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winner winner (and a chicken dinner (for real))

Good Monday to ya, online friends.  Hope your Easter weekend was relaxing and whatnot; ours was.

For her birthday Keaton got a “toddler cookbook” from friends.  It has a small selection of fun recipes which kids can help with.  Since she and I have a history of enjoying cooking and baking together, we’ve been anxious to try it out.  So on Saturday morning we paged through looking for something to cook for Sharaun that evening.  We settled on cheesy bread rolls, which we’d serve as an appetizer, and chicken satay skewers, which would be our entree.  We told mom we’d be cooking dinner and even made up a fancy menu and lavishly set the table.  We went on a shopping trip together for a few ingredients we were short on, and then we set about cooking.

Even though it’s a toddler cookbook, the recipes are fairly demanding in time and prep.  I actually liked it, because Keaton got an idea of how much time can go into creating something yummy.  We did the biscuits from scratch, kneading and rolling the dough by hand and then leaving the rolls to proof while we worked on the chicken.  She learned to how juice a lime, grate ginger, dredge chicken, and even stir a sauce while simmering.  She also learned that the cheesy bread roll sheet is hot when it comes out of the oven, and you get burned if you touch it (a good lesson, despite of, or maybe in owed to, the pain).  Anyway, it was a truly fun thing to do together and, as much as dad’s opinion counts, the cookbook was far and away her best birthday gift.

If your eyes work and you feel like it, you can check out some pictures of the fine dining and prepwork just below.  Despite  her apparent absence, Sharaun was indeed the guest of honor and was there… she somehow just managed to stay out of any photographic evidence.

[nggallery id=39]

OK let us move along.

Ever since I told Sharaun that Black Eyed Peas tickets weren’t in the budget this month, she’s been on a quest to win them from the radio.  Her track record here is quite good, so I was pretty sure she’d actually end up scoring them.  She called all day long all week long, and I suffered an entire Saturday listening over and over and over again to same stinking seven songs that the stupid radio has in heavy rotation while she tried and tried again.  She even enlisted me to help, and I’d dial and hangup and dial and hangup and dial and hangup right alongside her when she’d hear the cue to call.  In the end, though, around 11:30pm that day, she (of course) did win the tickets.  I half wish the lottery did call-in shows; I’m reasonably confident she could win us millions if they only gave it away over the phone…

Check out her winning moment below:

[audio:sharaun_wins_again.mp3]

When she decides she’s going to win, she wins.
(direct link for those on mobile devices without Flash)

I really should start keeping an index of things that are given away this way… and have her start doing it more strategically… I think we’d have to start claiming winnings on our taxes.

Goodnight.

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triumphant

Good evening internet. Hope your week is winding down well.

Last night Sharaun realized midway through preparing the fajitas for dinner that we had no sour cream. To me this would have been fine. Yes the integrity of the resultant sour cream-less fajitas would most certainly be compromised, but what can a body do when there’s no sour cream in the house? It’s not like I have time to maybe wait for some regular cream to go sour, so I made my peace. Sharaun, however, couldn’t abide the situation. Deciphering her complicated series of pointed exhales and sighs, Keaton and I made a quick run to the store; or, as quick as is possible with Keaton along, she really wanted to accompany me. We came home triumphant, and had fajitas to celebrate.

I sat and stared at this page most nights this week and nothing ever came. Over and over again all I could bring to mind were thoughts of work. Work. It’s been consuming me lately. Tonight I got home late and sat and worked even after that. I had to forcefully turn off my brain and get disconnected enough to read some Hobbit with Keaton. Even now as I write this last paragraph about not being able to write just so I have something to write, I’m distracted.

I had a meeting this morning with a co-worker near London. It was his Thursday evening as we spoke and he told me he was readying for the Easter holiday, where they are off Friday and Monday for a four-day weekend. Man I wish we got an Easter holiday. I could use a four-day weekend about now.

Goodnight.

Posted on

a hobo’s feast

Monday was a good day.  Got a lot done and did a lot too.  Listened to some music tonight while Sharaun watched TV.

Viewed from the outside, I imagine that scene (the one with me listening to music and Sharaun watching TV) must look terribly dysfunctional.  Here’s a couple who are simply sharing the same habitat.  The male isolates himself behind headphones and writes while the female watches people dance on television and surfs Facebook on her phone.  Like a case study on avoidance or something.  Not so, though.  It was just for a couple songs… and then we were back talking about how sad we are that Keaton is not feeling well.

Around 3am last night Keaton came wandering into our bedroom sniffling.  Through stifled sobs she told Sharaun she’d had a bad dream about some stairs that climbed up into the sky, or something like that.  Sharaun pulled her into the bed between us and she snuggled up next to me.  Putting my forehead against hers I noticed right away that she was burning up.  Sharaun grabbed the thermometer and she clocked in at 101°.  A quick gulp of Tylenol later and she was fast asleep.  The fever stuck around all day, hanging right near that 100° mark and peaking after dinner at 103°.  Poor thing; she’s so quiet and sweet when she’s sick.  She’s passed out on the couch right now while Sharaun watches some television and I write.

It’s supposed to rain this week.  Starting tonight, even.  As much as I like rain I was getting used to the sun and blue sky and warming temperatures.  Sunday we had some friends over for a barbecue.  The spring’s inaugural.  I cooked way too many (too much?)  beans… I always do.  So tonight we had beans for dinner.  No kidding; just beans with little pieces of leftover meat cut up and thrown inside and the whole mess heated in a pan.  It was like a hobo’s feast; a bowl of beans and meat with bread for dipping. I love leftovers; feels like free food.

Goodnight.

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dwarves & princesses & castles

This week I started reading The Hobbit to Keaton before bedtime at night.

It’s something I’ve been looking forward to for a while.  I loved the book when I was a kid but I haven’t read it since highschool.  I’m willing to admit that she’s likely a little young still to really comprehend the story completely… but I’d talked to her about “someday” reading it together and she wouldn’t let it go.  And, actually, so far she seems to be managing decently.

She asks questions and knows which characters are doing what.  She knows a bunch of dwarves showed up at Bilbo’s house, along with a wizard, and that they did some singing (for which dad dutifully invented a tune and actually sung) and some talking about adventures.  She knows Bilbo doesn’t like adventures and isn’t a burglar.

Every night we start our fifteen minutes of reading with a thirty second recap of where we left off the night before.  She was thrilled that, within the first ten pages or so, they mentioned dwarves and princesses and castles.  “I didn’t know The Hobbit had princesses, Dad!”

I’m hoping that as we get into the book she has enough retention to enjoy it.

And hey, “worst” case we read it all over again in a couple years.

Goodnight.

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the uh-oh squad

Wow.  Four days and four entries.  Amazing.  Tons of media today.  Let’s go.

Oh before I get started, remember that health care thing I wrote about a few days ago?  If you’re old enough to remember 1993, the year the GOP put forward their own health care overhaul legislation, you might find this link interesting.  It compares the major provisions of the GOP’s 1993 bill to the recently passed “Obamacare” bill (and the Republicans’ 2010 counter to Obamacare, just for completeness).  For such a small amount of consolidated data, I found it pretty enlightening.

Work this week saw me delivering annual reviews to the troops.  Even though it’s not inherently negative in nature, the whole “performance review”  thing is a downer in general.  People always want more than you’re able to give, whether they truly deserve it or just feel like they do… and you’re never able to do as much good as you’d ultimately like to.  It’s no fun being the guy that makes people feel like crap.  Tuesday was the day for me and it was a long one.  I called a fellow manager around 4:30pm, after delivering my last review, and said simply, “I’m done.  Meet me at the bar.”

Although I’m not done… still another few to go for remote folks or those traveling or whatever.  Bringin’ me down man, bringin’ me way down.  I’ll be glad when time heals the wounds and we can get back to execution.

Speaking of getting back to execution, here we go.

The other day Keaton was in her bedroom for “quiet time” – we don’t get naps anymore but she still gets an hour to hour-and-a-half of “quiet time” in the afternoon – and she was being anything but quiet.  She was back there singing to herself.  Now while this is a violation of quiet time rules, I had to let it got for a little bit so I could sneak up to the door and surreptitiously record her with my phone.  Have yourself a listen:

[audio:109thefish.mp3]

Keaton at “quiet time”
(direct link for those on mobile devices without Flash)

Funny thing about the radio call-phrase she mimics at the end there.  “The Fish” is a local christian radio station.  I hardly think they were playing the Black Eyed Peas or a song about being “a little drunk” at 2am and needing someone.

At work they have this new program where they offer you cash incentives to do some “health and wellness” stuff.  They’ll draw your blood and run your numbers and you fill out surveys about how often you poop and how many beers you drink each week.  Then you meet with a “health coach” and they tell you to go to the gym and eat less bacon.

Now, I know this sounds all 1984 and whatnot, and I’m sure they’re just using the data to bucket me into some “risk bracket” to determine the optimal time to let me go (i.e. before I kick the bucket per their statistical “when’s he gonna die” model).  Anyway, I didn’t come here to write about that (although I’m apparently sacrificing a full entry).  I came to write about sitting in the waiting room.

While I was sitting in the waiting room (my health coach needs a punctuality coach) I picked up a book to try and pass some time.  The book was called 301 Ways to Have Fun at Work.  Being a manager and all, I figured I might actually learn something I could apply at work.  Oh man was I wrong.  The foolishness of this book was indescribable.  If anyone, ever, anywhere did this stuff at work…  And when I got to this page, I just had to take a picture since no one would actually believe me:

If someone brought me this idea in all seriousness, I would try my hardest to fire them.  Fire.

Goodnight.

Posted on

squeezing the balloon

Hi internet.  How’re ya doin’?  Good.

This past weekend Sharaun and I decided we’d use Saturday as a “spring cleaning” day.  With the new baby on the way I suppose we are both getting a little “nesty.”  The plan goes like this: 1) clean out our 3rd bedroom, which is currently serving as Keaton’s “toy room,” 2) get a new “big girl” bedroom set for Keaton, complete with bed, dresser and some more storage in the way of bookshelves and likely a toychest or something, 3) move Keaton’s existing convertible crib/bed and changing-table/dresser into the now empty toy room.  As the toy room is currently bursting, however, we practiced the art of reduction quite liberally first before any of this musical furniture business could begin.

What’s more, there are things in the toy room that aren’t toys (at least not Keaton’s toys) which’ll need a new home.  Take for example dad’s Pac Man cabinet… or the bookshelf full of books and CDs and DVDs… all that had to go somewhere.  The plan for this was also multi-phase.  Again we began by simplifying and donating everything we could part with from the bookshelf, including the bookshelf itself, and old Wal Mart job we’d had since moving here.  After that the Pac Man machine moves into the family room, where it fits almost-like-it-was-planned tucked away into a little cubby intended for an in-wall entertainment cabinet.  Problem is there’s currently a huge old-school tube TV in there right now, so that’ll have to go.  That means dad gets to get a new slim, small HDTV which’ll get mounted above the cabinet (a nice bonus).  Alongside both the Pac Man machine and TV will go some shelves to hold the few books, DVDs and CDs we’ve deemed keepers.  The homeless tube TV and it’s cheap Wal Mart stand also go to charity.

In our modest home any “cleaning” that doesn’t involve a good deal of stuff-elimination is something like squeezing a balloon: you might reduce the size of the part you’re focused on but you’re really just moving the problem around and inflating another part.  And to you “Dave you’re gonna break down and buy a bigger house” naysayers I’m happy to say that my focus (stubbornness) on not up-sizing to accommodate a collection of things we don’t really need (not counting the new baby) remained strong even throughout the trying exercise of finding places to put more things than we have places for.  Shockingly, for the time being Sharaun shares my staying-put mentality – also in the face of the same “where are we going to put this?!” frustration.

I mean, I’ve been so successful at sticking to my guns on things like this in the past… what could go wrong?

Goodnight.

Posted on

tied together

Happy Tuesday.

I wrote nearly a week’s worth of entries this past weekend and set them all up to auto-post each successive day this week.  See, I already know this week is going to be hectic at work (and not at work) and figured this would work best.  Here’s today’s bits.

The other morning on the way to work the day’s burgeoning weather was so inviting I rolled down all the windows in the car.  It was only a few minutes before I realized I had been a bit over-zealous in my enthusiasm, as the sun hadn’t quite had a chance to warm the morning chill and it really wasn’t, after all, windows-down weather just yet.

Too stubborn to admit this even to myself, however, I continued on in goose-pimpled protest, attempting to project a face of “What?  You think it’s odd all my windows are down and it’s in the low 50s?  It’s you that has the problem, then” to the other drives eying me sideways.  And since we all know that windows-down driving only feels right when accompanied by ear-splitting grooves, I cranked the stereo and isolated myself from any sound other than what blared from the speakers.

Half way to work a bird broke from the shrubbery in the median, perhaps spooked by my deafening music but more likely just the routine approach of a vehicle.  As he climbed from his hiding place on the ground he paced me perfectly, gliding low at first and then slowly adjusting his pitch to come near level with my head alongside the window.  Here we are both traveling at something over forty miles and hour in near perfect lock-step and it was like I could just turn my and look over and say “Hey, what’s up bird?”  We were that well-matched.

It was only for a second, though, before he took a stiff turn away from the vehicle and slowed steeply to land again, presumably until the next car came along.  For some reason that brief moment of unison spoke to me.  Machine and nature, tied together on an invisible string or something.

Goodnight.