Category: lil’ chino

the coming spawn

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we need more of those people


It’s 8:30pm already, Wednesday night. Tonight is garbage night, so I have to get the various garbages together and haul them to the bins, after which I’ll haul the bins themselves down to the street. After that, I need to clean up the dishes from dinner, and maybe try and pick up Keaton’s scattered toys from her busy day at home with mom. I hate nights where the late creeps up on you, like tonight… where it’s 8:30pm already and I’ve barely had time to do anything but get home and sit down. Nights where the late creep up on you are almost as bad as sleeps where you wake up 15min before your alarm clock is about to go off. Anyway… back to tonight – let’s write something.

I like friendly people. Today, as I was walking out the door heading back to work after lunch, a truck was parked outside my house and a guy was unloading some boxes from it. “Hey,” he said, “got some boxes for you here.” “Boxes for me?” I wondered aloud, “OK.” As I walked towards the guy, he must’ve seen my company-logo’d polo shirt and asked me, “You sill work for Company-X?” (I’ll call my workplace “Company-X” for this one). I told him I did, and he proceeded to tell me how he’d just been laid of from Company-X. Having worked previously in some shipping/receivables department, he’d been let go just weeks ago and was now delivering for FedEx (in a Penske truck, no less).

Anyway, he was quite the talkative fellow, asking me what the situation was like now at Company-X: was it still bad, heads still rolling, etc. The guy was genuine, if a bit of a jabberjaw, and sincere. And I stood on the curb for a good 10min just talking about this and that with him. For instance, I learned that his dad recently died, and he’d moved back in with his mom to take care of her. You know those people who get personal too quickly when you meet them, he was one. But, I enjoyed myself, standing in the sun there – me still having my cush position at Company-X and being able to look down on his now lowly profession of Penske truck drivin’, box lugging deliveryman. No, no, that was a joke. The point here is that sometimes it’s encouraging to meet people who are just straight up nice. We need more of those people.

Helped Sharaun work on her resume tonight, as she’s applying for some part-time work as a freelance elementary school textbook editor through a connection. Would be stay-at-home work done on the computer, but we sure wouldn’t mind even the part-time income. Y’know, I’m glad, though, that she decided to leave work and do the mom thing – I honestly don’t think I could do it full-time. Watching the baby is one thing, but I’d fear I’m just too selfish to do it long-term. You think spending all day “playing” with the baby and reading to the baby and feeding and changing and singing to the baby is easy work, wrong… for me I get caught up wanting to do my own things. The things I’m used to being able to do when I want to do them. Yeah, I’ve got a lot of respect for what a selfless act the full-time mommy gig is, and I’m glad Sharaun’s the one doing it the same way I’m glad some dude (who’s not me) drives a garbage truck and takes away my refuse.

Well friends, the CD ripping part of my CD-ripping project is about 99% complete. I don’t know if I ever figured I’d really get this far. What’s left now is to optimize the entire resultant digital files. Because, out of roughly 150 gigabytes of music, some 50 gigabytes were ripped from discs that wouldn’t auto-grab MP3 ID3 tags from the ‘net. This means I’m going through and attacking them manually to make them more usable. But through a combination of some scripting I’ve done with the wonderfully extensible Godfather tagger, and just good ol’ done-by-hand data entry, I imagine the entire library will be finished sometime in early December. Make no mistake though, it’s downhill from here. All my tunes are now stored as safe digital copies, on a redundant disk array – and I couldn’t be happier. It’s a good feeling, to see my mater spreadsheet (which I started over two years ago) finally be completely green. I have now arrived at the digital age, ’bout time.

There we have it then, goodnight.

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other than that, i’m out


So disinterested tonight, I just want to sleep. I fear I’m coming down with something, as I’m not typically this tired all the time. This weekend, I just wanted to sleep. And now, I swear I could go to bed and yet it’s only 7pm. Sharaun seems to be stricken with the same affliction, maybe we’ve both caught mono or something. Maybe I’m so tired because I’ve been reading all these gushing reviews of the new Joanna Newsom album that I just can’t get into. I mean, this thing’s done been leaked ever since I wrote this, and it still hasn’t gotten any better.

So, I don’t have much tonight… spent a good amount of time uploading pictures and movies to Keaton’s gallery. If you’d like, you can view said media by clicking this link.

Other than that, I’m out. Goodnight.

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bits of ham at christmas dinner


Both Saturday and Sunday I was tired; too tired. I also had that tight-muscled feeling. Both those things together usually mean I’m coming down with a cold. As a first response, I decided to see if a Sunday afternoon catnap might help. Not sure I was able to stave off any sickness, but it should felt good to take a nice long nap. I put the new Shins record on the iPod and drifted off while Sharaun watched Home Alone on TV and played with Keaton.

Speaking of Home Alone being on TV, “they” (the powers that be) sure are starting the Christmas stuff early this year. I went to Home Depot on Halloween day to pick up some last-minute needs and they had already taken down the Halloween stuff and were busily assembling the glut of Christmas lawn decorations and green extension cords. I can remember not being Christmas-marketed until after Thanksgiving, seems now that’s moved to after Halloween. When my kids grow up, they’ll start making their lists in August.

Speaking of Christmas, I’m all kinds of excited for Keaton to experience it for the first time. Although I realize there’ll be a limited amount of actual “experiencing” going on, at least that she’ll be able to remember, it doesn’t really matter because I’m also excited about us getting to experience Christmas with her. I’m excited to give her something to tear into on Christmas morning, excited to see her reaction to the Christmas tree, and excited to be back in Florida with friends and relatives to tell us how cute she is. I’m excited to dress her up in warm clothes (although not too warm, as Christmas in Florida is generally shorts and flip-flops weather), excited to feed her bits of ham at Christmas dinner… excited about all that.

Alas, my friends, I’d’ve liked to have followed up that Keaton-based paragraph with a link to a new gallery of her pictures – but I just didn’t get it done. I’m shooting once again for a Monday night posting this week. Oh, and I’ve also decided that this weekly posting thing will more than likely turn into a monthly one after I get to the 52nd week. I’ll try and keep it up for the entire first year, but after that it’s anyones guess. After all, I don’t want to back myself into a corner in terms of precedent when kid #2 comes.

Well, I guess that’s a lot of nothing for tonight – but it’s an entry. Goodnight.

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rampant breeding and sheer luck


Tuesday night, and it was a good one. Packed with things like building a new computer for Sharaun, voting, playing with Keaton in the backyard, and doing dishes. It was a good kinda busy though, the kind of busy where, after you’re done being busy, it’s earlier than you think it should be. Like, you got a buttload done and it’s only 9pm… still plenty of time to do things like blog and work on ripping MP3s and whatnot.

My favorite time of year is underway, the time I refer to as the “holiday trifecta.” I love this time of year, but it’s also a big “hump” for me in terms of day-to-day concentration. I tend to start focusing on things like vacation time, turkey dinners, Christmas trees, and family. Lately, in fact, I’ve been taken by the vision of Keaton dressed in warm, Christmasey clothes – maybe crawling around in front of a twinkling tree. I keep thinking about how we’re leaving in mid-December and not returning until the new year, and how excited I am to get that respite from the daily grind.

And, speaking of Keaton crawling (I swear I was, read back a sentence or two), she’s just about there. In fact, I’d actually qualify her as “there” were she able to crawl continuously – but as it is now she gets up on her hands and knees, takes a few “steps,” and flops back down onto her belly. She’s got the mechanics, I just don’t think she’s put together that she can generate constant forward motion through repetition. My guess is that she’s just days away from completing that neural pathway though, and when she drives that golden spike she’ll be motoring all over the place. We’ve taken minimal precautions in expectation of this eventuality, likely fewer than we should have by now: We have no cabinet locky things, only a few randomly-placed outlet covers, and we’ve covered nothing in foam.

Furthermore, if I were to make a prediction, I doubt we’ll do much of this “babyproofing.” I was telling Sharaun just the other night that I bet cavemen didn’t “babyproof” the cave, or the tree, or whatever they lived in while following game across the lands. Nope, caveman-times babies were exposed to the unprotected terrain. But, I’m confident they learned to avoid the magma, velociraptors, bottomless chasms, and razor-sharp crags just like the rest of us would – by watching other, stupider and less fortunate, caveman-times babies perish at the hands of these various obstacles and deciding they’d rather keep on living instead. Admittedly, I may be giving caveman babies too much credit here. I mean, caveman-adults had much less developed brains that moderntimes-adults, right? How much less cognizant, then, would a caveman-baby be? Perhaps cavemem were only able to advance the species via rampant breeding and sheer luck.

Goodnight.

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buy her a lottery ticket


Happy Halloween friends! Welcome to another mundane Tuesday where, in real time, I’m likely already sitting at my desk lamenting the eight or so hours of work that lay before me. At least tomorrow I can, for a short time, escape the stupid humdrum of work and experience some happier times while scaring kids and giving out candy. Then, I take it all down… the motorized ghost, the coffin, the tombstones… I take it all down and store it away for another year. After that, I’ll focus on Thanksgiving and Christmas… because, after all, I guy has to have something to look forward to. Now then, let’s get around to this blogging business, shall we?

Keaton’s second tooth is just crowning, and I think it’s causing her to be a little cranky. She’s also spending a lot more time “scooting” around the floor and “raising up” onto her knees – like she’s showing us she’s almost there, teetering on the edge of mobility. I get so excited when I see her move herself around, but I also get kinda sad to think she’s changed so much from when we first met just a few months ago. I mean, we’ve not even had the pleasure of each other’s company for a year yet and she’s changed more than anyone I’ve ever known. She sits up, she ba-bas and ney-neys and ma-mas, she eats food… she’s too big.

Last week, mostly due to the furious preparation for our Halloween party, I forgot to mention to Sharaun that Jeff had told me he’d read in the paper that tickets for Justin Tenderlegs’ upcoming show here in town were going on sale this past Saturday morning. (Is that a run-on?,sure seem like a run-on…) Anyway, she’d been wondering, and had been checking daily online to ensure she wouldn’t miss the onsale. Well, she did miss it, like I said, because we were both preoccupied with party prep, and she was completely bummed. Now, for me, missing a Tenderlegs onsale wouldn’t sting at all, but for her it was a source of profound grief. The situation became worse when it was revealed I had know, and neglected to inform her, of the early morning post-party onsale. Moving forward though, she tuned into one of the local radio stations to see if they were giving away tickets; they were. About three hours later, she had, of course, won a pair by being the designated caller. This win brings her 2006 radio contest tally dangerously close to the-IRS-might-wanna-know earnings. Concerts, shopping sprees, iPods, Xboxes… you name it she’s won it. I don’t know quite how she does it, but I think it’s awesome.

Figured out my stereo-only-on-the-right-speaker thing tonight, turns out I’ve got a dodgy connection on the back of the TiVo. A little plug jiggling and all was well. All that for a loose connection. And to think, I almost went out and bought a brand new 60″ flatscreen because of it. Glad I didn’t, because the rear brakes on the Ford (the ones I didn’t ever change even though I’ve been planning to for weeks now since I changed the front) are making some God-awful scraping sound in both braking and non-braking situations. I have no idea what this is, but the sound tells me it’s not something good. I plan to at least change the brakes and see if that helps, but if not… who knows. And, now that that’s all over with…

Don’t forget to pop over to the Halloween costume contest leaderboard and see who’s ranking highest… If you’re not happy with the results, go and change ’em by casting your own vote.

Goodnight.

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feeding at the trough


Good Monday morning to you, readers. This was a heck of a weekend. My parents in town, Keaton’s first night away from mom and dad, and our 4th annual Halloween bash. We had a great time, and the party seemed to go off swimmingly – a rousing success by my standards. And, since it’s now 11pm on Sunday night, it feels like midnight, I’m still on the hook for posting Keaton’s regular weekly updates, and I want to get the costume contest gallery up for the party – the entry is gonna be lean today. This paragraph, which only serves to setup the links to the Halloween and Keaton galleries, and then the little one below about my fortuitous Saturday evening e-mail surprise, and that’s it. So, sorry for the slim pickins, but I did what I could, and here’s the bulk of it:

Halloween 2006 Costume Contest. Use the voting stars to rank your favorites, and don’t forget to comment.
Keaton’s week thirty-three gallery. No voting, but a whole lotta cute baby.

In closing, I checked my gmail account Saturday night and was thrilled nearly to Christmas morning tears to see in my inbox an invite to one of the underweb’s best-kept tunes-downloading secrets. And even though I’ve mentioned it here before by name, becoming a member has encouraged me to use discretion. Anyway, some kind user had taken the time to toss an invite my way, and I immediately used it to setup an account. Now, I must say that, due to the skyrocketing visibility of what is probably the scene’s most prolific private tracker, I am a bit leery of even using the account. Honestly, the whole nature of trackers and IPs and whatnot is scary to me – but the content is just sooo good. I suppose I’ll use it, y’know, here and there…

Until tomorrow, then. Look for Halloween candids later in the week as I get downloads from various cameras. Goodnight.

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self-centered focus disorder


Monday and I’m wishing I had some more time off, work is not sitting well with me of late. I’m depressed by how much stupidness goes on there, sometimes that happens. I waffle between one strategy where I master the politics and bullshit and just ride the wave, and another strategy where I try to “fix” things and make things better – and sometimes I get torn between the two and feel… ineffective… or something. Also, sometimes I just get discouraged, need a vacation, need time to do nothing.

I get these irrational peaks of emotion, where I just sit at my desk thinking about how much I’d rather be at home with Sharaun and Keaton, or how I wish it was Thanksgiving or Christmas and I was with friends and family. Sometimes, when this happens, I get an almost uncontrollable urge to “run,” to just get up and go. I can’t explain it really, it’s like I just get this sudden influx of what’s important in life and I want to go be with those things instead of at work. Sometimes these peaks align with particularly busy or hectic times at work, which is logical being that those are the times when a body’s mind would naturally turn to things more enjoyable – but other times they happen quite randomly, seemingly unprovoked.

Anyway, this morning at work I had one of those… and I wanted nothing more than to run away from it all. Get in a car with Sharaun and Keaton and head somewhere quiet, turn off the phone, lock the doors – hole up with what really matters.

You’d think one paragraph would be enough to cover that, right? But no, I think I’ll continue. I often get these mental interrupts when executing on a task, and I’d almost always classify them as “selfish.” What I mean by that is, when I’m doing something that’s anything less than exactly what I want to be – I’m frequently interrupted by thoughts of doing that other preferable thing. Typically these thoughts aren’t enough to derail whatever I’m doing, but they can certainly add delay.

Thing is, there are precious few times where I’m actually completely content doing what I’m doing, where my mind isn’t racing thinking about other things I could be doing instead. I wonder sometimes if this kind of thing is normal, or if it isn’t some kind of ADD-thing. I’ve long come to terms with my own selfish nature – and have pretty much stopped feeling ashamed when I want to abandon one thing for a different one that makes me happier or serves me better – I’m just a dick that way. I guess, whatever it is that finds me sidetracked so often, it doesn’t really wreck things for me – I function OK despite, so that’s good.

Maybe I’ll coin a new disorder or something: SCFD (Self-Centered Focus Disorder); symptoms include always wanting to do what you want to do.

Pavement’s newly reissued and expanded Wowee Zowee: Sordid Sentinals Edition leaked the other day, and I’ve been spending a good bit of time examining all the Zowee-era goodies that I’ve never heard before. Some good stuff on there, from what was a landmark album to me – the album that truly got me interested in the indie-rock sound. Several tracks are ones I used to have on various singles, but haven’t heard in a long time – and some are just brand new or live. I’ll be honest though, I never have been a huge fan of live Pavement… but there’s some interesting stuff on here. Particularly intriguing are a couple versions of cuts which are labelled as “recorded in Holland” and are significantly different from their previous incarnations (albeit for some reason centered far to the left of the stereo image).

Before I go, I did manage to get some pictures up for this week’s installment of Keaton-in-pictures. Check ’em out here. Goodnight.