Category: lil’ chino

the coming spawn

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don’t forget to remember

Monday again.  Spent today (Sunday, as I type) working in the yard, getting things ready for the Fall: pulling in the patio furniture, covering the BBQ, mowing, trimming, edging, and all other manner of yardwork and “winterization.”

Know what makes me a little sad?

Thinking about how Keaton won’t remember anything from these days.  I mean, for us, we feel like these days are building some of the best memories we’ll ever remember.  I mean, every day she says something new, learns something new, does something new – and all of them are exciting and new to us too.

Today, for instance, upon waking from her nap Keaton wanted to come “help” me work in the yard.  So, instead of edging I decided to pick up the leaves from the trimmed hedges, figuring she might be able to help me.  So we were both out there, stuffing leaves into the garbage can and gabbing.  She would pick up all sorts of stuff, rocks, sticks, dirt, and ask me if she could put it in the garbage can.  That kind of talking, interacting, whatever… that’s the kind of stuff I’ll remember one day in the home.

Too bad she won’t.

The brain is weird that way I guess, with the forgetting, and all.  I mean, right now, her memory impresses me on a regular basis.  For instance, with all the work I’ve been doing on the Halloween props lately, Keaton knows the holiday is close.  And, she keeps asking me when I’m going to put the pumpkin on our porch, “like yesterday,” as she puts it (to her, “yesterday” is a generalized term for anything that happened in the past).  What she really means is last year.  She actually remembers last year’s Halloween – a whole dang year ago, and when she was only one and a half.

But, as much as her memory seems elephantastic right now, I know she won’t be able to remember that first Halloween forever.  I suppose, as new things get pushed in, the old things get popped out.  In engineering terms, when you have limited space in which to store pieces of data, and the new stuff displaces the old, we call that a FIFO structure (first-in, first-out).  Guess our brains are big FIFOs.  I dunno if it’s that simple, or the brain is more selective with its memories… but it sure does seem crappy that she can remember a year back now, but won’t be able to in another two or three years.

Owell, I guess it’s just up to Sharaun and I to take good mental notes.  Because, when she’s fifteen and we tell her about how she used to call Mini Wheats “Winnie Meats,” our word is all she’ll have to go on.

Goodnight, happy weekbeginning.

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no one’s down with a sick baby

Aha, greetings, fair Tuesday.  What’s that you say?  Yeah, I saw Monday yesterday.  She was still dragging from the weekend, and was acting a right bitch.  I’m thinking about calling Wednesday today and see if he wants to hang out with Friday and I; it’s always a good time when Friday’s there.  Alright man, take it easy – say “what’s up” to Thursday if you see his sorry ass before I do.

Let’s get started.

Somewhat related to yesterday’s rant, and the last I’ll talk about it, I think, I stumbled on the full draft text of the Fed’s 700 billion dollar bailout plan online (I’d missed this before, or I’d have linked it yesterday).  In the article I was reading that linked to the text, the author stressed the following language from Section 8:

Decisions by the Secretary pursuant to the authority of this Act are non-reviewable and committed to agency discretion, and may not be reviewed by any court of law or any administrative agency.

Holy crap what?  So… the details of this $700,000,000,000 expenditure will be done behind closed-doors, the taxpayers will get no accounting of how the deal goes down, and no single entity on earth can review, question, challenge, or even see the details of the bailout.  A $700,000,000,000 “blank check.”  No one has to say how the money was used, no one has to account for the money achieving the intended purpose, heck no one can even inquire about what that exact purpose actually is beyond generality.

Your money: No longer your business.  Our tax dollars just got Patriot Acted.

Late-breaking edit: Found this article just before midnight.  It will apparently run in tomorrow’s (today, as you read) Wall Street Journal.  Seems the Treasury has decided, under pressure, that they will indeed have to allow some oversight into the whole process.  Man, and I just wrote all that…

Now, before leaving the topic, I wanted to pass along just a few more pieces of required reading for those who are interested in learning more about the bailout.  You can skip the next paragraph if you hate this stuff.

Slate’s finance-centric site has a good article called, Henry Paulson, Socialist, which does a much better job saying some of the things I was attempting to sputter here yesterday.  The NY Times has an interesting piece about how lobbyists (sorry Kristi, like you need more bad press) are already preparing to ask for additional aide on top of the $700B plan.  Fantastic.  And, for those looking to “send a letter” or “make a call” to ease their conscience in lieu of taking pitchforks and torches to the Lawn, check out the all-senators one-click e-mail link over at Mish’s site.  You can do it all in one feel swoop and use their pre-written text (if you’d like) or write your own.

OK enough; moving on…

The second day of this fair week brings a deepening sickness unto our little Keaton, who is new beset with a wet, hacking cough and faucet of a nose.  When she gets sick, the wheezing thing we dealt with a ways back tends to plague her again, so Sharaun busted out her nebulizer and gave her a “treatment.”  It still breaks my heart to see her wearing that noisy thing.  It really does seem to help her tho (I guess a steroid to the lungs would, however), so I’m not 100% against it I suppose.  Anyway, we’re hoping her wellness returns soon, as no one’s down with a sick baby.

And, randomly…

Fishing for a deal, I called our internet provider the other day and told them I was considering switching to a new faster and cheaper provider, hoping they’d offer me some faster and cheaper deal to stick with them.  Luck was with me, and they ended up bumping up me to the 6 MB up / 760 Kbps down package for $17 less per month than I had been paying.  Today the workerman came to hook up the new “filter” at the house and grant us our new speeds.  And, after running a speed test tonight – I think he may have messed up.  I’m getting unnatural speeds, testing consistently around 15-20MB down and 1.5 MB down.  I didn’t even know this connection was capable of those speeds.  I know they probably haven’t yet turned on some filter back at ISP-central, or haven’t re-provisioned my modem or something… but I don’t want the speed to end.  Bummer.

That’s it folks, goodnight and until tomorrow – Dave luh da kids.

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the halloween workshop

It’s nearing 2pm on this fine windows-open Sunday afternoon.

I just put Keaton down for a nap and Sharaun’s away at a baby shower.  I put on the new Of Montreal album (which is seriously growing on me, despite my initial skittishness) and decided to write a bit.  Now, writing wasn’t really my intention (nor has it been for the past week, as you’ve likely noticed if you’re a regular visitor here) – but I had no choice.

See, I had intended to get all the Halloween props down and start doing an assessment of what all needs to be repaired and what materials I’ll need to get everything back to working order.  But, all the Halloween gear is inside the fake coffin I built so many years ago to hold the pnuematic pop-up coffin dude, and that montrously heavy contraption is tied to the exposed rafters in my garage for storage (serisouly, where else am I going to store a full-size coffin?).  Problem is, other than my sneaking fear that the thing is gonna come crashing down randomly one day and wreck a car parked under it or worse smoosh someone as it falls, I can’t get the thing down all by my lonesome.  It’s just too heavy and unwieldy.  So, as Halloween prep goes, this morning was a complete loss.

Later in the day though, Sharaun got home and helped me lower the thing from it’s hold up in the rafters.  After that, I was able to get all the gear down from the various places it’s stuffed up into our roof and take a full account of things.  And, surprisingly, I’m not as concerned about the work as I was before.  Yeah, the rubber masks have all rotted and are tearing – those’ll have to be replaced, and I already knew I had to rebiuld the ghost… but everything else is just improvements: rewiring things for low-voltage operation in the name of safety, making cosmetic improvements, improving triggering and timing for the more complex animated props, etc.  I know you care dearly about all of this, so I’ll leave it at that level of detail and be done with it.  But, I’m happy to say that my side of the garage has now been officially transformed into the Halloween workshop; ’tis the season.

Shifting gears then…

Today as I walked in to pick Keaton up from her Sunday School class at church, her teacher turned to me and said, “Keaton had a day today.”  “Uh oh,” I said, recalling how we’d already struggled with her ourselves from the start as well.  “Yeah,” she continued, “I’ve never seen her like this.  Not only did she have four kicking and screaming on the ground fits, but she bullied every single kid in the class!” “Oh boy,” I sighed, looking down at our little angel sitting forlornly on a chair in all her infinite cuteness.  As Sharaun slid in beside me her teacher went on, “She pushed Madeline and pinched Matthew and just wouldn’t listen.”  Sharaun, having borne the brunt of Keaton’s earlier “No!” and hitting fit, screwed up her face and sternly asked Keaton to apologize, which she did.

Of course, after church she was a perfect little girl for me when Sharaun was away.  I sometimes think she acts out more for Sharaun than she does me, maybe because she’s got more to prove to her since she’s with her all day long or whatever.  Y’know, asserting her authority most to the one who’s the authority for most of the day, or something.  It sometimes makes me feel bad, because there are instances where she flips like a switch and instantly behaves better for me if Sharaun’s removed from the situation… but then again I also figure this is just the beginning of her wrapping me around her little finger so she can exploit me later in life.  Nah… I’m just playin’.  But I dunno y’allz… this girl can flex some bad, straight-up bad.

OK, whatever.  Goodnight.

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baked away the day

Monday night and what a welcome end to a long day.

Began around 7am when my boss called me from the airport.  I mean, I’ve not even made it into the sawmill yet and here I am listening to my boss in my ear as I fart around the house getting ready to go.

Yeah, I know, I’ve got to do more work with less people and less money.  Fix what went wrong on the last project but make absolutely no changes from the way they did things, uh-huh, right.  Sure, no problem.

I couldn’t even give Keaton a proper kiss and hug goodbye for holding the phone up to my ear to promise I’d “run some numbers” and estimate what might “fall off the plate” if I didn’t “get any upside” in first-quarter 2009.  I’ll tell you what’s gonna fall of the plate man… my faith in the fact that things can change… that’s what.

Ugh.

On top of this I’m buried in unread mail when I finally get to sit down at my desk.  Four-hundred bold-font missives stare blankly at me from my monitor… each of them threatening to make me think, make me do something.  I start to group them by subject, weed out the crap, the mile-long thread where thirteen people thank each other and reply with useless one-word statements like “OK” or “Sure.”  Past the near-ten pieces of corporate spam telling me they’re resurfacing the parking lot in front of building F or that the servers that run the Coke machines will be down for servicing Saturday night from 3am-5am.

Man, I could care less.  Is this where I landed for real?  I mean, I slept in a lecture hall one night in college we stayed studying so late.  We ordered pizza to the building, snuck in after the cleaning staff left, studied until 5am, slept on the floor until 7am, and studied again for an hour before the class began at 8am.  I worked that hard for this, eh?

I know, I sound sour – but I’m really not in that bad a mood when it comes down to it.  I guess I’m just in one of those moods where I want to stay in bed all day with Keaton and Sharaun.  When I got home, I put on some new music (an amazing series of rare 60s American “Northern soul” compliations called Talcum Soul) and played teaparty and “river” with Keaton.

And, after dinner I decided to have her help me bake some banana bread while we listened to the new Of Montreal (Sharaun took pictures).  So maybe the lyrics aren’t exactly the best for a two-and-a-half year old, but at least they don’t really swear… they just talk about “kicking it softcore” and “taking it both ways.”  It’s cool, she’s not listening anyway, she’s all tied up in cracking an egg into our banana-batter and licking the mixer/beater things clean when we’re done stirring things up.

Mmm… I’ve dried up.  Nothing left to write.  Let’s paste on this little closing job I did sometime earlier today when I thought I was gonna write this whole thing but didn’t.

Well folks, the LHC (which I’ve written about before) is coming online tomorrow.  Y’all ready for the Eeath to asplode?  I’m not.  In fact, I just sent out the invitation to our Halloween party… so I’m banking on at least another month or two of Earth, K?  K.

Oh, and I know I’m once again behind in getting new pictures of Keaton up… so to tide you over here are some new pictures Bill posted on his lil’ corner of the web, as well as one here from pro-photog Maygsters.

Goodnight.

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hey john, you can have your trail

Monday morning and, if I were the lying type, I’d tell you that I’m writing this after midnight Sunday… having just returned from our successful epic six-day JMT hike.

But, y’allz, I’m an honest Joe, so I’ll fess up: Early evening on Thursday we reached our third campsite after a long, but surprisingly bearable, sixteen mile trek and decided (in a groupthink snowball of unanimous rationalization) that we all felt accomplished enough with our ~40mi three-day adventure, and would rather be in a hotel eating a meatlover’s pizza and sipping some cold suds than bedding down again on the ground in our filthy clothes to wake with the sun and do it all again for three more days.  So that’s just what we did.  And, by late Friday afternoon we were in our respective homes, taking our respective showers, kissing our respective significant others, and easing into clean duds.

Didn’t bother me much to end early, and now that the trail has beaten us twice I think we’re officially done with it.  My pride is somewhat salved knowing we put in some good effort, and I’ve seen about ~70mi of the thing… so I count that as a neat experience.  Good enough for me, I suppose.  Oh, and I did blog while out there in the wilderness.  I saved the entries on the iPhone and upped them sometime this past weekend.  Scroll down to check them out if you’re interested.

Switching gear now, moving onto the normal stuff: I want to talk about Keaton for a moment.

Lately, she’s been protesting naps and bedtime more and more.  Saturday, for instance, she refused to go down for either – repeatedly getting out of bed, opening her door, and leaving her room. After several frustrating rounds of this back-and-forth game, I decided we need a way to “keep” her in her room (the bedrooms in the house don’t have locks on them).  So, call me a bad parent or whatever you’d like, but I improvised a door-locking mechanism out of a bungee cord and the nearby hinge of another door.  We used this “lock” with success Saturday night around 1am when Keaton just refused to say in her room/bed.  I secured her door and got back into bed with Sharaun.  And, after about ten or fifteen minutes of tearful protest she finally accepted her lot, crawled back into bed, and drifted off to sleep. Yeah, I feel kinda bad for having to “lock” her in there… but it’s what’s working for now.

Well folks, it’s creeping up on midnight and I better hit the sack and send this thing to the presses.  Love you and hope I didn’t lose you last week while the blog languished during the hike.  Talk to you soon; same place, same time.

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Random and scattered today

It’s the end of Wednesday and I swear I’ve done a week’s worth of hard work in this first half.  Between making up for my vacation last week and trying to get a little ahead to take the edge off my vacation next week, I’m cramming…

Random and scattered today, be prepared.

Today, I got re-excited about our hike for a whole new reason.  Turns out Ben has a pilot buddy who owes him a favor and is likely going to be in town next Monday.  In recompense, he may be willing to ferry Anthony, Ben, and I to a small airstrip in the Sierras close to our trailhead.  This would be a in six-seater twin-engine job, flying from here down there in a fraction of the time it would take to drive, and, probably more importantly, salvaging my marriage by taking the burden of the eight-hour roundtrip drop-off from Sharaun and Keaton.  I can just imagine packing into a private plane, all geared out for our hike, loading our packs up and taking off into the mountain skies.  I mean, it’s like a whole super-bonus beginning to what stands to be an incredible adventure already.  And, while it’s not 100% confirmed at this point, I would say we’re trending positively (sorry for the sawmill-speak, laymen).  So rad.

Late last night the new New Kids on the new New Kids on the Block album leaked, and today I downloaded it for Sharaun.  Oh man was she happy.  What?  Oh, you didn’t know the New Kids on the Block were back together?  Yeah, they are.  All their songs sound like the last Akon or Chris Brown song you heard on the radio, right down the the thinly veiled sexual lyics and robotic pitch-shifting voice effects ala Cher’s Believe.  But, my wife, whom I love to death, loves this band to death… and has spent ungodly amounts of dosh on concert tickets for their upcoming shows (where, in the apparent fulfillment of one of her lifetime dreams, she’ll actually be going to “meet and greet” the band).  Anyway, we listened to the album most of the evening – it was even our dinnertime soundtrack.  And, let me tell you guys… it’s bad.  Real, real bad.

Today Keaton and I had a teaparty with three of her dolls, Finny, Claudia, and Hannah.  Although, instead of tea we had coffee… and we doctored it with sugar, cinnamon, and nutmeg (her idea, I promise).  We had “biscuits” with our tea, which were actually tiny pieces of plastic fruit (go figure).  Sometimes I like to play the big brother role and do things like pretend to spill coffee or “accidentally” knock over one of the babies… maybe you think that’s mean but I enjoy seeing how she reacts to things.  Sometimes her reponses to situations floor me, she’s so mature seeming in some ways (well, for a two and a half year old… or whatever).  Parts of my insides cry when I think how fast she got here though… so I want to enjoy as many teaparties as I can, while I can.

Goodnight people.

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don’t snore daddy

8:30 or so on this week-starting Monday, and work came at me like an avalanche today.  Who knew a week of work sandwiched in between two weeks of vacation would be stressful?  Everything to catch up on, everything to make up time on and get done early.  Ugh.

Sharaun and Keaton are out again, and I’m using every ounce of my internet prowess to once again play gumshoe in search of an old breakbeat mix I had on tape back in highschool.  I’ve written about the mix before here on the blog, and I’ve been searching for it now for something like ten years.  I feel like I made some more progress in recalling some tracks which were featured on it, but try as I might, I can’t seem to find mention of a “common” southern US DJ set featuring them all… I’ll never give up!

OK then.  Another entry about Keaton today… seems to be a theme of late.

Sharaun went to the gym early this morning, somewhere around 5:30am.  She does it a couple times a week when she can, since Keaton’s sleeping and I’m home with her doing the same.  She usually gets back to find me about ready to head out to work and Keaton still down.  This morning though, sometime after she left I stirred in bed to a noise in our room.  Chalking it up to the cat getting into something, I hunkered back down into my fetal position.  Right after that though, I jumped as a sleepy little voice said, “Hi Daddy.  I waked up.”  Opening my eyes, Keaton was there, staring up at me.

Noticing that not much morning light was trying to push its way through the cracks in the blinds, I grabbed the iPhone to see what time it was.  At the same time I reached out and tussled Keaton’s hair with my other hand.  6:03am.  She was standing there with her hair all mooshed and tangly and clutching her babydoll (it was Claudia, I have seriously come to know them by name).  I told her, my voice crackly with the first words of the day, “Keaton, it’s too early to wake up baby.  You have to go back to bed.”  And then, “Do you want to go back to your room and climb back into your big girl bed, or do you want to sleep her with Daddy?”

“I want to sleep with Daddy,” she replied.  “OK,” I said, scooping her and Claudia up alongside me and covering them with the comforter.  I had some doubts I’d get any more sleep, as bringing Keaton into bed with us has never worked in the past.  She ends up wanting to play more than she wants to sleep, and, eventually, she’ll actually ask to go to her crib to get some real sleep if she gets tired enough – she’s never slept a whole night with us in the bed.  But, she actually settled right down and I started to drift off.

Sometime later, I was roused as by a tiny hand settling over my mouth and Keaton saying, “Don’t snore Daddy.”  I chuckled, and didn’t move her hand as I tried to get back to sleep.  Over the next fifty minutes or so, she put her hand over my mouth (and one time a little bit over my nose too) and implored me not to snore twice more.  I thought it was the cutest thing, and secretly hoped Sharaun would come home and see us asleep there, Keaton cuddled into my armpit with her hand over my mouth – and sneak a picture so I could see what we looked like.

But, by the time Sharaun got home my alarm had gone off and I’d gone back to take a shower while leaving Keaton to watch a new Backyardigans with some juice and graham crackers (a Dad-style pre-breakfast snack, I suppose).  Owell.

G’nite.