleaner-upper handy.


Now this one is a design study in unrealized potential. See, I saw these two pumpkins sitting on the wagon queued up to be moved to the front porch, and I said to The Mrs., "Go kneel down behind those so I can take a picture."

She started to, then she realized what was going on and said, "No. You do it. If you do it, it's funny. If I do it, it's just trashy."

The Mrs. has absolutely no sense of humor, in case you haven't figured that out already.

So, trying to make lemons out of lemonade, I kneeled down behind these generous orbs, and then I stuck my head between them.

The Mrs., again with the impeccable sense of humor, refused to take the picture. Thus, this crap is all you get. This is what The Mrs. considers "funny."


We had some little dinky pumpkins that were free from some farm field trip I didn't go on. These also got carved up, and the seeds are soaking to be cooked tomorrow. Big giant pumpkin seeds taste terrible.


Here's the porch in "all done" mode. We didn't carve those two medium-sized pumpkins. Six was all we could get through. Maybe tomorrow.

I love my childrens

Theoretically.

Something Not to Do 13

Let's say, purely hypothetically, that you're on a hike through the mountains with your fambly, and the day is cooling off due to an incoming cold front. You wife happens to say to you, "I'm a little cold."

The correct response, no matter what your finely honed interpersonal relationship skills may tell you, is not, "Ha! A little?"

That would be Something Not to Do.™

[ previous ] [ next ]

A mish and mash

I know it has been a while since I posted. I normally blog starting about 10pm. But I'm on vacation, you see, and thus by the time I would normally start blogging, I'm too absolutely insane to do anything other than play web sudoku. And maybe have a nightcap or more.

But for some reason, today both Childrens are sitting peacefully watching Cars. So, I sat down and installed the software for our new digital camera, a Canon PowerShot SD850 IS that we picked up at Office Depot on Monday. Office Depot had a great sale on these this week (20% off a very competitive price to begin with - cheaper than anything I found mail-order), so we nabbed one. Only had to go to two Office Depots to find one in stock (the last one). Which is good, cuz there are only two Office Depots around these parts.

It warmed up a whole bunches during the week, so we hit the zoo Tuesday. Here is where I discovered that MaxieC really enjoys his condiments on his hot dogs:


We managed to swing by the bird house in time for the 2:00 bug toss, which is where they give all the kiddies handfuls of meal worms, and then the kiddies toss them to the rainforest birds. The birds weren't all that hungry, but a good time was had by all. All but me. I got pooped on. A big, giant, steaming-hot rainforest bird poop. Luckily, it just hit my arm, so I was able to wash it right off.


Today, it was time for more wacky hi jinx. The Mrs. had been yapping about going for a hike or something the last couple days, so I decided it would be cool to hike up to this local landmark called "Horsetooth Rock" that we can see out our back window. However, when I started to read up on how far a hike it was (5 miles round trip), and how it was pretty steep and involved some bouldering, I decided that my back wasn't in the kind of shape it would need to be to carry MaxieC through all of that. So I found an easier trail in the same park that went to a waterfall and showed up as one of the recommended local hikes for kids. The descriptions were non-committal about whether there would actually be water in the waterfall at this time of year, but whatever. Off we went.


Oh deer.


This spider, which was about 4 inches from tip-to-tip, reared up on its hind legs and scared the living hell out of a girl in the family that was a few hundred yards ahead of us. She was probably 8 or 9. I don't know what kind of spider it was. I'll look it up and get back to you.


Very early on into the hike, HannahC found a rock that she really loved. She carried it with her the entire way. It possibly slowed her down some.


MaxieC needed to climb to the top of every boulder we passed. This drove The Mrs. fabulously insane. It was my job to climb up with him to assure safety. I also tried to teach him how to pose like a true adventurer whenever he was at the summit of a boulder and someone took his picture.


It's possible that my role model for a true adventurer is Captain Morgan, though...

MaxieC, Chip off the old Block

MaxieC: "Momma, Momma, do you know what?"

The Mrs.: "What?"

MaxieC: "Your momma."

Well

At least the house is clean.

Just when you thought schools couldn't get any stupider

Second Grade Student Suspended for Drawing Stick Figure Firing Gun

This, I might add, is what happens when you leave Democrats in charge instead of the grown-ups.

What comes around

Today after I picked HannahC up from gymnastics and The Mrs. brought MaxieC back from grocery shopping, I happened to mention while we were standing in the garage that I had not completed the yard work during their brief, two hour absence. MaxieC then said he would help me. HannahC asserted, no, she would help me. Then they proceeded to yell at each other a bit.

HannahC hollered, "Don't you understand that I'm the older one, so I'm the one that is big enough to help with the yard work?" MaxieC got angry and ran out of the garage into the front yard. She proceeded to run after him, taunting him about being too small to help.

Then, I heard a splash followed by a whole lot of screaming from HannahC. MaxieC darted across the front of the garage away from the noise. I went out to investigate.

I found HannahC screaming her head off and dripping wet from head to toe.

MaxieC had pushed her into the koi pond.

Let the Suffering Begin

23 hours before the arrival of her mother, and The Mrs. has cranked it into high gear. She's bossing everybody around and huffing and puffing that the house isn't clean. I 'splained to her that her mother already knows she doesn't keep a tidy house, but I just got yelled at for that.

So my role is apparently that of scapegoat. It is my job to watch MaxieC and "keep him busy" while at the same time making more forward progress on cleaning the house in an hour than The Mrs. makes in an entire week, because she can't make forward progress while watching MaxieC.

I better go. I hear growling.

A New Milestone

Fat Camp reached a new milestone yesterday: a new waitress at Lucky Joe's now recognizes us well enough to know what we drink and to not require a credit card to run a tab. This is an important milestone, as the previous waitress that knew us got moved up to bartender recently. While it's always good to have a bartender that knows you, if you don't sit at the bar, it's better if the waitress knows you.

As a result of a funny series of events touched off by this post, we now have a new catch-phrase: "Boom...Muffler!" That post was intended to just be a stupid throwaway filler post with no deeper meaning, but thanks to Bozzetto's dogged determination in searching for deeper meaning where none exists, we've managed to actually laugh so hard that it has brought tears to our eyes.

The beer may have helped, too. But I was still laughing today.

I'm not going to explain the catchphrase, as this is a fambly blog. The answer can be found on the web if you need it. It can be found much more easily than my now defunct super-secret blog. I really recommend you not look for it, though.

OK, Let me explain

Monday, I was having dinner with the fambly as I always do, and The Mrs. and I somehow got to talking about my craft. About halfway through, she gets this look of revelation on her face and says, "Oooooohhhh! You put Yukon Jack in a screwdriver. That's why you spelled it, 'Y-u'."

So I think to myself, "Self, The Mrs. is the smartest of all your readers, as evidenced by her intelligence in capturing such a great husband. I bet others also did not understand this as well, as is often the case being that your humor is so advanced."

Then, on Tuesday, I happened to be chatting with Rico and Bozzetto. I told the story of The Mrs. and Her Revelation to Rico, who is not a regular blog reader as he spends most of his evenings curled up in a ball with a wine hangover from the one glass he has at dinner or something. As I'm telling the story, Bozzetto goes, "I don't get it. What's a screwdriver?"

Then, he asked me for like the 100th time if there was some other definition of muffler that would make this post funny.

Now, Bozzetto and I work together for the same The Company. He's been there about the same amount of time I have, and he and I are both at the exact same level of advancement within the hierarchy of pay grades and titles. So, either there is great injustice within The Company, or he is considered to be as remarkably intelligent as I am.

For the record, I'm going with the injustice thing. It's also the only thing that explains The JohnnyB.

But, at any rate, here are the only two readers I ever converse with in person, and neither understood the drink title. So I figured I better apologize before all my readers stopped reading cuz they didn't understand my posts anymore.

There you have it.

A Cherkypology

It's very rare for me to do this, as I am largely infallible, but I am going to issue an official apology today. Here it is:

I apologize profusely for greatly overestimating the intelligence and worldliness of you, my loyal readers. I'm sorry if I made you feel bad or stupid or like a slack-jawed, mouth-breathing bumpkin. It was not my intention. I assumed facts not in evidence, and if that made you uncomfortable, I apologize.

See, in my most recent DrinkPact, I assumed that people would already know what a screwdriver was, and thus I assumed that if I posted a drink recipe that was a screwdriver plus Yukon Jack, people would understand where the name "Screw Yu Driver" came from.

I was wrong to assume that. I am very sorry if I made you feel stupid or moronic or simply idiotic because you did not understand the derivation of "Screw Yu Driver". I often forget what a big bunch of morons, excuse me, a Diverse bunch of readers I have. I will in the future try to dial my cleverness back from 11 down to a more reasonable 4 or 5 so that only about half of you are lost.

You have my heartfelt apologies.

CherkyB, Unlikely Parenting Hero

I was sitting in the hot tub with HannahC tonight while The Mrs. surfed the web and left snarky comments on everyone's blogs. Nobody beats The Mrs. and snarky commenting. Present company excluded, of course.

Anyways, HannahC suddenly jump out of the hot tub and says, "I want to see what that bug is!"

It's a big, giant roly-poly. HannahC then proceeds to wax warmly about all the fun she's going to have with her new pet. After a few minutes of listening to her go on about how she's going to play with it by holding it in her hand and petting it, I say this:

Me, CherkyB: "You know, HannahC, roly-polies don't understand 'playing'. All they understand is 'eat', 'sleep', and 'try not to get eaten'. They don't have brains. It's going to say, 'This isn't eating, this isn't sleeping, I better try not to get eaten.'"

HannahC: "They understand 'pooping,' too."

At this point I pretended to have gotten some spray from the jets in my eye, because I didn't want my daughter to see me cry. Even if they were tears of joy.

Later, inside:

HannahC: "Roly-polies must have brains. Otherwise how could they live?

Me, CherkyB: "Democrats live."

Diversity Corner #1

Welcome, adoring readers, to the very first installment of a new, recurring feature here called Diversity Corner. For those of you who don't remember when I first described it (and, who are we kidding, my readers are by and large not bright enough to remember what they had for breakfast two weeks ago Thursday, much less some casual aside I tossed in to some otherwise-riveting post), I'll lay the foundation for this segment again.

My new building at The Company has bowed to the pressures of the Diversity crowd and has established a "multi-cultural" room at work. As can be expected wherever there is a multi-cultural room, the room is decorated with such things as Islamic prayer rugs, copies of the Koran, and literature about Islam being a religion of peace. To go along with this standard fare, there is also a little bookcase labeled "Diversity Library" that has a shelf labeled "Diversity Reading". One glance at the titles contained in said library lets you know immediately that you are in Colorado, not California. In Colorado, people still think that "diversity" includes diversity of opinions, whereas in California they have given in to the widely-accepted definition that it refers entirely to the race and/or culture of the speaker, and that to achieve "diversity" you must have the one and only one wacko-Marxist "correct" opinion presented continuously by different peoples.

So, amongst the standard leftist group-think drivel in our Diversity Library, one is able to find a few eyebrow-raisers. I am thus going to kick off Diversity Corner with a discussion of one such book. It's a book I have been wanting to read for a long time, but is always checked out of the public library. Imagine, if you will, my excitement at finding Dr. Laura Schlessinger's "The Proper Care and Feeding of Husbands" just sitting there on the Diversity shelf!

Now, those of you who know me know that I am a calculating sort. I did not immediately grab the book and run home with it. No, I first had to spend a good deal of time trying to figure out if The Mrs. would consider it a personal affront for me to be in possession of such a book. But, I eventually decided to risk it, in particular because I needed some blog material, and either way we have a winner. I did decide, though, that I would read the book myself despite it being targeted at wives (and therefore womens, despite it being in the Diversity Library) on the pretense that I was trying to make sure that my actions were not unreasonable as a husband. Much like if you could actually get your car to read the owners manual so it would say to itself, "Self, my driver has followed the prescribed maintenance schedule faithfully, my fluids are all within spec, and it's only 25 degrees out. Hmmm... This means I better f'ing start this morning."

Also, because I've given that recommendation to a couple dudes I know, and I wondering if such rot actually works in real life. I always suspected that the womens would see right through it, but that it would establish the level of plausible deniability that is necessary in order to escape punishment. For my part, The Mrs. saw right through it, but not only did she only act with snide derision a couple of times while I was reading it (lamentably predictable stuff like, "Oh, are you planning to get a husband, cuz we could sure use someone to do some housework around here?"), but she also then read it herself. That worked out exactly as I had assured folks in the past that it would.

I am, oddly enough, a relationship guru.

Now, for those of you who have not heard of this book (i.e., the womens in my readership who are deep in denial), this book purports to be a user's manual about husbands. Once you get to reading it you realize, hey, yeah, this is actually a user's manual about husbands. It's amazing how the good Dr. could take a series of anecdotes from her radio show and weave them into a fabric that is dead-nuts on in so many ways. In fact, if there's one great comfort in reading this book as a husband, it's that your wife isn't the big mean ogre you thought she was. She's just a normal wife who never read the manual and is getting by on the advice of her bitter mother, bitter friends, and the odd collections of freaks and weirdos she comes across in the normal course of business. And Russian mail-order brides almost always secretly swipe your money so that they can import their boyfriends from Russia and then divorce you the second they get permanent residency.

OK, that last part wasn't in the book. But it's something topical to keep in mind.

The book is comprised of a total of eight chapters, so it's a pretty quick read. The first couple chapters do an excellent job setting up the theme, and the book finishes quite well. The middle chapters are a bit repetitive, in my opinion, but it could also be that they just didn't speak to me as personally as the others.

I found in this book a remarkably adept description of the transformation from loving wife to completely-child-consumed mother that I have witnessed happen to so many of my dear, dear friends. Sadly, the recommended fix - to put your husband back at the top of the priority list instead of at the bottom - seems to be one that is almost laughably unworkable given that the situation involves a woman.

My favorite chapter is Chapter Six: "What's Sex?"

This [...I wanted him to love me and accept me just the way I was] is not an unusual sentiment for me to hear from women, who express hostility that their husbands would like them to clean up, dress up, and tone up. They act like their husbands are selfish, sex-crazed, superficial, insensitive barbarians, which isn't the case. The, "If they loved me, they wouldn't make a fuss about such things" point of view is simply irresponsible and destructive.

There's a lot more good, naughty stuff in there, but this is a fambly blog.

The Mrs., while she was reading the book (the whole book, not just chapter 6, you perverts), gave me 4 of the happiest days we've had since we had children, so I can say that the advice contained therein is actually useful. Unfortunately, as soon as the book was completed and the cover shut, it evaporated as though it had never happened. Thus, I question the long-term applicability of the advice.

Overall, I give it 4 out of 5 Diversity Stars.

DrinkPact #2

It has been a while since I have shared my creative energies in the mixology field with you my multitudinous fans. In fact, it has been nearly a year since I posted the one and only entry on the topic.

I started out thinking it would be a good time for a Halloween drink. So, what would make a good Halloween drink? Clearly, there is a whole world of cider drinks already on the books. And the only way to make a drink "scary" is to set it on fire.

As a general rule, I try to avoid drinks that are on fire. Not because I'm afraid of the fire or afraid of anything catching on fire. No, it's because having a fabulous background in engineering and the sciences, I know that the only thing that burns in a drink is the alcohol, and the alcohol is the only reason you made the damn drink in the first place. It's like buying a beer, then pouring the top third of it out on the counter.

So then I got to thinking that maybe I should just do an orange drink. Orange is a nice Halloween color, plus it doubles as an autumn color in case you can't think of a Thanksgiving drink, or in case the Thanksgiving drink starts like this, "Take 3oz of turkey gravy..."

I didn't go quite as adventurous with this one as with Minty Fresh, instead making just a minor modification to an existing favorite by mating it with old friend.

Here is your special CherkyB Halloween concoction:

Screw Yu Driver

6 oz. Orange Juice
1 oz. Vodka
1 oz. Yukon Jack

Mix. Stir. Enjoy.

Make it Quiet

This is the muffler on The Mrs.'s minivan. It makes the van quieter. In theory. To tell you the truth, I've never actually tried the van without the muffler to see if it was any louder.

One of these things

Is not like the other.
One of these things
Just doesn't belong.

Can you tell me which thing
Is not like the other?
Tell me before my song is done.
And now my song is done.

The Mrs. has a new hiding spot for her stash. She hides it from MaxieC cuz he's an obsessive cleaner. That makes her feel inadequate, so she hides the cleaning stuff and makes him go play outside. It's like we've been blessed by god with the gift of a child who likes to clean, and we are spitting in god's face.

Oddly enough, Sesame Street stopping singing the "doesn't belong" song because they felt it made diversity uncomfortable. I never let my children watch Sesame Street because it was taken over by one world gub'ment socialist pansies. And I never felt particularly uncomfortable despite being a diversity.

Today was a wonderful chest-thumping day. It was a day when I finally, finally got to shoot that new gun I bought back in April. Six months in the safe, sad and lonely, sad and lonely.

See, the Iceman and Tinfoil were going to go sporting clays shooting today, on account of it's almost bird season or Halloween or something, and I weaseled my way in for the trip (never having shot sporting clays). I figured it'd be a good excuse to get to buy a scattergun. But then Tinfoil got sick yesterday. After a whole lot of hemming and hawing by Iceman, we decided to head out to his members-only range in the middle of nowhere to do a little handgunning and high-powered rifle shooting. He also invited Seiborg, who wanted to shoot his slightly newer but at least he used it once .22.

However, the logistics of this are complicated. I work at one of those places where they fire you if you park in the parking lot with a gun in your vehicle. Even an unloaded, field stripped, locked up gun. None of us wants to get fired too terribly, so the choices are to leave the guns at home until you're ready to go, or park on city streets. Unlike any of the previous locations I have worked for The Company, there is actually a city street that allows parking within walking distance to the plant. However, someone at work swears that neighborhood (which is all apartments) is loaded with drug dealers.

Now, I've lived in neighborhoods loaded with drug dealers, and they look nothing like this area. But it stuck in my mind, so I decided to leave the guns at home lest they get ripped off while parked in a drug-dealer infested apartment complex. Everyone else made the same decision.

Then, when the time came to go, neither Ice nor Seiborg were ready. In fact, they delayed roughly two hours. That's the kind of thing that happens when you're single or married with no children. But i was on a strict deadline. Thus, despite packing up the .40 and the .300 Win Mag, I only had 45 minutes of shooting time, so I could only shoot the new .40. The dear moose gun sits another year unused. Year 7. I have not shot it since HannahC was 4 months old, which is the last time The Mrs. allowed me to go hunting.

I got home 6 minutes late, which I didn't think was bad given I was 30 miles away at some place I had never driven back from. It took a little longer to return than it took to get there. I don't know why. The Mrs. appeared to be fuming at my lateness, but then I decided she was just cranky cuz it was late in the day, she was hungry, and she spends all day every day with The Childrens who will literally drive you insane within about 16 hours. Then you just kind of hang on for the ride the next 18 years. I don't think it had anything to do with me.

Tonight, after HannahC did her homework and MaxieC was in bed, I taught HannahC how to field strip and clean the .40. The Mrs. walked in in the middle of the lesson (which took place at the kitchen counter), and told me she now understood why I seemed so unusually animated this evening.

She's not used to me being happy.

Don't worry, though. I'm sure it won't happen again for a long, long time.

Gone Fishin'

Some people, including certain brothers-in-law, get to go on multi-day, backwoods fishing trips with their buddies. I, on the other hand, am married with children. Thus, when I go fishing, it means something that can be driven to within about a half hour, isn't too terribly dangerous for childrens, and where the predominant fish species is quit happy eating worms.

After yesterday's fiasco fishing, HannahC really wanted to go back again today to give it another shot. At least,that's what she told me when she woke me up from a very happy sleep this morning.

MaxieC was right there, too, so he got it into his head that he'd go fishing as well. This in turn caused The Mrs. to huff and puff in her very best put-upon fashion and come along as well. After a nutritious meal of Easy Mac, we were off. We didn't even have to stop for worms, as we had plenty left over from yesterday.

When we got there, we had the whole pond to ourselves. Just us and the water. No other fisherpeoples.

No fish, for that matter, either.

Yeah, we got a primo spot on the back where we could spread out a little and cast into the center of the pond without snagging trees or each other, but there were simply no fish. I'm actually starting to sense a pattern around here. Whenever I've gone fishing around 9, there are no fish. The fish seem to wake up around 10:30.

Today was cold and windy in the morning, so maybe that had something to do with it. Though I can't for the lift of me figure out why a fish would care if there was a little wind.

MaxieC fished with a real hook for the first time in his life. He can cast like a pro. He out-cast HannahC quite handily, though don't tell her that. He cast about three times, didn't catch any fish, and decided that was plenty of fishing for the day. He and The Mrs. then spent the rest of the time leaf hunting and chasing ducks.

HannahC and I headed down-pond to the end at which everything piled up because it was down wind. There, we saw maybe 15-20 fish in the water. So we started fishing them. Naturally, there was about 8 feet of space for us to stand, it was under a tree, and down a slightly steep bank. The fish couldn't hang out where there was some room. Nooo, they all have to crowd in the weeds at the tip of the pond.

Now, I gotta tell you, these bluegills in this pond are the craftiest little bunch of worm-stealing bastards I've ever come across. They sit there and study the worm very carefully, them grab it on the side and go, never touching the hook. The picked worms completely off the hook despite these being "bait grabber" hooks that have barbs all the way up the shaft, and despite the worms being threaded onto the hook from head to toe, not just stuck through the side.

We couldn't set the tackle and bait boxes down by the pond cuz of the slope, so they were up behind us about ten feet. At one point, I was fishing, and I heard this commotion behind me, and then something bumped into my legs from behind. It was HannahC, who had lost her balance coming back from getting a worm and had log-rolled down the hill and come to a rest at the back of my legs. If I hadn't been standing right there, I think there would have been substantially more moisture involved in that roll.

HannahC, bless her heart, didn't cry or scream or anything, she just expressed deep concern for her fishing tackle and immediately checked it out. It was fine. I suppose we should be quite happy that she managed to fall over, roll down a small hill while holding a fishing rod with baited hook, and come to a rest on my legs without anyone getting injured. But I thought it was funny as hell. So I said, "Hurry up and get that hook in the water. You can't catch fish if you're lying on the ground with your hook in the dirt."

I managed to catch three fish. One of each, to quote Fat Moother.

The first was a little bluegill. After quite an argument with HannahC over whether it was too small or not, we kept it to eat. It later turned out to be too small, as it shriveled into nothingness upon cooking.

The second fish was identified as a carp. I'm not positive it was a carp, but given the Mr. Stinkyfish episode, we decided to err on the side of caution and let it go. It was too small to eat at any rate (though bigger than the bluegill). HannahC complained a whole mess about letting it go, as she claimed to have loved the taste of Mr. Stinkyfish. I also regretted letting it go, as carp destroy the habitat of normal game fish.

Shortly thereafter, I landed what was again identified as a carp. This time, I slit its throat, as I was not going to let our new fishing hole get overrun by stinky slimy carp. I ditched it under a bush. But then I got to thinking. Hmmm... The thing about Mr. Stinkyfish was that he had the wrong number of fins for a bass. But this fish had what I though was the right number.

So I retrieved him, and laid him out on the fillet board. I got out my Colorado fish identification guide, and damn did he look exactly like a smallmouth. The only problem was that the fish ID guide has the smallmouth as having red eyes, and this one had black eyes. But the shape was right, the fins were right, the jaw was right. All of that was wrong on Mr. Stinkyfish.

So we kept him.

HannahC likes to gut the fish. I slit them open, she rips out the guts with her fingers. She got guts in her hair today. We found them later.

Anyways, upon returning home, I smoked the bluegill and smallmouth with Sugar Maple wood. I compared the smallmouth with the picture of the one that The Mrs.'s brother caught, and they looked the same, except my fish was smaller. Both had black eyes.

The Mrs. and The Childrens ate my fish. I was given one tiny morsel about half the size of a pencil eraser by HannahC. I hear it was quite good. Much better than Mr. Stinkyfish. I can't say for sure, though. I can say it didn't stink up the whole neighborhood when being cooked like Mr. Stinkyfish did.

I also spent about 6 hours blowing out my sprinkler system today. The Dave Guy lent me his air compressor in exchange for me loaning him my lawn tractor (his is dead). It was only 4hp and not a lot of flow rate, so it was like 30 second of blowing the line, then 4 minutes to regenerate, repeat 3-4 times. 34 zones like that. Ugh. The Childrens discovered a spot where "bubbles are coming out of the ground" that turned out to be a leak in a join on the supply line for one of the boxes. I dug it out a bit, enough to see the problem, but not enough to fix it. It's 2" PVC, and they have two lines coming together at about a 10 degree angle, but used a straight coupling. The coupling leaks like crazy at one end (the one angled off by 10 degrees) and is glued on perfectly to the other. I'm not sure exactly how to fix that, as I don't think I can buy 10 degree angle couplings. I may have to go with one of those flex couplings, but I'm not sure those are supposed to be used on lines that are always under pressure.

We shall see.

Nonsense

HannahC and I tried to go fishing today at a new place. It was a fiasco. The place we tried to go was surrounded by a barbed wire fence, so we fished in the lake next to it. That lake doesn't have any fish, it seems. I knew that, as the recent reports on Fish Explorer reported a lack of fish. HannahC immediately got bored and decided to try to play with the ducks that were living there.

After a while, we packed up and left. I called Tinfoil, who had told me about the barbed-wire place to try to figure out if there was some way in that we were missing, but he didn't answer. Then he called me back about 15 minutes later and told me where the hidden entrance was. It was like 50 yards from where we were fishing, but there happened to be a truck parked there blocking any view of it from the road.

So we did a U-turn and headed back. The place was absolutely lousy with little kids who had showed up all in the previous 15 minutes (we say them driving in as we were leaving), so we ended up way off at one end of the pond. The pond was loaded with bluegill. Bluegill who were remarkably adept at eating the worms off hooks without getting caught. We fed them about a dozen crawlers plus a preserved cricket without catching any.

HannahC, though, had to be at gymnastics practice at noon, so we only got in about 20 minutes of fishing before having to pack up again to leave. I managed to get behind an RV going 10 mph below the limit, then I got boatloads of red lights, then got caught behind an old man in a Cadillac, so we were a couple minutes late to gymnastics, but whatever.

HannahC wants to go back tomorrow. The Mrs. tells me that it might snow tomorrow. I think that's hokum.

The Childrens and I washed the truck today. I had taken it through a carwash last weekend twice (the second time for free cuz the first time it came out just as dirty as it went in) before giving u on trying to get it clean in the carwash and washing it by hand. Touch-free carwashes are the absolute stupidest idea ever come up with. Well, other than Code Pink.

I also waxed it. It is shiny, but I noticed a number of little spots that seemed to be the start of rust. It's only 4 years old, and 3 of those years were in Sunny California, so I shouldn't be seeing any rust. Yet, I have a hard time explaining little wart-like bumps in the paint on the roof any other way. I shall keep my eye on it.

The piece of wood that is embedded in my leg is hurting less today. I wonder if I will have to have it cut out at some point. It doesn't seem to be dissolving on its own. It has been about two months so far. I'll give it until the spring.

Oh Heavens

We had to drop the winivan off at the dealership today so that the DVD player could be replaced. It stopped ejecting discs when it's warm. One could assume this is because it's a cheap piece of Japanese crap, except for the cheap part. But it may have been damaged that time HannahC jammed multiple DVDs into the single slot a while back. It's being replaced for free under warranty, so whatever.

On the way back, The Mrs. announced that we should stop to get some take-out. The standard problem immediately broke out: The Mrs. wanted Good Times/Taco John's, but I had eaten there for lunch, so I suggested the Arby's right next door, and HannahC was very excited about that, but The Mrs. has suddenly decided she hates Arby's, so she suggested KFC, and MaxieC started yelling, "Yeah! KFC! KFC!" much like Bozzetto does whenever we go there without telling his wife, but HannahC was yelling, "No! Arby's!" and The Mrs. was saying, "Well, I'll just eat leftover chili at home, so you decide wherever we'll eat," in order to make me the bad guy for picking one child's place over the other's.

We happened to be driving by the mall, so I suggested the food court there. HannahC had a burrito, MaxieC had pizza, and The Mrs. and I had Greek. Then The Childrens got Dairy Queen for dessert.

While we were eating, The Mrs. broke the news to me. Fat Moother aka Manly Lesbian aka Granny aka my mother-in-law is coming to visit us in just over two weeks. A surprise visit due to some unexpected airfare sale. HannahC was very upset by the protocol of a surprise visit, but we later figured out it was because she has recently moved into the basement guest bedroom so that she can sleep in a king sized bed, and she doesn't want to give it up for houseguests without sufficient advanced warning. And she doesn't consider 16 days sufficient.

Man, that child is so much like her mother that I am already pitying the poor man who marries her. I imagine many a day spent, he and I, sitting on one of our decks with some beers, staring blankly off into space and saying, "Yup," to one another every now and then.

I've decided to name him Steve.

I've given up referring to my daughter as "Kelly", my son as "Bud", my wife as "Peggy", and my dog as "Buck", though. No one seemed to get it.

But, anyways, for those of you who forgot, the last time The Mrs.'s mother visited us it made for great blogging. As a refresher, start here then read this and this and this.

We might go fishing tomorrow. Hard to say. The weather is supposed to be lousy, but better than Sunday.

I think I'll have the first installment of Diversity Corner ready tomorrow. The Mrs. is reading the first book, so I have to wait for her to finish in order to write my review so I can pull out choice burbs.

CherkyB's Guide to Carpet Cleaners

Unlike many other things, I am not an expert on carpet cleaners. Though my fan base seems to think I am an expert on all things. Which is understandable given the general state of my slack-jawed, mouth-breathing audience. I wish I had half the talent of FrankJ so I could attract a higher-quality readership. But I don't. So you'll have to settle for better grammar.

Anyways, though not an expert on carpet cleaners, I have owned one for nearly FreddyC's entire nine year life. Or, more accurately, I have owned three during that time frame. Which brings me to the first point in my Guide to Carpet Cleaners:

1. All carpet cleaners that you can buy without going to some commercial cleaning gear company are cheap, poorly-designed, Chinese crap. [Ooo - a correction. The Hoover, at least, is cheap, poorly-designed, Mexican crap.]
   

It's really breathtaking what big, steaming piles of crap these things are. Yes, they clean the carpet more easily than you can with a bucket of soap and water. But they feel cheap. They look cheap. And they are cheap. Except for the price. My rule of thumb here may be to divide the price of the carpet cleaner by 3 and then expect the build and design quality to be about equivalent to that price vacuum. Hell, my first carpet cleaner - a top-of-the-line Bissell ProHeat - had one of the gaskets begin to break apart after less than 20 minutes of use. The machine then continued to slowly consume itself, working more and more poorly with every use, until one day (about 2.5 years later) when it simply made a lot of noise but produced neither suction nor jetting water.

So I said, "Screw Bissell. The next one is a Hoover." I said that as I was staring at a big giant pile of dog barf and was holding a Bissell that produced neither suction nor jetting water, and I had houseguests from out of town.

Due to the nature of the emergency, I was unable to acquire the top-of-the-line Hoover SteamVac and had to settle for a somewhat lower model that was in stock (late Sunday is no time to try to chase down a specific model). Which brings me to my second tip in the Guide to Carpet Cleaners:

2. Always buy a high enough model to have separate detergent and water reservoirs, not a model that requires you to mix them.

Despite what you might see in the latest TV commercials for some little tablet you drop into the water that dissolves into "perfectly mixed cleaning solution", it is actually trivially simple to mix the detergent and water yourself. On the Hoover, the lid of the reservoir had a measuring cup built right in. And really, what kind of idiot can't fill a cup up to a line, dump it in, and then fill the container the rest of the way with water? On the TV commercial, they've got some guy in the middle of his garage floor wearing rubber gloves (as though soap is somehow too noxious to get on your hands) and using a funnel (as though filling the container with water is so hard if you put soap in first as to require a funnel, but if you put the soap in second in tablet form, suddenly a funnel isn't needed for the water) and having the thing fall out of the machine and spill on the floor (as though some how it will mount in the machine more easily with tablet-soap than with liquid). No, that's all just marketing fluff. The real problem with mix-yourself machines is when you're spot cleaning - like the dog/child/drunken friend barfed on your carpet, but not enough to require an entire gallon of cleaning.

See, carpet cleaners actually only work with hot water. All you're really doing is washing the carpet with a machine (despite the fact that they all at some point reference "steam cleaning," there is no steam), and just like any other kind of washing, it works waaaay better with hot water. You'll also quickly note that the sucking up of the dirty water is an imperfect process, and if you clean with cold water, you can expect your carpets to take hours to really dry afterwards. So what do you do if you've mixed up a batch of nice, hot cleaning solution, but then only use half of it? You have just a few choices:

• Throw it out. Bad choice. Cleaning solution is expensive.
• Save it in a bottle and use it cold next time. Bad choice as none of the machines is designed so it's easy pour the water back out of the clean reservoir without a big mess. This is when you should be in the middle of the garage floor with a funnel. Plus, when you go to use it next time cold, it won't work well and the carpet will never dry.
• Save it in a bottle, but heat it up in the microwave in a half-gallon Pyrex next time. Pain in the ass choice.

The second cleaner was the last one I ever buy that I have to pre-mix the solutions on. The other added benefit of an automatic mixing machine (at least of the Hoover I now have, but not the Bissell I had first) is that you can have the option of "rinse". The Hoover I have now had an auto-rinse function where it only lays down soap with water when pushing forward, and then just water when pulling back. This is because if you go from front to back of the cleaning head it goes suction, then jets, then brushes. So when pushing forward, the liquid hit the carpet, then the brushes hit it. Going back, the brushes hit the same, stale solution, then you get fresh "rinse" water which is immediately sucked up by the vacuum. So laying down soap on the backstroke is a waste of soap as it spends maybe 1/4 second on the carpet before being vacuumed up. I also have a switch to turn the soap off completely, which is sometimes useful if you've really saturated a barf spot and are just trying to get it rinsed out without adding even more soap to the mess.

Despite the lack of a segue, I bring you my third point in the Guide to Carpet Cleaners:

3. The big powerful brushes on the bottom are largely decorative when it comes to spot cleaning.

Bissell has a roller brush just like an upright vacuum (and, recently, two roller brushes back-to-back on some models), and Hoover has a row of circular spinning brushes. My opinion, having owned both, is that the Hoover brushes are slightly superior, but not by enough to make much difference. Maybe $10 more superior. The bottom line is that these brushes are fine for going over your entire carpet a few times a year to get out some general tracked-in dirt and odors, but for serious spot like spilled food, drinks, barf, and poop, they don't do a damned thing.

They are designed not to exert too much pressure on the carpet, but serious pressure is what you needs to wash out these nasty nasties. So expect to have the accessory hose out with whatever cleaning head it comes with that's supposedly for upholstery and be down on your hands and knees working the living hell out of that spot. Best technique is to spray down the spot very very heavily using the accessory hose, then wait about five minutes for it to saturate, then just suck it all up without any brushing. This way you don't grind the mess into the carpet with the brushes. Do that a few times until it's "surface clean". At this point, start using the upholstery brush to get the stuff that soaked down in. When you're all done, you'll have a soppy mess of a rug. Now is the time to deploy the big upright-vacuum head with all the brushes and suction.

That's really all I've got. Good luck.

The Blogging is Light

You may have noticed. The reasons for this are twofold: first, we've all been sick with a nasty cold for a couple weeks now, and I'm spending a lot more time asleep than usual; second, I have taken up reading again for no good reason. I imagine I'll have to put some book reviews up here soon. Speaking of which, I have a great new idea for a recurring feature here at Me, CherkyB.

You see, I was poking around in our "multi-cultural room" at work on Friday, and I noticed that they have now labeled the bookshelf "The Diversity Library." And each shelf is labeled something different to do with diversity, like "Diversity Reading" and "Diversity Pamphlets" and such rot. Being as I'm now officially a member of the diversity community at work on account of where a couple of my grandparents happened to live at some point in their lives, I figured it was my duty to work my way through the Diversity Library one book at a time.

Now, I figure if I'm going to all that pain to understand why it is that every year The Man doesn't give me that big promotion I've been on the cusp of for the last 4 years, you know aside from the fact that I'm kind of a wise-ass and nobody likes to put a wise-ass in a position of authority, at least I can do my part to spread diversity learning to the Me, CherkyB crowd. So keep your eyes open for "Diversity Corner with your host Señor CherkyB". I finished the first book last night, much to the consternation of The Mrs. See, being a white woman of traditionally oppressive Germanic/Scottish descent (or whatever the hell she is - she actually refuses to tell me when I query), she is extremely threatened by Me embracing my Diversity. Much the way Hillary Clinton or John Edwards or any other WASPy female Democrat with an expensive hair-do secretly loathes Obama.

Speaking of which, I was browsing at a sporting goods store today while HannahC was at her swimming lesson, and I couldn't decide between the "Smith & Wesson" and the "Got Beer?" trailer hitch cover. So I didn't get either. My trailer hitch remains unadorned after 4 years.

I did cast another glance at that little pink .22 carbine. HannahC would love that so much. Tonight at dinner she was quizzing me about when she could go deer hunting, and I told her when she was big enough to shoot either a .30-30 or a .308. Then I told her she was probably old enough to get her own .22, and she said (I'm not making this up, mind you), "Darn it! That's not big enough to kill a deer."

Then she asked me if there were any wild cows. Cuz she really likes steak. Then she asked about wild pigs, which really do exits though not around here. She also wanted me to teach her to roll her r's like a good diversity child (I happened to be discussing Diversity Corner with The Mrs. at dinner), but I didn't know how to teach it. I am a pathetic diversity father, but when the jihadis come for her, she'll shoot their eyes out.

I have a line on a place nearby where you can catch really big bluegills. Tinfoil told me about it, but has yet to disclose the exact location. He promised to send me a map. I'll have to pester him.

I got the cap on the pickup on Saturday. It didn't take long. Today, I was driving HannahC to swimming lessons, and I kept thinking how the truck was handling differently and even sounding different, and I was hoping nothing was breaking. Then I happened to glance in the rear-view mirror and saw the cap. Duh!

A friend of mine is getting married, but he hasn't actually admitted that yet. I hope I get an invite and there's an open bar. Actually, only the second one is necessary.

CherkyB, The Sufferer

I had one of my little overnight junkets out to Santa Clarabelle Wednesday night/Thursday to attend a review of something being put on by my old group. The one that ran me out of town on a rail, but now that I'm no longer in their employ, suddenly decides to value my opinion a lot more.

Tinfoil was also along on the trip, so I took him on the nickel tour of San Schmose, what with me being formerly a local and all. Meaning we hit my favorite sushi place for dinner and the the bowling alley karaoke bar for some after-dinner refreshments. Dood and WoodyWoody swung by to hang with us, too.

So, I got back home at like 1:30AM Thursday night, and then got up to go to work this morning at the usual time given as I was double-booked in my 9am timeslot. The Childrens hadn't seen me since Wednesday morning, so they pretended to be happy to see me in the morning.

When I started to leave for work, HannahC told me I couldn't go.

Me, CherkyB: "I have to go."

HannahC: "Why do you have to go?"

Me, CherkyB: "So I can make money so that we can live in this house and have food to eat and buy stuff."

HannahC: "Humph!"

Me, CherkyB: "See, that's what men do. They work themselves until they die so that women and children can sit home all day in comfort and complain about them."

CherkyB, Father of the Year

Last night, I managed to get HannahC all ready for bed, and tucked away into the bed in the guest room (she likes to sleep there cuz FreddyC will often jump up on the bed and sleep there, too, whereas he can't make it up into her loft bed in her bedroom). I turned off the light, walked out of the room, and she yelled, "It's dark!"

I walked back in and said, "Duh. It's night time, and the lights are turned off. It's dark every night. Now go to sleep."

She said, "Oh. OK."

Then I walked out of the room again, and she yelled, "Tell me a story!"

I walked back in, sat on the bed, and said, "I don't know any short stories."

"Tell me about the boy who cried wolf."

"Ugh. That story takes forever. How about I go look on these bookshelves outside the room and read you something short I find there?"

"OK."

Turn on the light, start rooting through the bookshelves. These are mostly reference books and biographies and such. All very long. But down on the bottom shelf, I find a pile of some periodical literature. I grab the top thing on the stack, nod approvingly, and lie down on the bed to read her a story.

"This story is called, 'The Santa Claus Caper', by David Sipos. I guess it's a Christmas story."

I had to change a few of the words, and define a lot of stuff for her, but she really enjoyed the story and went right to sleep afterwards. You can find the story online here. It's really quite touching.

You'll be happy to know

I've now almost completely lost my voice. It was very quiet today, as I was unable to yell at The Childrens nor at anyone at work. I tried to express myself in a Clint Eastwood hoarse snarl, but that works a hell of a lot better when backed up by a big-ass .44 magnum.

And I don't have anything bigger than .40 S&W.

Plus the people I have to yell at are mostly in Smashachusetts, so it's really hard to go all Dirty Harry over the phone. They just keep saying, "What? Can you speak up? It's hard to understand you."

My internet connection seems to be a bit weak tonight. That happens on and off.

I'm averaging about six hits a day to my snowblower review now. Fall is really upon us. I googled it, and I noticed that the blurb it was displaying (which was most of the first sentence of the post) didn't say a damned thing. So I added a new sentence up front to better summarize the post. Those of you reading on RSS feeds will see that the article will appear as new, but that's the only change. Feel free to mark it as read.

The tadpoles arrived today. So now we have two tadpole pets. All the butterflies emerged last week and were set free, so I guess we're still down one pet.

Though we have a second grasshopper now. I'm not sure if that counts. HannahC has declared that the crickets are not pets, as she raises them as feeder livestock. I think the grasshoppers are special given that she named one of them.

If they have a name, they're a pet.

CherkyB, The Moms

Today I am The Moms. Normally I get to be Himself, but today I have to be The Moms. See, The Mrs. has not been improving much in her battle with the deadly virus, whereas I am almost fully recovered despite having been infected more than a day later.

So today I am sequestered in the basement with The Childrens whilst The Mrs. spends the day in bed. This is a very difficult life, being The Moms, as it is so remarkably boring. I have made two meals and gone shopping once (to Big 5 Sporting Goods after one of our air hockey paddles broke as I was playing HannahC - we got new paddles and also a fish filleting board with a big clamp on it). Those were the highlights of the day.

I'm trying to figure out if there's a way I can sneak into the garage to sharpen my lawnmower blades. I like to do that whenever I'm bored.

I haven't mowed the lawn yet this weekend, and there is only about 4.5 hours of light left. I can take one child on the mower, but someone needs to watch the other. I'm very worried because the rules state that my lawn cannot be over 2" tall, and right now it is precisely 2.5", so I expect a call from the HOA president any minute.

OK, that last part isn't true. We're watching Over the Hedge, and it happened in that. But it is supposed to rain nearly every day for the rest of the week, so if I don't mow today, I won't be able to this week.

Shoot - I also need to go clean the hot tub filters. Better do that now.

Later.

Everybody is sick

In this case, I mean it in the literal sense. I'll reuse the headline when Hillary becomes the next president.

It started with MaxieC about last Sunday. Then The Mrs. got sick Monday. I got hit on Tuesday, and HannahC hung on until Thursday night. Luckily, the first day isn't so bad, so she was still able to compete in her first gymnastics "lollipop" meet Friday evening.

She came in first in the vault and second on the floor. I think she was roughly second on the beam, but only mid-pack on the uneven bars. They don't keep score at lollipop meets, so I don't know who won overall.

We all have bad colds. Remarkably tenacious, bad colds. Just-when-you-think-you're-better, you're-worse colds.

I think I'm a lot better today than yesterday. Mostly, I spent the day flat on my back on the sofa in the basement. The Childrens and The Mrs. were with me on and off, watching TV and fighting.

I managed to mortar in the 17 feet of stones from the edging project. Both MaxieC and HannahC helped, but thankfully not at the same time. I'll bash my mower deck into them tomorrow to see how they hold up.

The Mrs. seems to be getting worse. She normally prides herself on me being the sickly one, so this is unusual. She refuses to take the mega-doses of Vitamin C that I am taking. It turns out mega-doses of Vitamin C make certain things burn at certain times, which is not at all pleasant.

We're heading to bed early.

Something Not to Do 12

Let's say, purely hypothetically, that you are standing in the kitchen in the morning and happen to glance over at a stack of checks, and on top, there is a check from your parents as a gift for your anniversary. 

Then you think to yourself, "Self, that was nice of them to send us a gift. We didn't send them anything this year. I'm The Bad Son." But, you know, you've been The Bad Son on and off all your life and, luckily, with two brothers there is always some competition for that spot such that no one has to spend too terribly long with the title. 

But then you get to thinking. "Hmmmm... Yesterday was the 20th, which you remember because you had to update a web page and put the date on it right before you left from work. That means today is the 21st. Ohhhh shiiiiittt." 

And then maybe you get a panicked look on your face for a second until you contemplate how you already talked to your loving wife this morning, and she didn't say happy anniversary. So you charge upstairs to where she is in the shower and yell, "Happy Anniversary!" To which she replies, "Yeah, I was just thinking that." 

Later, she tells you she was waiting for you to say it first since it's so important to you to be the one who remembers first. You know that's a filthy lie. She is trying to catch you forgetting and doesn't want to admit it. But you let it slide. When you get home that evening, maybe something like this transpires:

The Mrs.: "We got a 'happy anniversary' call from your parents while we were out."

Me, CherkyB: "Oh. That's nice."

The Mrs.: "They sang a happy anniversary song. It's the one that goes, 'When the moon hits your eye like a big pizza pie, that's amore.' Yeah, 'That's Amore', that's what the song is called."

Now, your finely tuned marriage instincts may tell you otherwise, but take it from me. The proper response to this is not:

Me, CherkyB: "That's Amore? That's a really strange song to think to sing to us."

That, dear readers, would be something not to do. ™ [ previous ] [ next ]

Time to spruce up the resume

Every now and then, something strikes you in a way that just opens your eyes. It's usually not something big and obvious, but it's something small and subtle. Something one person might not even be given pause by, but to you it is revelation.

Today, I had one of those experiences when I got to work and re-animated my laptop compooter. Something startling caught my eye. Something that made me say to myself, "Self, this is very possibly a sign from god that it is time to move on."

See, I was able to live through the dancing weirdos everyone thought were funky 70's spacemen. I was able to keep going even after the dancing weirdos were replaced by an even more bizarre mascot - an apparent group of ancient British war reenactors who, after having their will to survive gradually sapped out of them by a never-ending, creeping bureaucracy of one-world-government types, decided, "Oh hell - let's stop being war reenactors and form a mime troupe. I bet we'd get more tail."

I was even OK when some fancy-pants marketing firm was paid millions of dollars to develop and copyright something called, I kid you not, the bong. Actually, I kinda liked that it was called "the bong", though it grates on my nerves to hear it now.

But this morning was the last straw. I opened up my laptop, and there it was as plain as day. An obvious sign of marketing apocalypse. Yes, folks, for a time there this morning, all advertising space on Me, CherkyB had been purchased by The Company. A double-wide ad across the top, and a fancy graphic ad on the right.

It's the end of the world as we know it.

Some Pictures

Manly Lesbian has been hinting about wanting to see some more pictures, as my writing tends to be a bit wordy and my audience is easily befuddled by lengthy prose. I always forget that blogs are read mainly by people for whom television is too complicated...

Here are a couple deck pictures. The is the western view. You can see the fancy platform-rocker loveseat with matching table in The Grotto under the pergola. For what that stuff cost, you could buy three copies of The JohnnyB's car. I left the stair lights on in the photo, but they're hard to see on account of this big ball of fire that's in the sky this morning, though it thinks I don't know it's there because it's hiding behind clouds.

That lamp hanging on the wall near the hot tub is the one I fixed in this post.


The Childrens decided that The Grotto was just the bestest damn place in the world to make mud sculptures.


Here's the eastern view:


A shot of the side to show how the builders put redwood cladding all across it to keep the doggies out and to make it look much more attractive. There's an access hatch in there towards the left so I can get to all the electrical junction boxes.


This here is a picture of the concrete rock underlayment project I discussed here. (You guys do follow the weather blog, too, right?)

Pets and more pets

I'm losing track.

Let's see. There's the doggie, FreddyC. And the rat, JackieO. After, that it starts to get fuzzy.

We have three black swallowtail chrysalises named Katie, Alex, and Alex.

And we have a new tent caterpillar named Joseph.

And a new grasshopper named Wilbur, though he was at first named William.

And there are the roughly 50 crickets that don't have names.

We are anxiously awaiting the arrival of the frog eggs that go in the frog habitat that HannahC got from GrammaC on GrammaC's birthday. Those of you with grandchildren will understand that.

As the baby crickets grew, we realized that the little 2.5 gal fish tank in which the crickets were kept was getting overcrowded. So I spent some time on Craigslist this weekend locating a cheap, used, 10 gallon setup. Fish tanks are plentiful on the used market, as people pretty quickly realize that fish really, really, really suck as pets, but not until after they've bought a whole setup.

I think grasshopper suck more as pets than do fish, though, as their propensity to jump about 6 feet the instant you open up the lid to feed them makes routine maintenance very challenging.

Wilbur got merged in with the crickets in the 10 gallon tank so he wouldn't be lonely. He spends most of his time upside down on the lid, waiting for his chance.

There's going to be another OJ Simpson trial. Doesn't that kick ass?

The Greatest Show on Earth

We went to the circus tonight. It was fun. Fort TomCollins has a much smaller auditorium than does San Schmose, as Fort TomCollins has only a Central Hockey League team compared to the NHL team of San Schmose.

It also may be because San Schmose has a higher population in any one of it suburbs than we have in the entire county. But I think it's the hockey team.

Anyways, the place was only big enough for a one ring circus, not the three ring we got in San Schmose. But we were able to buy seventh row center seats this morning for today's evening show. HannahC loved it. MaxieC, unfortunately, was not quite himself today. He had barfed earlier in the day, and he was feeling OK at the beginning of the show but faded fast during it.

There was no barfing or shabooing at the show, though. So in the respect, it was a success.

I had nachos and a locally-brewed Bud. The Childrens had cotton candy.

I got to deal with our newly outsourced-to-Costa Rica technical support today. It was an order of magnitude better than outsourced-to-India technical support I've had in the past. And the guy actually fixed the problem, too. We've got a lot of stuff going on in Costa Rica in The Company now, and I've been overall pretty impressed with them. Where in the hell does Costa Rica get decent engineers, though? It's not a place I ever would have expected to be a technical haven.

Of course, neither is Fort TomCollins.

Today, I was in a meeting where we were getting some stuff presented to us by one of the groups that designs a component of our product, and the news was not what we wanted to hear, and this ended up triggering a 20-minute argument between two guys in the room, all while the speakerphone was on mute and the meetings (which was run out of Smassachusetts) proceeded along not knowing that this was going on in Fort TomCollins. I kept wondering if I should step in and moderate, but both these guys have been under a huge amount of pressure lately, and it looked mostly like they were just venting. Eventually, though, I had to stop them cuz I needed to ask a question of the guy who was now presenting (who I think was actually in Arizona). It wasn't so much a question as it was a statement of my opinion that what he was presenting was sheer craziness. But I phrased it as a question to try to make it less confrontational.

I know, that probably surprises you. But in general, it's a good rule not to piss off people who control how much attention the factory actually pays to making your part.

I'm thinking of putting the cap back on the pickup this weekend. I like to get it on there before the rainy/snowy season. I hope it snows a lot this year, just like last year. It didn't fall down from the garage ceiling despite me suspending the winch from screw-in eye bolts that came with little tags on them that said, "not for overhead lifting." I had done a much more complicated attachment at the previous house, but everyone assured me this would be fine. And it has been. It was a lot easier as it did not involve opening up holes in the ceiling to attach Simpson strong-tie straps (rated at 1500 lbs) to the sides of the the joist.

I should go to bed.

iDon't Care

Last week, a whole bunches of people from work went out during lunch and bought iPhones. The old ones with not very much memory that are on clearance for something like $299. [Correction - I have learned that the vast majority of them bought the $399 8GB models, not the clearance ones. Suckers.] Now, as far as I can tell, there is basically no use for an iPhone other than to make phone calls or browse the web really, really slowly using EDGE. Now, a few of the people at work seem to think there is something very cool about having an iPhone, and they are constantly trying to get you to ooo and ahhh about their lemming-like purchase. I assume this is because once they got it home, they realized, "Hey, I just paid $299, plus I signed up for a $60/mo cell contract that I am locked into for 2 years, and I can't even use an MP3 as a ringtone! I must either be the coolest dude out there, or just a big dumb fuck."

And they (wrongly) assume the former.

So anyways, I was chatting with The Hamburgler, and somehow he started waving around his iPhone as he always does now in a desperate attempt for validation. He was telling me all the great things you could do with it which included, "MoodyT got this great light-saber sound effect program, so as you wave it around, it makes light saber sounds," "You can watch entire movies on it," and "You can watch YouTube videos on it!"

I said, "See, but I don't actually care about any of those things."

"But they're so cool!"

"But I don't care. None of those things are something I want to do on my cellphone for $300 and and extra $30/mo. It'd be more useful to me if it were a flask."

Then, of course, I got riffing on that.

"It could have a little straw that popped up and it could ring at you whenever it was time for a little nip. You could enter your height and weight, and it could estimate how much you needed and dispense just the right amount. You could build in a breathalyzer so it could track your BAC and refine its metering to match your personal physiology. It could use the GPS location to look up the local driving laws of wherever you are on its precious wireless web, and it could let you know if you were OK to drive or not. It could ask you if you wanted to drive, and adjust your target BAC based on that. Or you could enter in a BAC target, and it could dose you perfectly to get you there quickly and keep you right there.

"Yeah. The iFlask. Now that'd be something interesting."

Or, I guess, you could download an application that used the internal accelerometer to make light-saber sounds.

Duh or No Duh 3

In reference to the comment thread here, an actual conversation from this morning:

Me, CherkyB: "My job blows."

Me, CherkyB: [patting The Mrs. on the cheek] "But I take solace in the fact that when I get home, my wife doesn't."

The Mrs.: "No. You see, you're supposed to think 'blow job'. 'Fuse job', 'fuses blow', then I say, 'combine the two,' and you're supposed to think 'blow job', but I say it backwards, 'job blows', and that's what makes it funny."

Me, CherkyB: [blink]

Me CherkyB: "I'm insulted you thought you had to explain that to me."

No Duh.™

Oh well. Maybe with a spoon full of sugar...

[ previous ] [ next ]

A Confession

Step one of any of your popular multi-step programs is to admit you have a problem. It's been building for a long time now, but I have been putting it completely out of my mind. Yet, this morning, as I nursed my coffee (I un-gave-up coffee on Friday, by the way), driving gingerly so as to not light up the full aural force of the Flowmaster 50 on my way to work, which, don't get me wrong, is a great sounding muffler, just maybe not so much early Monday morning after such a great weekend, I was struck with the undeniable truth.

I don't know why it took me so long to figure it out. I think maybe all those years in Kalifornia working long hours trying to get the career going. Then immediately along came The Childrens. I didn't really have time to ponder. I just tried to get through each day without the grim face of death showing in my rear view mirror.

Just as things started to settle in, the move to Ft. TomCollins popped up suddenly. A remarkable tumult that has been. A new house. New everything - tractor, snow blower, air hockey, deck, Carl, oh and did I mention the wonderful bar with the new bar stools?

Ah, the bar. My whole life I've wanted a house with a bar. I had a little bar of sorts at the San Schmose house, but the previous owner had removed the actual bar part, leaving just the little counter under the stairs with its sad, lonely sink. Nothing like the bar I have now. Yeah, and maybe I went a little crazy - did I mention I now have nine different kinds of whiskey? Nine. What man really needs nine different whiskeys? (Though, honestly, I only drink 8 of them. The Scotch is just for guests.) I only have three kinds of rum. Everything else is one flavor - take it or leave it. And the whole "never blog sober thing" - a rule I am ironically breaking with this post - that hasn't helped the matter any.

But anyways, now after a year in the new job, in the new city, in the new house, I've been giving it some thought. I think about it a lot - on weekends on the way to Target, on the way to my doctor's appointment, nearly every day on the way to work, most days on the way home. It's just a lot more front-and-center now than it ever was back in Kalifornia.

So, anyways, step one. I'm going to come right out and say it publicly in this forum. A forum where I can always feel accepted, despite my faults. A forum of friends and family and people I don't even know but think of as friends anyways. And, a forum where I stand to make a buck or two off selling advertising space on my step one.

Are we allowed to turn step one into a commercial venture? Or does that void the whole thing? Well, anyways, I'll have to google that and get back to you. [Update: You'll all be happy to know that I made nothing off my step one. I made already two bucks off the latest installment of Duh or No Duh, though. It just goes to show that there's no accounting for taste. Not with this crowd, at least.]

So, here it is. This morning, I remember the precise moment when it happened. When I finally admitted to myself something I had been denying for a long time. Something I was afraid would make me a lot less manly - but the time for misplaced machismo is passed. It was precisely when I was making the right turn from Kechter onto Ziegler. I can't keep up the facade anymore.

I really like traffic circles.

I should be in bed

But instead I am up writing a perl script to extract fuse default values so I can compare them against the microarchitectual spec and flag anything that either mismatches or doesn't make sense.

They give the fuse job to the person they hate the most.

Marry Poppins

The Childrens are watching Mary Poppins. They just sang the song that goes,

Just a spoonful of sugar
Makes the medicine go down.
The medicine go down.
The medicine go down.
Just a spoonful of sugar
Makes the medicine go down
In the most
Delightful way.

And I was struck with the thought...

I wonder if that works on your [blank]?

Today, I am Angry

Not "was". "Am".

I wish it were past tense, but it isn't. And being angry is not at all good for my blood pressure. I am trying to settle in with a nice bottle of chianti, which went well with our eggplant Parmesan dinner. Homegrown eggplant. Even that, however, is not helping much.

I had a whole bunch of work stuff written here, but I decided to delete it as it was too easily deciphered. Let me just say this: as of today, I am pissed off enough that [redacted]. Never before has my ire risen to this level. I do not suffer incompetence well, and this has gone on long enough. It's worse than when I had to work with The JohnnyB.

I had to look up "ire" to make sure I was using it correctly there. I was. Being a sooper-genius is a lonely life.

I was almost calmed down by the time dinner was over. Then I looked through the mail and noticed that I had a letter from my mortgage company. My insurance company had kindly sent them a note saying they had cancelled my policy, and the mortgage company was kindly inquiring as to whether I still had insurance or whether they should provide me with some at an exorbitant cost to me. This ticked me off again.

See, the insurance company had for some reason gotten it into their heads that they should bill my mortgage company for the premium rather than billing me. I don't know why this is, as I paid them for the initial year. But, at any rate, they sent a bill off to the mortgage company, who apparently looked at it a bit and decided to toss it in the garbage. Then, my insurance company was kind enough to cancel my policy at the end of the year term for non-payment of the renewal fee, send a note off to the mortgage company that the policy was canceled, then give me a courtesy call to say that the payment was overdue, then send a bill to me. Of course, they called on a Friday, and The Mrs. did not call me up to let me know when she got the message, but instead waited until I got home at 6:30pm after every insurance company in America is closed and said, "Oh, by the way, there's a message for you from the insurance agent."

Naturally, this was the night before HannahC's birthday bash, an event I didn't want to head into with no insurance. So I spent about an hour Saturday morning trying to figure out what the 24-hour help line number was for my insurance company. It's State Farm, which you'd think would be an easy number to find. But noooooooo. State Farm only has 24-hour service from select agents. Call your agent, and his voicemail may connect you. If it doesn't, you're SOL - you're agent isn't participating in the 24-hour service program.

Now, my agent's voicemail said, "Our office is closed, but don't worry. State Farm is available to assist you 24-hours a day, 7-days a week. If you'd like to leave a message for the office staff, please press 1. If you'd like to make a claim, please press 2. If you'd like a quote on auto insurance, please press 3. For everything else, please call our office during normal business hours Monday through Friday from 9 to 5."

Now exactly how in the hell is this 24-hour support?

After surfing the web trying to find a better way, I eventually settled on pressing 2 for claims. The claims people are pretty on-the-ball at an insurance company. It connected me to a phone tree that included "make a payment" and "speak to a representative" in addition to "make a claim". I chose "speak to a representative" cuz I figured I needed to get my policy uncanceled, which I thought was more complicated than "make a payment". I was wrong. The guy pulled up my file and said, "Yup - we billed your mortgage company. Yup - they didn't pay, so we sent a Notice of Cancellation. Oh, it looks like we sent you a bill directly yesterday, too." "Is there any way I can pay now and get it reinstated today?" "Yes, but I have to transfer you to our payment department."

So I paid and got a confirmation number in time for HannahC's party, at which no injuries occurred, but you never know. But, sadly, my bank may not know this. The insurance company sent me a Notice of Reinstatement, but they sent it the same day my bank sent me the query. It possible they have the info already, but I'll fax it in anyways tomorrow, and then call them to confirm.

It's not really a huge deal, but it's enough to set me off again on a Bad Day.

Two of our three pet caterpillars are beginning to spin their chrysalises today. I don't think I mentioned the pet caterpillars before. All three are black swallowtails. All were discovered on the pond parsley we have in the koi pond over the weekend. One (HannahC's) is named Katie and two (MaxieC's) are named Alex. The Alex's replace a tent caterpillar, named Alex, we found the day before along with Katie but had to let go because he wouldn't eat. MaxieC went ballistic over that, and luckily The Mrs. was able to find a couple more black swallowtail caterpillars the next day. They've been chowing down on carrot greens from the garden and getting big and fat since the weekend.

The whole house fan is great on nights like tonight where it isn't insanely hot out. I am starting to fell like it was worth the money, unlike in July when it didn't get colder outside than inside until 11pm.

CherkyB continues to live

Many of you have been asking about the results of my recent physical, and for some of you it's because you actually care, whereas the rest of you have merely a morbid curiosity or are worried who will take care of your daughter if I'm dead, or some such. So, let me quote my inimitable doctor: "There are things that we can do that will delay your heart attack and stroke."

His point, however, was that if you live long enough, you'll die from either a heart attack or stroke. Not that I'm headed for one any time soon.

I always thought if you lived long enough, you'd die from prostate cancer. If you're not a woman, that is.

So, now that I've had my first physical in 22 years, I can reflect on why it is that I haven't had one in so long. Let me count the ways.

1. I really do not enjoy having someone lean on my liver while I take a deep breath.
2. See number 1, only substitute "spleen" for liver.
3. "You drink alcohol?" "Uh-yup." "Like 1-2 drinks a day." "Yeah. Around that on average, maybe." "How about 0-2 drinks a day? Are there ever days when you don't drink?" "Fuck you."
4. "See, now your testicles start out up inside you around here, and right about the time you're born they travel down these tubes, and if the tubes don't seal up afterwards, that's why you get a hernia. The tube is right here." "Owwww!" "Sorry. Now bear down like you're going to move your bowels, only don't." "Uh, owwww."
5. "Now, normally we wait until you're 40 to do this, but you're close enough to 40." "I just turned 39 a couple weeks ago!" "Close enough. Elbows on the table, please."
   

In the end, he didn't find anything wrong with me that I didn't already know about. Thus I would overall deem the physical a success. They're gonna call me with my blood test results this week. I passed the pee test already, and he gave me an EKG that was normal. I have not yet submitted my poop sample cuz the envelope requires extra postage.