Happy Thanksgiving suckas.
Wishing you the best from my warm perch on the couch where I can watch football and smell the smells of our coming feast cooking in the kitchen.
Love ya.
two black eyes
A week ago Tuesday, the week before we left for Florida, which is where we are now, I was on a phone meeting with an employee of mine around 5pm. As we were wrapping up, with another ten minutes or so remaining in our conversation, Sharaun called my cellphone. I didn’t answer. About 50% of the time, when I’m working that is, I don’t. Usually, she’ll just leave a message or send a quick text, assuming I’m occupied and can’t get to the phone. This time, however, she rang my desk number immediately after. When I didn’t a answer that, the cellphone again. Curious, I politely put my call on hold and answered.
“Keaton hit her head really hard on the table and the size of the bump really has me worried,” she said. “OK,” I replied, “Was she unconscious? Did she get sick? Is she acting funny?” With a round of “Nope”s in reply, I told her I’d go ahead and get off the phone right away and come home just to check, but it sounded OK to me.
When I got home I was greeted with a seemingly normal daughter, all but for the humongous bruised and swollen lump over her left eye. Sharaun was helping her ice it when I got there, and a friend who’d stopped by just minuted before I arrived had already given it his best dad’s inspection and “all’s well” report. I took a look myself, poking it a bit and asking her how she felt (you know, the real scientific kind of diagnosis-stuff I learned in computer engineering school). After talking to her and prodding her I myself was convinced she just had one heck of a bump (or “hematoma,” as Trapper John taught me). And folks… it was indeed a large bump… as the picture above somewhat indicates (bad light plus iPhone doesn’t make for superlative photography).
Anyway, as the week wore on, and we got closer to coming back to Florida to see family and friends we’ve not seen in year, the blood in that bump drained down into little Keaton’s face. First, the bridge of her nose appeared swollen; next, small black circles at the corner of her eyes. By Saturday, however, when we flew across the country, she had two fully-developed shiners. We got some looks in the airport, and one flight attendant even stooped to whisper, “I couldn’t help but notice your daughter’s eyes, are they just naturally dark like that?” “No,” I replied, “She took a header into a table.”
Oh well… part of growing up I suppose. I’ll spend the last few evenings before we leave GIMP’ing out the black eyes from all the Thanksgiving photos for family, no biggie.
Maybe later this week I’ll write a bit about being in Florida. In brief though: It’s good to be back and the place feels the same.
Until later.
i know you’re watching
Mmmm hmmm internet.
I smell it on the horizon… wafting over from afar in scented waves. Slightly coastal, faintly deep-fried, with a dash of burning rope and a hint of recent thunderstorms. It’s vacation in Florida, and the smell is just the precursor to the faint strains of fiddle music, slow drawl and electric guitar that’ll begin to wend their way around my head as we fly 40,000ft over Birmingham and begin our final descent.
Monday when I got back to work after a week overseas, I went downstairs to the Starbucks for my morning coffee and was ecstatic to see they are already brewing Christmas Blend. Man I love me some Starbucks Christmas Blend. Maybe it has something to do with the fact that, at work, the Starbucks is free… at least for the brewed, non-fancy, stuff; but I’m down there before 8am for the first mug and back around 3pm for an afternoon refresh (not “refresh” in the sense that it takes me from 8am to 3pm to drink my morning’s cup… however). Sometimes I think about how good I have it at work… that place, despite being my prison, is aaaallll-right sometimes.
Switching gears.
A good buddy of mine recently uprooted his family and moved to Taiwan. Unwilling, however, to give up American TV (presumably because it’s just so good) he instead bought a neat little modern-age wonder-device called a Slingbox that allows him to transmit a TV feed from anywhere in the world to anywhere else in the world. So long as you’ve got TV service wherever the Slingbox lives, you’ve got that same TV service wherever you may roam. In this case, the Slingbox was installed at our place. It’s in the closet, it has a dedicated HD DVR receiver and my buddy graciously supplements my cable bill to cover the costs (as well as sponsoring me to the highest speed boadband package to assure the bandwidth required for high-definition streaming is available).
When the Slingbox is active, meaning my buddy and/or his wife are halfway across the world watching TV from the receiver in our closet, there’s a little upside-down U-shaped series of LEDs that pulses, chasing one another from end to end. Sometimes, early morning here, I’ll walk by the open closet while it’s still dark and I’ll be able to see that light pulsing on the shelf, casting a flickering red light a small ways out into the hallway. Every once in a while it pulls me in and I’ll stand there watching the thing pulse for a few seconds, knowing. Watching the LEDs snake their way around that U-shape sometimes feels like second-degree voyeurism or something. Somewhere, thousands of miles away, someone is watching TV that’s originating from my closet. At that exact moment.
I know you’re watching… you can’t hide.
Goodnight.
so i think i might puke
Hold on. Slow down. Let’s take a breath and blog.
Our schedule this week is about to give me a nervous breakdown, y’all. Tonight Sharaun dragged me to the So You Think You Can Dance live show. Let me tell you, that’s four hours of my life (counting transit to and from) that I’ll never get back. Tomorrow I’ve got Keaton as Sharaun’s at volleyball. Wednesday night we’re doing a pre-Thanksgiving Thanksgiving-style meal with a big group of friends from church. Thursday night we’re doing a pre-Thanksgiving Thanksgiving-style meal with a big group of friends from not-church. Friday night we’ll have to pack for the sunrise flight to Florida the next day.
Oh, and the flooring guys will be here tearing the place up the whole time.
Meanwhile, I think we’ve found the only possible solution to the Thanksgiving flight problem I mentioned yesterday. Well, not truly a solution, as we still haven’t managed to change our flights – the costs are just too high to do so. But we are able to do same-day standby for free on a slightly earlier itinerary. It’s by no means a guarantee, but it’s about the best we can ask for without auctioning off the farm. We need three seats on each leg, and right now there are nine left. So… maybe it’s more like an outside chance… but it’s what we have. Here’s hoping.
Goodnight.
to do
Note before we begin: Yes, I am playing with new themes. No, they are not 100% yet so please pardon the dust. Moving on.
Things to do before I leave for Shanghai and Taiwan:
Get a haircut. For my Halloween costume, I shaved my beard super tight in hopes it would help the faux beard and moustache stay attached. It didn’t. However, the transition from this short facial hair to my overlong already-needed-a-trim head hair is now too stark. When I go overseas or even to a customer domestically, I like to have a fresh haircut. For some reason, having a tight crop in the “fade” area makes the baldness on top appear a little more… “intentional” or something. Also, a nice close cut helps me carry authority and appear erudite when speaking. So says me, at least.
Wash the dress clothes. For a week now I’ve not had anything brown-based to wear. I’ve been cycling through the grey, black, and dark pinstriped pants coupled with the same three or so dress shirts that are un-wrinkly enough to wear. The problem started back when Sharaun was in Florida. Not that I rely on her to do my ironing, but she will occasionally iron all my dress shirts so that I have a nice stable of wearable items. Problem with sticking to blacks and greys means that I’ve also run out of clean black dress socks. I’ll need a range of colors for the week abroad. It’s important to not only come well-groomed but to come well-appointed also. Shockingly, I haven’t been to the Asia-Pacific region since before Keaton was born. Managing to dodge the love/hate bullet that is Asia travel for this long, I’d like to show up looking as if my station has improved since that last visit years prior. I mean, why not, right?
Get the big-trash people to come by the house and take away this massive pile of big trash that I’ve been storing alongside the house. We bought a new dining room table a month or so back, one that can accommodate a larger dinner party or maybe someday a real family Thanksgiving. I had to do something with the old table, so I moved it into the backyard. Some friends had indicated they might want it as a prop for a house they were trying to rent, to fill out the space and hopefully make it more attractive to potential tenants. I left it out there while we went to Mexico and the thing got rained on heavily. When I returned, it was literally a woody mush holding precariously to the shape of a table. When I tried to move it it fell apart in pulpy pieces, literally crumbling in my hands. I threw it back by the shed, along with the chairs, amongst a growing little pile of things I don’t use anymore (like my years-old Craigslist-purchased lawn mower and some large wood and plastic scraps from various projects). Time to move this off the property before the coming winter rains reduce it to even more of a mushy mess.
Call the floor guy. As part of the (now overdue) Q3 “home upgrade” item I try to include in each year’s budget, we’re getting hardwood flooring installed in the house. I bought the materials long ago, and have been delaying the actual install to work around various travels and events now for too long. I need to call our friendly Eastern European contractor and get the dates scheduled so we can have the things in before the holidays. We’re both pretty excited about the floors, and have also both become quite detached from the care of the current carpet – not even bothering to give it a clean post-Halloween Bash. We’ll also have him replace the carpet in our master bathroom shower/sink area (carpet in a bathroom, really?) with some nice large tile – since we’re doing “floor stuff” anyway.
Order some of those credit card “convenience” checks. To pay the floor guy. We don’t carry a balance on our single credit card; we pay it off every month. However, we use it almost exclusively as our preferred method of payment for as many purchases as will allow it. All this to accrue airline miles which we can use to shuttle around the USofA visiting our scattered friends and relatives (or for the occasional international trip to Oktoberfest in Munich, “cough-cough 2010”). Since the flooring install will be check only, and will be a substantial outlay, I can’t overlook the chance to net miles from the transaction. The card we have allows me to get one mile for every two dollars on checks (one-for-one on most normal transaction and two-for-one for a limited set). Yes, the checks impose a minimum fee for usage, but ultimately, doing the math, the miles are worth it. We typically end up netting between four and five free round trips per year, or enough for a family jaunt and some me-alone or Sharaun-alone travel to boot. Not bad.
Fix the walls. Again, as part of the Q3 “home upgrade” bucket, I had some wiring work done in the main room. Because most of the wiring had to run through external or hard-to-access internal walls, the work was somewhat invasive and required a good deal of drywall cutting. This leaves me having to go back and patch, texture, and paint the worked areas. It was worth it though, not having to do the work myself (I hate working in the attic pulling wires) and getting the surround speakers mounted attractively only the wall sans visible wiring. The last items on that Q3 list involve mounting the flatscreen and getting a custom entertainment cabinet built on the wall below it. In the end, everything will be attached to the wall with no wires to be seen. Should be a large improvement to the room.
Wow. Gotta run. Tons to do. Goodnight.
prince charlie
Well friends, it’s Sunday afternoon and I’m taking a bit of a break from doing some housework. Keaton is dancing around in her Princess Araura costume as Animal Collective plays. She keeps singing something about finding her “Prince Charlie.”
Prince Charlie… I LOL’d.
Oh and yes: housework. As the sole proprietor of this here shop for another Mr. Mom weekend, I’ve busied myself tidying, laundering, and scullionry. After church Keaton and I swung by the grocery store to pickup some foodstuffs for lunch (and I couldn’t resist a sixpack of Sam Adams Octoberfest brew, a cold bottle of that goes so well with housecleaning). She got a turkey sandwich, some grapes the size of small eggs (which were on sale), and a glass of milk. I had a few salt-and-pepper kettle chips (“send a man shopping,” they’ll say…), grapes, and a turkey sandwich of my own. I heard they changed the food pyramid recently… wonder how I did?
Random topics today, if you hadn’t already figured it out…
Y’know, I’ve got to hand it to whoever does the new Scooby Doo cartoon on TV. We caught an episode of it while in the hotel room down in Mexico, and I was pleasantly surprised at how true-to-formula it was (that formula being how I remember the show when I was a kid). The voices are spot-on, the stories develop and play out as expected, and the jokes are still aimed at adults as often as they are kids. Keaton seemed to dig it (she is my child, after all) so I was more than happy to setup a recurring recording for it on the DVR. Watching it with her is like going back in time a little. Good job Scooby people, good job.
I spent a good bit of time Saturday further tweaking all the props to get them perfectly dialed-in. And, as expected, once I had things pretty much how I wanted them, two of the props suffered major breakdowns. Always; always, always, always. The stupid coffin popper appears to have popped his pneumatic frame right off the bottom of the coffin – that’s not going to be an easy fix; and I found the crank ghost as a sad crumpled mess of glowing cheesecloth, hanging by one arm and going up-and-down. Ugh. At first, I figured I’d just let ’em rot for a day or two… not wanting to see how badly things were broken and learn how long it’d take to fix it all. But, I had some free time Sunday between loads of laundry so I took a look. Happily, things were all fixed and back to working order in under thirty minutes.
Goodnight.
mexico & cat pee
So, tomorrow, Mexico.
Work’s gonna be tough. Mind wandering. Not a lot of meetings Friday so not a lot of motivation to stay rooted in the office.
We leave bright and early, fly to L.A. first and from there on South to Mexico. Hopefully, we’ll arrive with time to find the Florida/LSU game on Mexican TV. Still have to pack; couple paperbacks, some swim trunks, jeans and a nice shirt for one night, a hat, sandals… who needs much more?
Maybe I need to expand a bit on my harsh-sounding anti-feline sentiment yesterday. See, the cat has decided she is going to quit using her littler box and instead urinate and defecate on the carpet. This doesn’t seem to be a one-time thing, either. In fact, tonight, for the first time, I walked down our hallway and, at the end, smelled that worst-of-all smells: cat pee. I knelt down and sampled the bouquet and sure enough that putrid overpowering stench was emanating from our carpet, right where the cat has designated it her new commode. Let me make it clear: this won’t be happening. Yes, haters, yes; I will simply get rid of this cat I nursed to life from a bottle as a kitten. I’m not going to have an animal using the house as a bathroom; not gonna happen.
I accidentally set this entry to auto-post last night at midnight… and left it incomplete. Not that it’s much more finished now, but at least it has a picture and stuff. Blogging has been hard this week, cut me some slack.
That’s it then. Mexico and cat pee. See ya later.