Abby was bugging her grandma this morning and I told her to stop bugging her or I’d spank her read end [not intensely, and with a laugh so she knew she just needed to quit bugging grandma].
Abby laughed and said, “I don’t have a rear-end.”
I told her to come here so I could show her where her rear-end was.
“No thanks,” was her reply.
Dang, she’s getting smarter and smarter soon she’ll be showing me how to use the computers 😉
When we were kids we lived in Carson City for part of our kidhood. And right about 30-45 minutes away was Lake Tahoe. I say 30-45 minutes away because it depends on which car my parents owned at the time. They had a white Volvo stationwagon that was so slow that it could possibly have been 90 minutes to Tahoe. They also had at one point in time a Suburban that was really fast, and really lifted, which made it really unsafe to drive to and from Lake Tahoe on US Highway 50. I take that back, it was safe if you went 20 miles an hour.
As kids we would go out in between the large rocks and boulders near parts of the shore and try to catch ‘Crawdads’ or Crayfish. Those critters were fun to catch because we would entice them out with bacon on a string, or bacon on a coat hook, and sometimes bacon on a large sheet of plywood. Pretty much anything with bacon got their attention. We loved to catch them and put them in a cooler so that we could show off our catch to our parents, other onlookers and gross out our sister and her friends. Now I think Becky would just cook them.
Well, I think that the nickname ‘crawfish’ should have caught our attention. Because fish, when they get dead and old, start to stink. And they don’t stink a little, they stink like you were buried up to your eyeballs in dead flesh. I mean that in the nicest way possible Crayfish activists. My brother and I somehow talked our parents (or parent if only one parent happened to take us up to Tahoe, I can’t recall which) into letting us take a few home as ‘pets.’ But crayfish don’t actually eat bacon alone, and they need their water changed and circulating. They also don’t live in a cooler as a native habitat. Coolers don’t provide those very important things that crayfish need to stay alive. And so it began. The stench slowly built up in the garage (mom wisely would not let us keep them in the house). And the crayfish moved slower and slower. And the use of ‘and’ to start off a sentence began to be beaten into our heads at school. And we did it anyway.
The crayfish died. But the smell lingered on, we didn’t want to throw them out because we didn’t want to get close enough to the cooler to get rid of the crayfish and then take on the responsibility of cleaning out the cooler. My parents finally made us do it. It was sad, gross and a valuable lesson: don’t bring home pets you’re perfectly glad to go visit in their native habitat. Which is why I don’t own dogs. I’m more than glad to go visit them in parks when other people are walking them in their native habitat.
While we were waiting to watch X-Men III this last weekend (Pordcast forthcoming) we saw a trailer for “The Devil Wears Prada” [I don’t care if that is spelled wrong]. Except that the sound wasn’t working. So we made up our own dialog and said it loudly. I’m sure other patrons were slightly less impressed, but I wasn’t about to just let this Mystery Science Theater 3000 opportunity pass me by.
Then, when we got home from the movie chocolate chip cookies had been baked. Doh! Now I must sacrifice my own body weight and eat them so that Jessica can maintain her diet! Yummy.
Today is Friday the 26th, which is like Friday the 13th x 2. So instead of being scared and supersticious, I challenge you to go out and walk under ladders, meddle with black cats and break several mirrors. Since today is the 26th and you are feeling adventurous, go ahead and drive 2 x the speed limit. If the police catch you, tell them its Friday the 26th and that things are twice as safe as they would normally be on Friday the 13th.
Other things you might want to try on this day of guaranteed safety:
Or, you could just go about your life in a normal fashion. But I don’t know much about fashion.
* Trinidad is the sex change capital of the world. But if you play this game get someone else to video record it, because that would be hilarious!
Abby wants butterfly trinkets from Target for decorating her room. Jessica suggested I buy some tonight on my trip there. Abby chimed in, “For me?”
Being normal and a loving father I blurted out, “No, because after you go to bed, I like to dress up like a butterfly.”
On the phone with a human being in India recently he related that he ‘owned’ my problem. It was his problem to resolve and he would do it. The problem, of course is that if he didn’t fix the problem then claiming that he owned the problem would just drive me to loathing hearing someone tell me that they were going to fix my problem by owning it. One of the problems with script based help systems, just like a touch-tone system, is that the language becomes boring, it become irritating to customers, and it can cause the customer to perceive a poor support experience. That is why live human being with a direction, but not a script, will be more useful. That of course is problematic because that requires training to actually know the product. It also requires people with personality and character.
I’m sure you’ve experienced this yourselves, but I’m writing it here just in case some CEO/Exec type person stumbles across it and decides he’s going to do something about it 🙂
Jessica and Abby are upstairs making blueberry muffins. Abby is helping put dry ingredients together and was stirring things. A bit too wildly, though. As Jessica was collecting strewn flour she said to Abby, “Cooking is a science. You have to have all of the right ingredients in it for the right reactions to occur.”
Abby replied, “Oh… are you going to call Spider-man?”
Classic!
Yesterday evening I made the major sacrafice of going to the computer store [MicroCenter] 🙂 I needed to look at the price of computers to compare to other sources as my mother-in-law is going to be buying a machine soon. Abby came along so that she could sit in the car with me and talk about buying a recording studio (I keep telling Jessica that since Abby wants one, I should get her one). As we walked through the computer store I saw an employee messing with a flat panel display. Then I walked near the employee, Abby trailing behind, and discovered that he was alone for a reason: flatulence. Abby said to me seconds later, “Daddy, you’re stinky.” Ha ha ha!
I was just thinking about my childhood. For some people that would be a bad thing, but I think mine was pretty cool. I remember distinctly digging in my friend’s mom’s garden with him so that our G.I. Joe’s could have bases & forts. We never actually got around to playing with the G.I. Joe’s because we were too busy digging in the dirt. However, when we did actually play we always had extremely intense weapons. If your team was going to win you needed to have lazer equipped fighter jets that can blow the enemy into vapor.
And if you’re the enemy you need to have plasma-mega-ultra force fields (or force shields) that will block anything coming in. Otherwise, you could be toasted by the ultra-uber-mega lazer smashing ray of doom.
And we can’t have that!
Abby asked me last night who put my beard back on. I had shaved it off a couple weeks ago and she didn’t like it, but apparently she had gotten used to it because now she’s irritated that my hairs poke her in the head when she sits on my lap and I rest my chin on her head 🙂
What am I to do? I’ve got a bride who loves it and a child who wants me to look 14 again 😉