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yeah, take that commies

Sitting on the couch writing on a Tuesday night.  I’m a bit more accustomed to the new room and setup, but all the changes really did throw me off my game.  Too much other than nightly writing to think about, I suppose.  Anyway…

This particular Tuesday was a fitting “makeup day” for yesterday’s work-shirking marathon HDTV install excursion.  I worked hard at work, and came home and worked hard again.  We’re in something of a “cleanup” mode around here in expectation of my folks visiting later this week (shoot, which is tomorrow as you read this, actually).

After last week’s stupid-expensive buying frenzy, I had piled the “spare” room high with empty cardboard cartons and styrofoam.  I had to bust out the carpet knife and do some serious box breaking-down, reminding me of my old days in the fast-food industry (you really got chewed out if you didn’t break down boxes before putting them in the dumpster, let me tell you).  Anyway, in the end it all fit, and the garbage man will magically whisk it all away come his appointed day.

Yesterday, as Keaton and I were playing in the living room, the doorbell rang.  Opening the door, there before me stood a woman I don’t know and three young girls (one of which I recognized as one of our neighbor’s girls).  The woman introduced herself as another one of our neighbors, from down the street.  And, after I introduced both myself and Keaton, she asked the girl to hand me one of their “fliers” and told me not to worry, that they weren’t selling anything. I unfurled the rolled flier as she spoke:

“My husband and I were talking the other day about how most of us have lived next to each other in this neghborhood for five years or so and we hardly know one another.  We got to thinking, we should get the streets together for the Fourth.  Y’know, we all just drive into the garage, hit the garage door button, and hide inside.  We wanted a chance to hang out and meet everyone and talk, so we’re inviting everyone into the circle at the end of the block for food and fireworks.:”

After telling her what an awesome idea I thought she had, she thanked me and said she hoped to see us there.  I closed the door and mused on how Andy Griffith the whole thing was, and then considered how much I loved that fact.  Also, I took pause to consider the “guts” it would take to put yourself out there like that.  Now, practically, it’s really not that big of a deal – just a casual invite to an informal get-together; but, more than that, it requires us modern-day closeted humans to move out of our comfort zone and meet strangers.  I have a lot of respect for them for putting it together, and I am really looking forward to getting down with some Mayberry, Ward ‘n’ June, RFD neighborly face-time.

I mean, what better way to beat the terrorists than to gather with your neighbors at the end of the block to eat food, drink beer, watch the kids run around, and shoot off fireworks?  Yeah, take that Commies.

Goodnight friends.

Posted on

to ease my conscience

Know what?  Andy Griffith does look like crap on a 50″ HDTV.  I knew it.  It looks sweet, however, when viewed from DVD on the same said TV.  Too bad I’m, for the most part, too lazy to queue up episodes on DVD versus an episode recorded off TVLand last night.   The poor guy who came to hook up the HD ended up spending five hours of his morning here, and I ended up spending an entire day “working” from home when I didn’t intend to.  Those kind of days always make me feel guilty – when I, for whatever reason, can’t focus on work; like I’m stealing a paycheck.  Guess I’ll have to work double-hard tomorrow to ease my conscience.

The other day I happened upon a backup copy of the Microsoft Access database I wrote and used to manage all the CD trading and selling I used to do back in college and through into our early California years.  I’d long ago password protected the thing, just because I was worried it would be a treasure trove of evidence against me should I ever find myself prosecuted.  And, of course, I promptly forgot the password.  Over the years I’ve tried a couple times to brute-force my way into the thing, casting my mind back to passwords of yore, but I’ve never been successful.  I don’t know why I want to look at it, I just do.  Then, the other day, when I randomly came across the thing, I decided, also randomly, to try one of my modern “stronger” passwords on it.  Surprisingly, it opened right up.

Once inside this thing it was like a walk down memory lane, with names from the past and a regular timeline of when I acquired all my best illicit discs.  Not to mention a running record of all the monetary exchanges I made back in my “copies of rare discs for money” days.  For kicks, I cut all the money I was paid out of Access and into Excel, where I could sum it.  Imagine my shock when I found that, between January 1999 and September 2002, I apparently made a whopping ~$7,000 selling burned CDs.  Wow.  And, of course, I reported all this income on my 1999, 2000, 2001, and 2002 income tax returns – as any dutiful citizen of this great nation would and should.  Crazy, right?

In other news, the smoke that hung thick over our city last week has finally blown away, and has been replaced with blue skies and warm weather; Keaton’s still keeping her “big girl panties” dry; and my head still isn’t “into” writing.  I’ve just been too consumed during the day to think about writing.  I’m sorry, maybe it’ll work itself out by tomorrow.  For now, though, this is all I have.

Goodnight.

Posted on

like a switch flipped

Sunday night, home from an afternoon winetasting in Napa and Sharaun and I just rearranged the furniture to suit the new TV room.  Tomorrow the HDTV guy comes… so I’ll have fully jumped off this bridge after he leaves.  What’s interesting, our monthly bill actually went down by switching to an HD package.  I dunno.  I told Ben last week that my emotional state after dropping the dosh on the new TV was something like a 60/40 mixture of glee and doubt.  I mean, I love the thing, and I spent a lot of time researching it and all that… but it’s still a purchase a couple notches above size I deem “recreational.”  Anyway, let’s get a move on.

The news in our world this weekend is all about Keaton and potty training.  Sometime late Thursday, she just made up her mind that she’d be potty trained.  We were eating dinner with some friends, and she asked to use the potty four or five times, keeping her diaper dry the entire evening.  The next day, Sharaun IM’d me around 11am at work to inform me that she’d been wearing “big girl panties” since she woke up and hadn’t had a single accident.  And, amazingly, it’s been like that now since Thursday – no accidents and no diapers.  It’s like a switch flipped.  We’re hoping this is it, and are both pretty happy at how sudden it came about.

I’m looking forward to the abbreviated work week this week.  My folks come into town Thursday night and I plan to spend at least one day congregated around the grill cooking some meat and drinking some beer while Keaton plays in the sprinklers.  I think we’ll go down to the city to watch the fireworks.  Should be a good time.

Man, blogging from this couch in this new room is really messing up my routine.  This new arrangement is really gonna have to grow on me… so, until I get a little more comfortable – I’m outta here.  Catch you guys Tuesday, have a good Monday.

Posted on

for five hours

Hi friends, happy Tuesday to ya.

The smoke around our burg is even thicker and heavier and nastier than yesterday.  The news says to keep the kids inside or their lungs might bleed.  OK, they didn’t say that – but it’s really bad out there.  The sunlight is all brown and orange and muted and hollow, and everything smells like a smoldering swamp.  We’re wreathed by fire, so say the headlines.  “Fire season,” apparently.  There’s actually a season for that, I guess.

Work was busy today.  Got a lot done, felt accomplished.  Even still, I found time to call and reserve wilderness permits for our planned John Muir Trail “redo” later this summer.  That’s right, in the face of the weather-forced failure Anthony and I had last year, we decided we wanted to have another go at finishing up what we missed last time  So, early in September Anthony and I, with the happy addition of Ben and Erik, will be setting out from our stopping point last time and finishing up the half-through hike.  The idea being that we can maybe complete the entire trail like this in pieces over time, maybe even finishing up in 2009.

Anyway, the acquisition of passes makes it all the more real to me, and I’m tremendously excited about spending five days on the trail hiking through the Sierra backcountry.  Not too long from now, I’ll be posting a detailed day-by-day itinerary similar to what I did last time around here, so those with more than a passing interest can checkout our intended route.  I’m just  elated that we’ve secured the trailhead and are now concrete in our plans.  It’s hard to think that it’s only a couple months off.  With luck, we’ll miss any early snows this time around.

You know, my job sometimes affords me the opportunity to listen to quite a bit of music.  And, on days when there are few meetings (it’s typically a rarity, but today was one such day), I can basically spend my time permanently be-headphoned while I write e-mails or draft PowerPoints or excel at Excel.  Today, I felt like I got to listen to a ton of music.  So, I decided to go back and take a peek at the iPod to see exactly what all had graced my ears.  And, turns out it was easy enough to copy/paste that list out of iTunes – so I decided I’d share it here (for whatever reason).  May I then present to you: What I heard, June 24, 2008:

Started out the day giving that new Wolf Parade album another spin before I switched to my typical random-listening use model.  Some good stuff in there, eh?

Not sure you’re as fast or accurate with figurin’ as I am, but see if you don’t sum that righthand column and get pert near five hours of listening.  Yeah?  Wow, that’s a lot of music for one day I’d say.  When I was in school, I used to dream of a job where I could listen to music all day as I worked.  And, looking at that list, it sure looks like my wish came true.  (Now, to just sit back and wait to meet Tiffany Amber Thiessen and win the lottery…)

Well, that’s about it for tonight.  I’m gonna try and get another set of pictures posted to Keaton’s gallery shortly here (I’m about a month behind).  Keep an eye out for that, OK?  OK.

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all ugly bruise-yellow

Hey y’all.

Totally Monday here, and the smoke around Ourtown, CA is stinky and so thick it makes the sunshine come through all ugly bruise-yellow.  The news said I shouldn’t go outside, as the air was bad to breath.  Let’s think on that: The air is bad to breath.  Where can I run?

As I walked to my car after work and looked off into the hazy distance, I tired to imagine this place void of all modern construction: Rolling foothills of mostly grass and dotted with trees and loose rocks of all sizes.  I pictured a tribe of Native Americans encamped in one of those copses of trees, maybe near a small stream or decent hunting – and tried to imagine what the blanket of rank smoke would have meant to them.  Move; maybe.  Pick up stakes; fire is coming.  Check which way the wind is blowing and throw the kids in their papooses and head right along with it.  Life sure is easier when you can hit the grocery store with a rock from your couch.

I worked a little bit tonight on setting up a blog for Sharaun.  See, she’s been asking me for a while if she can have a blog (she reads some other “mom blogs” I frequent).  She’s not sure she’d be diligent enough to write regularly, but I figured I’d set something up for her and let her play around to see if she likes it.  She mostly wants to tell stories about, and post pictures of, Keaton.  Secretly, I think this would be awesome – and I kinda wish she’d decide to do it.  Anyway, once she’s up and running I’ll see about getting a link here on my  blog so you can check her out.

Gosh.  I just have nothing left to write.  I was so happy it was cool enough to open up the house last night after the sun went down – then I remembered the smoke.  I did it anyway.

Saving money.  Goodnight.

Posted on

jailbreak!

Sunday afternoon ’round about four o’clock and Radiohead has shuffled up on the iPod.  I just got done doing dishes and wiping down the counters and kitchen table (an extended Dead jam provided the sonic backdrop whilst I Cinderella’d).  Sharaun’s out in the hammock sunning and Keaton’s asleep.  What better time to crack the top on a Hefeweizen and sit down on the couch to tome (yeah, I verbized it).

It was a busy weekend, and it felt extra long, I think because I flew in on Friday and went straight to socializing, I remember I couldn’t stop feeling like it was Saturday night as we sat and played Euchre.  Maybe that’s the trick: get your brain to think it’s the next day, and then you get a “bonus” day each weekend.  Don’t know how to reproduce it, though, aside from the fog of traveling – and I don’t like the tradeoff.  So I guess I’ll just settle for the standard two-day weekends I’ve come to know and cherish… as there really the only sanctioned escape we get, eh?  Right.  Moving on.

For this next paragraph, I’ll ask you to recall a blog from not that long ago, where I wrote right here on sounds familiar about my “fear” concerning Keaton eventually learning to baby-Houdini her way out of her Pack ‘N’ Play.  Do you indeed recall, my dear reader?  You guys even commented on it.  Well, some of you guys (gals, whatever).  Still no?  It’s OK, I’ll link the thing right here and you can go refresh yoself.  Yoself refreshed?  OK then.

Well, going back for a moment to that Friday night I kept thinking was Saturday earlier this weekend (remember, you just read it) – it happened.  Yup.  As I cast my memory back over the past couple evenings, lemme see if I can set the scene for y’all.  We had gathered with a small group of friends at one of their houses to play some cards and hang out, and Sharaun had just put Keaton down to bed in her Pack ‘N’ Play in one of their spare rooms.  It was a hard-fought bedtime to begin with, as our friends have two young kids as well and one big playroom which bulges with toys – each one of them new and exciting for Keaton, not to mention the chance to play with other kids.  But Sharaun put up a valiant fight, singing our little angel into droopy eyes and metered deep breathing, sneaking out the door with a the loud smack of an air-kiss and a “Goodnight Keaton.”

And, with her down and quiet, we broke out the cards and began the first hand.  Cards were dealt, the girls bid six diamonds, the guys, one by one around the table, passed.  Cards came out, tricks were taken, and a good time was being had by all.  Then, out of nowhere, I see a little crop of blonde hair bouncing up the two flights of stairs towards where we were seated.  “Hey mommy look I woke up!,” smiled our triumphant baby.  “How the…,” Sharaun and I asked, looking at each other.  And then it hit me: She figured out how to climb free of the confines of the Pack ‘N’ Play.  Horror of horrors: She’s mobile.  (Well, to be brutally honest, as a dad, I was actually a little proud that she’d managed to climb out – that she was big and strong enough and not too scared to do it, but don’t tell Sharaun that).

Sharaun was not happy, and she scooped up babygirl without even giving me a chance to give her a second goodnight kiss to transport her back to bed.  After another ten minutes or so, she returned, lamenting that Keaton still wasn’t “having it.”  And, another five minutes after that – as we’d barely gotten into our second hands – she came trotting up the stairs once again.  Our friends laughed, and I had to just a little too (and again, her having done it second time only made me more proud because she could reproduce the feat).  I asked her, “Keaton, how did you get out of your Pack ‘N’ Play?”  “Because I wanted to play,” she answered, mishearing or misunderstanding the question.  “Yes, I know you want to play, but it’s time to sleep now baby.  Did you climb out of your Pack ‘N’ Play?”  “Yeah,” she answered, unconcerned as to whether it was “sleep time” or not.

In the end, we put her down in the crib our friends had setup in another room in preparation for their coming third.  She finally ended up hitting the sack then, but it was lucky the crib was there.  Funny enough, the next night saw us out socializing again and I put her down in the Pack ‘N’ Play with nary an issue (OK, she fought me on the sleep thing just a bit, but what two-year old doesn’t?).  So, I think she just wanted us to know that she can get out – if she wants to.  Well played Keaton, well played.  Man I love that little girl.

Goodnight fevers and dreams, goodnight lovers.