Wednesday, November 23, 2005

Things I think about. . .

Blogger and Flickr.  One of the truly excellent symbiotic relationships of high profile internet services.  A shining example of where two fantastic and successful internet brands come together to give each other greater value to the user, while increasing the user base and value for each individual company.  The companies win.  The consumer wins.  A great grand gold star for consumer driven capitalism and collaboration on the internet.

 

Except now Flickr has been bought by Yahoo, and Blogger has been absorbed by Google.  Google and Yahoo---two fierce competitors in the middle of a pitched battle for internet clicks and eyeballs.  Now joined at the at the hip like a Montague/Capulet Siamese twin.  How long can that last?  Yet if either is the fist to pull out of the arrangement it would be like taking a leaf blower to a house of cards made of dollar bills.   Talk about cutting off your nose. . .

 

I think about other things, too.  I just wonder why no one is talking about this.

Tuesday, November 22, 2005

Make room for one more at the table

My brother’s pregnant.  Well, actually his wife is, of course.  You would have heard it otherwise on the evening news.

 

I’m going to be an uncle again.  This is very exciting news as it has been very difficult (and expensive) for my brother and his wife to get pregnant before this.  My niece and nephew are the product of modern medical assistance, and we’re so thankful that we live in an age that this assistance is available.  Those kids are just the best.

 

The cruel irony is that my brother and his wife had been meticulous about family planning and birth control up to the point where they decided they wanted to try for a baby---only to have to deal with the heart ache that all that birth control may have been redundant for all that time. 

 

Or so they thought!

 

Seems nature has triumphed over science once again!

 

As my wife exclaimed, “How cool.  And they didn’t even have to buy this one!”

 

(We’re all very excited---can you tell.  Congrats you guys!)

 

 

Friday, November 18, 2005

But I'm not biased

My daughter is taking Drama as a class in school this year. She relayed that she did her first monologue for the class this week. She described her selection to me as a tearful outpouring of an abused teen-age girl. Oh good, I thought, a comedy.

Anyway, Kitten described how when it came time for the students to present their monologues before the class, the teacher explained that after each person was done, she would ask the class to give feedback on something each person did well, and something each person could improve on.

After my daughter got done with her presentation, she said the class was silent. The teacher got up and said, "Well, so . . .can anyone tell me what she did well in this monologue?"

To which one student replied, "Um, . . .everything."

The teacher never did ask what needed improving. Kitten took that to mean that she must have done well.

Thursday, November 17, 2005

Kittyvlog

Tuesday, November 15, 2005

The coin has well and truly dropped

It’s snowing.

That’s when you know winter is serious. Before that it’s all empty threats. But as of today the gauntlet has been thrown.

If you need me, I’ll be cowering till March.

If you were to ask me how many pets we have, I’d tell you one and a half cats. The half cat is a big fluffy black cat. He’s an entire cat, but he can only be really considered 'ours' through the cold months of the year. He was obviously a housecat at one point because he’s declawed and he responds to the electric can opener, yet he refuses to live inside for as long as he can. But it would seem the snow tested his metal this morning as he leapt in the door with my daughter’s friends coming to walk to school with her. However, he quickly changed his mind. Apparently you could see the walls closing in on him in his eyes, and he was out again just as fast.

It was pajamas day in the Lemur’s class today--they were allowed a fun special day where they could wear appropriate PJs for school clothes. He jumped out of bed, and was happy to announce that he was instantly ready for school. I did remind him that shoes were in order.

However, as we were pulling up to the school he got a little anxious when he didn’t see anyone else in PJs. He wanted me to take him home. There was no time to make that sort of change, but my refusal and his brother’s reassurances could not calm him. He only grew more panicked with each kid sans PJs that he saw.

Then finally, thankfully, a little girl hopped out of the SUV in front of us with pink polka dot pajama pants coming out of her pink parka. He instantly relaxed and was off.

Last night the wife relayed that she had had a bit of a mental slip at dinner. Things were a bit chaotic, as they can be around dinner time. She was trying to get the boys settled down and my daughter was on the phone. So she just sat down to say the blessing and get on with dinner. It was a short prayer and she ended with,


“Please bless this food. In your holy name. .


. . .Bye”


She started serving herself as the boys looked up slowly, not sure how to respond to the unconventional ending. When she started to feel that something was a little wrong, all she could do was look back at them and ask,


“Did I say 'bye' out loud?”


Oh yes. That’s sort of how thing are going right now.

Wednesday, November 09, 2005

Micro Post

Do you remember that matching game you played as a kid? The one where you would line up all the columns and rows of cards and by flipping two, you would try to find a match. The trick of the game being that you would need to remember where certain cards were from flipping them previously, so that you could make matches from memory.



The Lemur is a formidable opponent at this game. And he just fills with glee at each match he is able to make.



So why is it such a struggle to find two matching socks in his sock drawer every morning?

Thursday, November 03, 2005

Guest Vlogger

There is a new video on the Vlog. My daughter tries her hand.
Check it out at www.CJD-TV.blogspot.com!

Wednesday, November 02, 2005

Hollow's Eve Revisited



Halloween begins at our house in early October with the catalog costume shopping with Grandma. She is the one who generously outfits the kids each year. My mom is very big into holidays. She has a whole parcel of decorations out for each holiday—even to the point of having seasonal bathroom towels. Some how I never picked up that gene. I’m the guy shopping for Christmas at 7:00 pm on Christmas eve.

But the kids sit down a pour over the catalog, pointing with excitement. Lemur studies each page intently, scrutinizing each choice---and then inevitably chooses a Ninja costume, like he does every year. This year it was different. This year the Ninja costume had muscles sewn in.

Kitten, being 15 now and in high school, is too old for trick-or-treating, so she has opted to stay at our house and give out candy with some of her friends. But she’s not so old that she doesn’t want to be made up. This year she wants to be done up as a character from the musical Cats. This is much better than her previous years choices, which usually ended up being so specific that no one could tell what she was. Last year, she was Buffy the vampire slayer. Her costume consisted of a trendy teen-ager in black boots, blood spattered with a wooden stake. Some people guessed that she was depicting a teen driving accident.

But this year she’s in luck. My final exam in my college make-up class was a character from Cats. And I scored very well on that one. So daddy will be able to put some of his college education to use for once.

Her friends showed up in costume too, to help her give out candy. The funniest one was the boy who showed up as the Phantom of the Opera with a mask made up of paper napkins and duct tape. He knocked on the door, and when I opened it he presented me with a squash and a “Happy Halloween”.

I asked, “Is this a tradition in your country?” I never got an answer for what the squash was about.

But my daughter sat him down and painted a Phantom mask on his face so he didn’t have to spend the rest of the night with the napkin/duct tape mask.



Then we took our little Bear dressed as a dragon rider, and our Ninja, and stepped off the porch to begin our rounds. We have a real good neighborhood. Lots of kids and people who like kids, so many porch lights are on---indicating the houses who are participating in trick-or-treat. And all the families go up and down the block---up one side of the street and down the other like a big clockwise costume parade.

Bear didn’t really realize what was going on, but he was fascinated by all the people in costumes and decorations. I was practically carrying him by one arm trying to keep him moving forward. Then at the first house the neighbor lady brought a big orange holiday bowl to the door and down to Bears eye level to pick out his choice of treat. That instantly cured his A.D.D. His eyes grew wide as he stared in the bowl and he let go with an “Oh My GOSH!”

At that moment it clicked and he realized the allure of this fall festival. As we went around to each door we prompted him to say “Trick or Treat!”. In his mind that got translated as “GET a Treat”, so that’s what he would say at each door. That got a couple laughs.

Robo, on the other hand, dressed in his Grim Reaper costume and went off to go door to door with his friend down the street. He’s getting a little old to hang out with the younger crowd. He would later tell us of this one house that he went up to, that his friend choose to skip. Robo when up, no problem. Knocked on the door, no problem. Got his treat, no problem.

What he didn’t realize was that 5 guys in Scream masks were silently lining up behind him. He said he turned around and about peed his pants. His friend had learned about that house last year and purposefully avoided it. He also equally as purposefully made sure Robo didn’t. Trick or treat indeed.

Later, when we were being told this story, his Mom asked him in a teasing voice, “Were you scared honey?”. We expected him to get all cool and say how he was cool. But he just looked back her and said, “Um, Yeah!”

Meanwhile, we’re still making the rounds and Bear is getting into it. He saw a kid in a scary costume and wasn’t scared himself, but played along like we do when we play monster at home. We walked down the block with him going, “Ahhh monster. Go away monster. Ahhh, it’s going to eat me. Run away, Run away.”

When we got back we found the teens in the living room sitting around having a sing along with the Buffy the Vampire Slayer musical episode CD. Yes, that show had a musical episode, and yes, they brought out a soundtrack CD of it.

Even though they had pretty full sacks of candy at that point, we still had one more destination. Grandma’s house. She lives across town from us, but she has special treats for her special people (who are her grandkids and the kids she does daycare for). Really BIG Halloween treats. So we made the stop and hung out for a bit while some of the daycare friends showed up in their costumes. Even daddy got a treat leaving with a couple bottles of Mike’s Hard Lemonade.

When we got back home we let the teens go down the block to hit a couple of houses. Most people aren’t impressed with older trick-or-treaters. There seems to be an unwritten etiquette rule that says at a certain height you’re not a legit trick-or-treater, you’re a parasite just in it for the candy (like the little kids have some more noble reason to go door to door). Kitten said one house even said, “Hey wait a minute, aren’t you guys old enough to vote?”

It was tough getting wound up kids to bed---it was even harder getting them up the next morning. We’ll be recovering till the weekend, I’m sure. The wife spent some time the next day separating the hard candy from the chocolate. She does this because if you leave them all together the hard candy, like sweet tarts and such, permeate the wrapper and ruin the taste of the chocolate.

Why should she care, you ask. Is she that concerned about the delicate palates of our younglings? Nope, it’s because she’ll be taking her duty from their haul. This is a life lesson, children. No such thing as a free lunch. We took you out, so we get our cut. That’s the way the world works. Enjoy your 80% and be happy.

Death and taxes. That’s what this holiday is about at our house.