Don't read today's post.

Except... um, nope. Nothing interesting. If i think really hard...

Okay, i thought of something interesting. Today at work, i wrote out the number one googol. That's a one followed by one hundred zeroes. Actually, i wrote one hundred googol, since i started with a one and then a comma, and thirtyfour triplets of zeroes. That's a big number. As we all learned in my essay about probability, there's not even a googol atoms in the universe. It's crazy that we can write down a number that represents such a ridiculously stunning concept.

I also sang Praise You by Fatboy Slim for karaoke night. I pretended like i was dying, trying to sing the "shouuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu" part without breathing. The kids said i turned purple. SWEET!!! And now i'm off to clean the kitchen! Listening to my mp3 player! SWEET!!! AGAIN!!!

sorry, say i

I went to work this morning, but my boss sent me home after a couple hours because i was feeling gross. I think it was out of compassion and a desire to see her staff not get more sick from persevering at work when sleeping in bed would make more sense. Not because i was sitting with my head down on the kitchen counter ignoring the kids. I don't think i was ignoring the kids, at least.

So then i came home and told Karen that i was sorry about five times before she said "You always say that when you're feeling sick." I always hug her a lot too when i'm sick, but usually she's standing up when i do that. So i spent nearly all day in bed sleeping. I guess the reason i say "sorry" is that i'd naturally want to spend all day in bed sleeping due to the fact that we have three young kids and are therefore tired always... but of course there's always food to prepare, diapers to change, and messes to clean up, so Karen and i both do what needs to be done with cheerful, energetic willingness. Or something like that. But yeah... sorry, Karen, for sleeping all day. I'll try to do more than my share tomorrow.

Techmology

As i was driving home today, i thought about how totally cool my car is. I mean, it's really complex, with pistons whizzing up and down in the cylinders, coolant rushing around to keep the burning gasoline from melting stuff, oil lubricating the works, the power going through shafts and gears in the transmission, the tires getting all kinds of abuse from Michigan's terrible roads without complaining, the suspension and steering systems keeping the car comfortable and in control... it's totally amazing that it works so flawlessly and i pay so little attention to it. I rely on it without even thinking about it. Of course it'll work tomorrow morning when i need to go to work!

And airplanes? They have these long aluminum tubes with wings glued (mostly) to the sides, with turbofan jet engines which spin stupidly fast, and burn some kind of hydrocarbon to toss themselves through the air, for amazing distances. There's countless airliners doing twelve hour flights right now, over the arctic, over the vast open water of the Pacific, over continents in a single trip... it astonishes me.

But you know what? We achieved that kind of reliability and performance back in the seventies. There's not been any huge improvements to airliners or cars in my lifetime. What has improved vastly in my lifetime is computers, and of course the level of automation allowed by computers has improved all areas of manufacturing and design, so cars and airliners are cheaper to build and better overall... but they're not as good as you'd expect them to be if you compare what they would have looked like 34 years before i was born - back in 1938.

So my biggest question about this is: will computers reach some kind of maturity and stop improving? Yes? No? When? If anyone actually cares, i have a good theory as to why they won't.

Mmmm, friends

It's been years of Juanito-Time since i posted a picture of myself on my blog, so there you go. It's blurry.

Today was the day where Travis and Brooke visited! An awesome bonus of the Christmas season is getting to see friends who happen to be passing through. You know, to visit more important people. Or whatever. Houston and Katrina LOVE Travis and Brooke, and it's no wonder. I've never m[et a couple people so uninhibited with being totally silly, and getting way down to just exactly how they want to play. It's so cute. Here's Katrina showing with her face how much she adores Brooke. Here's a video of how fun Uncle Travis is too.

And they stayed late (but not as late as Sam) and i'm gonna be tired again tomorrow. One cannot help but wonder if we parents of young children are cosmically destined to be tired. Hmm, i wonder. Oh yeah, and like Karen mentioned in her blog, the LeapFrog globe is [popup:olives_again.jpg:a hugely fun party game::1:inline]]. But i bet if you were one of the "Nigeria... isn't that right by Nicaragua?" people, you'll be frustrated at first. But your knowledge will grow by... oh geez, what's that called? Somethings and bounds. The Leap Frog Explorer lets your knowledge grow by ______ and bounds.

And readers from the future: today is when President Ford, Grand Rapids' Native Son died. He was 93. A man full of years.

Wanna box? As in, -ing day?

Heh - that's one of my famous jokes. Without the "-ing day part", of course. Replace that part with hiding a box behind one's self, hopping back and forth with your head down, and presenting it to your joke-ee at the proper comedically timed moment - just as they are looking confused at the prospect of actually boxing with you.

I should be a comedy teacher, i tell ya!

Okay, so today was totally, amazingly relaxing, but not because we didn't do anything. Oh no, we did plenty of stuff. We had Sam and Shelbi over for a very pleasant visit, and we cleaned the house. Mostly at the same time. You know, usually when you have six four-and-unders in the house, the guests leave with the place trashed. Well, that was partially true today (we had an incident with polystyrene foam bead packaging which was ripped apart like an enraged wild hog rips apart the underbrush), but the house was less trashed than when they arrived! It was horrible before. Luckily, Sam and Shelbi are high on Juanito's Continuum of Friend Familiarity, which means when they're coming over, i don't even worry about the house being clean. Paradoxically, our neighbor Corbyn is apparently on the top of the JCoFF. When he comes over, i don't even bother to put pants on.

Oh yeah... it was relaxing because there was nothing hanging over my head that i needed to get done.

Houston played with his radio controlled car. It's broken, of course, because the battery compartment front is flimsy plastic, which broke upon a hefty front end impact, allowing the battery pack to shoot forward into the interior of the car and rip the antenna lead from the circuit board. I'm gonna fix it tomorrow - my soldering iron is at work. Katrina screamed from gleeful fright when the car came too close to her. Aww, she's cute. And i gotta be at work in six stupid hours. Someday i'll get some sleep. Maybe the day after tomorrow. 'Till then, it's lots of coffee, i suppose. Karen got me Starbucks espresso beans, so that's not a bad thing.

Merry Christmas!

You know, we opened our family presents yesterday, so that made today a lot more relaxed, besides the whole thing with spending half of the day over at my in-laws' house, and cooking the "fancy vegetables" that Karen promised. Lemme tell you, the stuffed mushrooms (recipe: pull stems out of clean mushrooms, chop finely with garlic, bread crumbs, smoked oysters, softened butter, parmesan cheese, put mixture back into mushrooms and sprinkle with mozzarella and bake) were totally amazingly awesome. I ate six. Or seven or eight. I think Karen and her mom ate most of the rest, and the more adventuresome of Karen's family (for many, even eating food with mushrooms as an ingredient is Not Done) tried one or two. Now that is my idea of a successful food item to take to a party. Seriously, mushrooms are one of my favorite foods. Partially because you can take any tiny bit of a mushroom - the comb, the stem, the cap - and taste it, and it'll all taste the same. The textures will be different, but the taste will be identical. Cool.

And the poor neglected sibling "fancy vegetable" zucchini sauteed in garlic and olive oil - lightly but over very high heat - with spaghetti sauce was also a moderate hit with everyone besides me, Karen and her mom. Oh, and Jackie - she loves zucchini.

Anyway, i'm totally off the track of what i wanted to talk about. Which was... um... well, Christmas, i suppose. Hanging out with the family is so great. I think Karen and i are incredibly blessed to have in-laws on both sides who we really love, and (much more remarkably) get along with, and even like! It rocks. So the focus today wasn't so much materialism, it was more relationships and community. Or maybe i'm fooling myself? I know Houston and Katrina got some pretty amazing toys.

Another thing Karen and i were speculating about was what stuff was like for Jesus. Was it actually disorienting for Jesus to depart from his Father and be human? Fully human? Like, from omnipotent supreme being to cell. Hey, lookit me, i'm a zygote? Is that what happened? Infancy involves astonishing quantities of selfishness, right? Like, Zane is so self centered that he thinks that when he turns his head, he's adjusting the orientation of the universe. Surely this narcissism would be sinful in an adult, so was Jesus selfish like that? The bible says Jesus grew in stature and wisdom. So he always knew he was God, right? But he's God, and nobody else is. Talk about being different. How did he "come out"? "Um... mom... I'm, you know... God." Mary and Joseph had some angelic pep talks, so this most-unusual-of-coming-outs might not have been so shocking, but how about his friends? Well, it's fun to contemplate.

Tomorrow we have a messy house to clean, and a lot of older toys to store in the basement. Maybe we'll wrap them for next year... see if the kids forget.

Hi Sam!!!

Okay, so my friend Sam visited! Just the other day Karen and i were lamenting the fact that we can't ever hang out with our friends and talk until, like, three in the morning. Well, Sam came over and we hung out and talked (and made micro-nativity scenes out of veneer plywood and Sculpey) until, well, 2:30am, and it was super great. But there's kids upstairs with their little bioclocks ticking away until the time when we all have to be awake and functioning. Aaah, memories of what it was like being kidless. We had more money than we knew what to do with (it's all gone, and i don't know what we did with it - see what i mean?) and enough spare time to sink a cantaloupe.

Today we opened presents with our family. I was pretty worried that Houston and Katrina would freak out a huge amount, and reward our giving with all the positive reinforcement of being all awe-struck by their cool gifts, but it wasn't really the case. Katrina, on one hand, gasped with glee every time she'd open anything, which was nice. She's so cute. Houston, on the other hand, showed far more impatience than anything else, always wanting to open the next, bigger present. So the pleasure centers of our brains are doing okay - not overstimulated by our kids' bald materialistic glee.

That being said, Katrina LOVED her scissors. She opened them and instantly was off cutting any piece of paper she could find. Houston loves his Hot Wheels cars. And they both love their really big presents - the ones we made. I have pictures around here somewhere... like, in my computer... i suppose i'll have to put them up.

Karen liked her presents. The gift i was most anticipating giving to her is a little motorcycle i made out of paper bags. It's obviously a Ducati Monster, maybe 2002. It took me about thirty hours to do, and i'm totally extremely proud of it. She was like "Aww, cute!" I got several hand tools, which will come in very ha-- ha--... handy* when i'm working on projects in the basement at my new tool bench! I'm looking forward to actually make the railing for our stairs so we don't the only lethal-drop-of-death house in the neighborhood anymore. Won't that be nice. I heard that stairs are where the majority of household injuries and deaths happen, and most injuries and deaths happen in the house, so my solution is to spend as much time as possible running around in the street outside, and removing our Killer Stairs and putting an extension ladder to the upstairs and basement. Also, i got from Karen, Karen's grandparents, and Jackie, a really sweet "PMP" which could be pronounced "pimp" but is really "Portable Media Player". It plays video, mp3, and can show pictures. I'm gonna enjoy it a lot.

*my favorite way of making corny jokes now is to say the first syllable all breathy and explosive, as though i can hardly keep myself from laughing. That's the effect i was going for in that sentence, not stuttering.

Okay, so that's my post for today. Now i'll edit pictures.
___more___

Not really a post

It's amazingly late, i just finished the Bean Bag Throw Board, which features a red bird, a giraffe, a tiger, a jungle man, and a frog. I think it turned out pretty cute. And now it's time for bed. Oh... the things Karen made are pretty much incredible too. I hope we'll be able to stay awake for opening them tomorrow. I mean, in a few hours.

In which i continue the meme

Oh jeez, i gotta go to the bathroom, and i've got a sleeping Zane on my lap, and i've got a big old project i still need to do for Houston's Christmas present. As soon as i get up, i'll be committed to moving around and getting things done, and my bladder is hurrying me on effectively, so i'll totally do that meme that Karen did yesterday. Lemme start off by saying that i'm a little worried that this won't be as interesting or weird as i'd like. Let's find out together, shall we?

The deal: twelve sentences, the first sentence from the first post of each month, starting January 2006, and ending twenty two days ago.

1. I took a picture today.
2. The big news of today is that i made really good salsa.
3. I'm on a totally fresh installation of WinXP.
4. It's been a couple days without a picture, and Karen and i spent time actually on a "date" thing tonight (i think they're called "date" - it's where you go somewhere together but you don't buy diapers or wipe anyone's nose but your own), so i don't have time to edit a video. [dang - that was long. And so far, these tend toward the mundane, no? I mean, that one was April First! I should have had something funnier to say!]
5. Help me! [May first, Mayday, Karen's birthday, M'aider = help me... heh heh]
6. I actually measured my hair today, and it's only 61mm long.
7. Today i took three kids to an ApologetiX concert hosten[sic] in Wedgwood's gym. [this was pre-Firefox2.0, where spellcheck is now EVERYWHERE!!!]
8. Okay, i'm covered in crawling insects right now, which have stuck to my sweaty skin since i was just rolling around on the grass under our new van looking for where refrigerant is leaking out. [heck yes, that one's a little better. It's still all about ME, darn it.]
9. Awww! A beach picture! [yes, i know, that was two sentences. Can ya blame me? What kind of a sentence is "Awww!"?]
   
10. Earth! It's where we live.
11. My latest entreprenurial dead end (judging by past performance, that is) is to be the VIDEO NINJA! [boy, i'm a regular Nostradamus, ain't i?]
    
12. There's a big long comment on yesterday's post, so check it out if you want... in lieu of anything deep in this post.

There you have it. The year in review. Perhaps as dull as i'd feared. I should have broken the rules and hand picked better sentences from the beginning of each month... and it's not like anyone's obsessed with my life (besides me...) and would have poured through the archives to call me on it.

But... i do have to say that i'm a MUCH happier man than i was last year at this time. Many posts from a year ago have the words "work" and "sucked" in close proximity. It was, as i'm reminded from re-reading myself, kind of horrible. So thank you God for getting me through.

Whoops again...

Okay, so after painting the steps on Katrina's doll house, i decided to come in here and quick type a little weblog post... and that was about an hour and a half ago. I guess i need time to let my brain absorb stuff. Wikipedia! Weird Al! Books! Yeah, i need to turn off the spigot, close my brain, and go to bed. I work early tomorrow, dang it!

What makes me sad a little bit is that i don't spend enough time reading and commenting on the weblogs of my friends. Tomorrow i'll do better. Pshaw!

Keeping on trucking

That's my post title because i'm super tired, but i feel like i NEED to keep working on Katrina's doll house. We'll see. But right now, Beth's over! I'm ignoring them, but they're talking about craft type stuff. And see, i'm a macho man, so i don't need to even dignify conversations like that with my attention. Except i'm actually paying attention - they're talking about punching holes in sheet metal. Hey... that's a pretty macho subject, punching holes in sheet metal.

So... you know the "Keep on trucking!" bumper stickers and shirts and stuff that were popular back in the late seventies? Yeah... that was one of the more conventional pieces of that dude's stuff - his name is Robert Crumb, and his art is really odd. Out there. Graphic. But... i kind of get the sense that he's being taken too seriously. Judging by that Wikipedia article, he's intelligent, a good draftsman, and eccentric. But is he really an artistic genius as the list of famous artists proclaim? What if it's all a con? Maybe some artists are so weird and inaccessible that people read too much into their work, and once a few people with the right credentials start to praise whatever's being done, nobody else wants to say "Hey... i don't get it." Nobody wants to admit that they see a naked Emperor.

Except... i used to think that way about Picasso, with his out of proportion still lifes and non-representational portraits. And now i get it - i see what's so great about the dude. So perhaps if i really got into Crumb, i'd see the "genius" people are talking about. Huh... now that i think about this, i remember a paper i did in college on Robert Mapplethrope, the photographer whose homoerotic works caused such an uproar about the public funding of art back in the nineties. I said that the guy's got a photographer's eye, he's a skilled technician, and he's got a confusing, troubled past. So he takes beautiful pictures of unconventional subjects, but is he an Artist? Does he have Something to Say? No, said i. Juanito, the happy cynic.

Controversial post

Christian asked why i wasn't writing any controversial posts. Well, as i was driving to work, where i ate so much bacon, eggs and french toast that i'm wondering how it is that i don't weigh three hundred pounds (this confusing meal was where Christian asked me the aforementioned question), i was thinking to myself: do i love America? It's a question i've not answered, but the fact that it's a question i'm not immediately answering YES to might strike some as controversial.

...

And now it's nearly one o'clock, so i'm not going to explore those thoughts in the excruciating detail i'd planned... besides to say that we need to define "America" before meaningful answers spring to my neocortex. But even after ruminating on that point, i'm not done pondering.

House

Karen's watching the show House, and i'm fresh from working on Katrina's Doll House. It's sawdusty work down there in our basement, where i have enough tools to do the job and no proper work area. It's okay - i'm kind of proud of my junky old rusty tools which allow me to create pretty cool stuff (while remaining totally, utterly non-square) which got Houston to say: "I think she'll LOVE it!!!" I agree.

Tomorrow i've got lots of stuff to do - team meeting and work and working on the house (procrastinators of the world unite!... later) so i'm gonna go to bed now.

Little dancer

Nobody should be surprised that Katrina loves to dance. There should be no drop in atmospheric pressure due to the collective gasps of shock when this is revealed. That wouldn't happen anyway, because people's chests expand when they breathe in, obviously replacing the volume of air drawn into their lungs. If everyone in a perfectly sealed, perfectly rigid room took a deep breath, held it and tensed their chest muscles squeezing the air they breathed in, i wonder how much they could decrease the air pressure. Could they make someone's ears pop?

That's a question i've often pondered.

Um... Katrina loves to dance. She got to wear tap shoes and dance on a had floor at Auntie Jill's house today. She adored it, and she's got quite a bit of aptitude. She's go "step step step step STOMP STOMP STOMP!" She had a huge grin on her face. Plus steel dust on her face and tights - tap shoes scuff off a little, so all the dancers walked away with gray splotches on their hands and clothes. I used to get steel dust on me all the time when i would weld and grind and cut metal where i used to work. And seriously - Katrina's going to LOVE the book Karen made for her. She's mentioned out of the blue a few times recently how much she loves those special white shoes. I predict it'll be her favorite book.

Which brings me to the whole keeping Christmas not commercial thing. As parents, i know one of my most cherished holiday moments will be the blazing, unfiltered glee which Houston and Katrina will blast our way when (if?) they get that perfect present that they really wanted. And the joy and happiness is so rewarding for us parents, that we very much want to feed that. Giving them toys and stuff is a pretty unambiguous way of showing them that we love them - a message that they can understand instead of the confusing messages kids are sometimes sent "I'm spanking you because i love you". Huh???

So anyway, i think the best way to make this situation a little less bad is to make gifts. I made Karen something cool, and the plan is for me to make something for Houston and Katrina this week... which brings me to the next topic:

GottaGoToSleepNowBye!

Days go by...

There's this video by Dirty Vegas. It's got a neat story, and good dancing, so when Houston wanted to see more dancing that our usual treats of Groove is in the Heart and Weapon of Choice, i slapped that one on him. We talked about the story, and he said "it's sad" that the girl left and didn't come back to be the guy's girlfriend. So i asked Houston what happened to the girl that i loved. I said it was Karen... and he said "She's on the couch!"

Actually, he said "couchie" but that's weird. So then we watched the most amazing break dancer in the entire world, who looks like he's got the bottom half of a skinny short guy and the top half of a huge massive strong tall guy. He ends up being a short massive strong guy who can do pushups without his feet touching the ground.

Finally, after we watched a cartoon featuring Eartha Kitt's voice, and then got the kids in bed, i looked up a video of her. She looks like Yzma. Yep, she looks scary beyond all reason, but in a kind of attractive way. I think she invented that "Rrrrrrrrr" thing that people do to be creepy.

Electroshock Therapy Worked for Me!

I uploaded a couple more t-shirt designs today... which i drew at work... what else is there to do, for serious? The kids are learning about Johnny Tremain and the Stamp Act, hearing things like "Yeah, i guess video games would have been taxed by Imperialist Briton". Sigh.

And, my friend Sam called! We talked for at least an hour. I like that - catching up with old friends. But now, since i work tomorrow morning, it's kind of bed time for me. Dang it, i hate it when actual personal relationships take away from quality computer time. Um, wait, no i don't.

Singing...

Heh - crashes are kind of cool because they're kind of like spontaneous, unstructured disassembly of the machinery of the car. The bad thing is that people get hurt and damage to cars is expensive to fix... But still.

So, at work we have a Christmas Program thing coming up, and it's nearly exclusively singing this time. Two years ago there was the one where the Delta girls did a whole dance thing that my coworker Michelle choreographed for them. I remember Dave was really impressed, and the whole thing was really well done. But this year? It'll be kids up front singing, and while that has a special charm, let's just say there won't be any moments of virtuosity. Like, one of the kids giving a solo is totally off the entire time. But he thinks he can sing? He's got confidence, certainly, but why hasn't anyone actually told him "Dude, you're flat. Whoah, now you're sharp."

So, most of the kids at Crossroads don't have much singing skill, and i'm learning that with honest, repeated training, they can get better. But i remember when i went to college, meeting for the first time, lots of people who couldn't hear that they weren't singing the right note, and how totally weird that was. I guess everybody i'd heard sing up to that point had good pitch. My immersion in a singing family taught me to sense what pitch i need to sing, and how to get there. My mum has told me that she used to sing a note, make me sing it, and sing "higher higher la la lower lower" until i got it right. All three (five?) of us kids got the same treatment.

And so we're doing the same thing with our kids. I sing a tune to "Now i lay me" and make it different each night for each kid, and have them try to sing the same notes i sing. It's really cute, i'll record it one of these times. Katrina's pretty good when she's paying attention, and Houston sang it perfectly last night. Rhythm too - even if our kids have trouble with tone ever, i KNOW they'll have good rhythm. Karen and i both have rock steady (steady rockin' all night long) rhythm. Like metronomes, baby!

Good day!

First of all, happy birthday, Keith! I'm not sure how old you are, but you're always gonna be younger than me, nyeah nyeah.

Today started out okay because i finished Katrina's book and got, like, three hours of sleep, but then when i woke up i realized that in my confusion earlier this morning, i'd set the alarm for about half an hour too soon. Figuring out when i have to be up to leave here so i can get to work by 6:15am is a really freaking daunting task when you're really tired. I can't believe i figured out that i could sleep for that much longer when i was even more tired than that. I guess the motivation of letting my head smack that pillow really alluring.

Um, but anyway... i got to see a good friend i haven't seen in about five years at work, which increased my mood. And then we made stone soup!!! Yeah, stone soup! Okay, one time way back when i was a dorky college kid, i decided to have an Arctic Swim Party, so i drove my little Dodge Colt over to an ice factory and bought $30 of ice - 150 pounds - which is all i felt like packing in the back of my car. I think i even took out my speaker box to fit it all in. Right... so then i unloaded it next to the pool, people showed up, music was played (probably Ace of Bass) and ice was carved, melted, tossed, and put down various bathing suits. It was (from what i recall) a roaring success. At least, compared to some of the horrific duds i've been part of before. Like, did you know one time we had a Halloween party, decorated the house to the, um, gills... and three people showed up? One of which we didn't even know and one of them was Karen's boss - probably the dorkiest guy ever? The third guy was Tim, my late super amazing super awesome friend, so it wasn't all bad... and we really like Phil...

But anyway, Karen thought it would be fun to make stone soup and invite over various family and friends, who managed to actually come over, so we made soup (including an actual stone which i found right next to our sidewalk - i probably ran into it every time i mowed our lawn) and plenty of pepper and some beef and barley - it was really delicious. And fun. Dad thought the coffee was way too strong. Eric made some funny jokes. Oh - i got to tell my "brrr" joke four whole times. I stepped in soup. Andrew and Linda actually said they'd watch KOYAANISQATSI, which is totally a first. Totally and completely a first. My buddy Dave is the only other person i know who likes that movie. Besides my kids, but duh - they're little mirrors reflecting my (and Karen's - they also like U2 and country) taste.

They day's winding down now, and i'm happy with today's post, so that's a great finish to a great day. Awww.

Still working on Katrina's present

So, instead of a proper post today, i'll leave you with an awesome video you HAVE to watch. Come on, it's only four minutes long. She's gotta be one of the coolest ladies ever. That outfit!

Just a note...

Yo. I'm currently working on Katrina's Christmas present - a book containing pictures that Karen drew and photographs Karen took. See, Karen pretty much is making this book. I'm just doing the grunt work. Work that a computer could do, but computers are not advanced enough yet. That's why my daily, obligatory post is short.

I got some dental work done today. They numbed my lower right jaw, and it was really stinking numb for about three and a half hours. And then all the feeling came back within five minutes. Like, i went from cheek-chewing numb (not that i chewed my cheek - i'd close my teeth by first puffing out my cheek and have my tongue retreat to the other side of my mouth... i'm sure i looked like a total dork) to full on feeling everything in a really short time. What is going on there? I would expect metabolic processes to be a little more gradual. Maybe it's exponential!

i like my mouse

because it's good. Good mouse. See, i'm thinking of that because i'm finally being a productive person around here, when it comes to making Christmas presents. I'm helping Karen out with Katrina's book. It's really cute.

I just read Karen's post, and she talks about her mouse too. She uses the one we got with our AMD K5 166MHz system which struggled to run Windows 98. I think it even had EDO memory, which basically means "slow". Not slow like walking is slow, slow like walking barefoot on shattered glass is slow. Um... but my mouse is arguably the best performing mouse ever, although the button design is confusingly bad. But i rectified that with screws and sandpaper and now my mouse is the best mouse in the entire world.

So anyway, in church today Rob spent most of his speaking time talking about how lopsided the world economy is, and how mind bogglingly rich we are in the US, and how we really need to wage war on poverty, because without a war on poverty, we will never defeat terror. That's one of the quotes which stuck in my mind. It was really weird and awesome to hear such a progressive, political, but non-partisan (not explicitly partisan, at least) message in church. If you wanted to recreate the experience for yourself, you could Read that article, watch this little animation and then think about Godly stuff like, um... love... and peace... and, you know, you could read some Bible passages about Samson's efforts to retaliate against the Philistines and Peter chopping off the ear of a servant... or i guess you could go listen to it. Karen observed that he was extremely careful today - the most careful we've ever seen him. He was consulting his notes, using precise language, and talked about using conservatively estimated statistics. I understand. This is western Michigan, after all.

fill in post

Oh man, i just can't think of anything to say today. So i guess i'll take a hint from the sex-offender teenage boys from work (not something i'll often do), and list the events of the day.

First, i woke up. Karen was pretty close to still being asleep, so a few minutes after i got up, she managed to go back to sleep. So i played sticker games with Katrina, and played some Sesame Street games with Houston, and we managed to keep the house kind of mostly clean! It's nice to have a mostly clean house. I think we went to the basement for a little bit while i folded laundry. Then, a while after Karen woke up, we put the kids down for their naps, and fiddled about on our computers. I made more shirts for my Zazzle gallery. Two things; i'm really enjoying putting stuff up there for people (theoretically) to see, and i'm also impressed with myself that the Arminian and Calvinist ones fit kind of perfectly into the bumper stickers. Like wow.

Okay, so then we went over to bake various awesome confections and delights at Keith and Karla's house with Beth and Diana. Everybody in that list has blogs, and everyone has a link over to the left but Karla. Oh... but she wasn't there.

Anyway, today Katrina put on a foam visor she made at MoPS or somewhere, and needed to put her coat on, so she asked me to "hang onna" her "hat". I did, but also had a handful of pretzels, so i put some pretzels in my mouth and Katrina, from her very low vantage point, looked excessively concerned and said "Don't eat it!" She's really cute.

SDIH

SDIH is a made up acronym for "Sleep Deprivation Induced Hallucinations", and while i'm far from experiencing these, i am tired, and i hope to end up where i started...

A few years ago i read about how slight random vibrations can make us more sensitive to sensory input. When people wear shoes that vibrate randomly, but the vibrations are below the person's ability to sense them, they are better able to balance. The theory is that when there's, um, infrasensible (i made up that word, but it should be understandable) vibration noise, any slight sensory input will be more easily noticed, since the meaningful sensory input will be randomly, but significantly, augmented by the infrasensible vibrations. See? It's so obvious when put so clearly.

So anyway, today i'm kind of tired - the kind of tired where, when i pay attention to it, everything i see looks a little shimmery. Like i'm looking at the world through small heat ripples. Well, i was sitting at work today, not reading Gravity's Rainbow because i don't know where my Palm Pilot is, and i noticed some ants crawling on the carpet. Hmm, i thought, those ants are really little and they're quite a ways away. If i look directly at them (thought i) i can't really pick them out very well. I'm surprised that i even noticed them. WELL, what's going on here? The shimmery heat ripples! See, i'm tired, and my general ability to pay attention to stuff is a little impaired. And yet, i experience random visual distortions - a shimmery heat ripple effect - that go completely unnoticed unless i pay close attention. And i saw some ants which i don't think i'd usually notice.

My theory's probably obvious. My body is compensating for the fatigue by introducing some random visual distortions, which will help meaningful visual input more easily noticed. Pretty sweet, huh?

Back in '95, when Karen and i were both working at Olan Mills, had one car, and were working on fixing up our Volkswagen Van a few hours every night and driving for about an hour and a half every day hither and yon, i started to see, out of the corner of my eyes, people running out in front of the car when i was driving. It was pretty scary, for more than one reason. But they were all in the fuzzy, dark realm of sleep deprivation induced hallucinations. Maybe our natural compensating mechanism for our fatigue related impaired noticing stuff was becoming harmful. Well, from what i remember, the repeated frights kept me awake enough to drive around without, you know, getting in any accidents.

Up there is why i was up late last night. Tonight, what kept me up late was talking to Karen and watching some... ah... racially insensitive cartoons from the 1930's. Aaah, for the good old timey days when everybody was racist, and everybody was okay with it.


Heh... some other shirts i'm gonna make: "Born to be a Calvinist"... how about "Arminian, BY CHOICE!!!" and the less obvious "Molinism... what the???" And then, the "pee on..." kid peeing on a pee-on-kid ad infinitum (or at least ad loss of detailium). Oh, and on the back of the Calvinist shirt, it could say "2 TULIP 2 quit". Heh heh. Probably only funny on a seminary campus.

Borat...

Okay, so today i slept in waaay too late, which really bothered Karen, who wanted to do stuff like "clean up" the "house" because "tomorrow" we have "pre" school o"ver" here"." I gave Karen my abject apologies, which she appreciated some, but then i helped clean up and had her take a nap, and then took the kids to Bagel Beanery for an hour. I don't think i ever went anywhere with my parents for an hour just to chill. One wonders if people used to do that...? My guess: sure they did, but not with little kids. Plus, coffee shops weren't the hangout spots, the general store or the barber shop.

Okay, so what's up with Borat? If you've not had a chance to go watch the movie-film, check out YouTube's plethora of clips. Ali G is another of Sacha Baron Cohen's characters, who is also pretty stinking hilarious. Soanyway, today i had a couple conversations about racism and culture, and everything i said was stuff recently on this blog, pretty much. Which somehow in my brain makes me think about the brilliant way Sacha Baron Cohen is able to comment on society today. It seems like the more politically correct or culturally sensitive people are, the more bigoted they end up looking on his shows. Political correctness, noble intentions notwithstanding, seems like fake-it-till-you-make-it non-racism.

cute day

I, um, had a good day. I worked, got a computer given to me, fixed some chick's broken shower, went to see reindeer with Karen and the kids, went to Big Lots to shop (and Karen, who may or may not have made fun of me for shopping there, seemed to really enjoy it) and came home, and here i am writing my post!

Oh... i forgot to say yesterday that it was Antony's birthday! He's 18 now, old enough to legally shoot guns at people.

Okay, holy crap, look what i just figured out how to do with my panoramas. After the break, you'll see a java applet loading, which is this teensy little program which will not harm your computer at all, i promise, ha ha..... and then you can look at the panorama of the library with... well... it's AMAZING!!!!! I'm so coole.
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busy day for me!

If you look closely, you'll see Katrina hiding behind water bottles. She said "My bein' a mouse". You'll see Houston lying down under the shopping cart. Zane? I don't remember if he's in the picture, but if he is, he's on the totally blurry half.

That program is like, a free fisheye lens! Neato!

You know, when i go shopping by myself, i have a really hard time going fast, unless i'm well dosed on caffeine or are listening to techno music or both. But holy cow, with three kids? Who are so tired that Katrina is collapsing on the floor saying "My feet hurt" and Houston's letting his forehead drag on the grocery store floor as the cart is being pushed along? I think?... that's pretty gross, isn't it? It took me about an hour to get $24 worth of groceries. Oh!!!! I forgot that we had two diaper blowouts at once, and the diaper bag in the car turned out to be a black snowsuit, and as such contained no diapers or wipes... so i wasted a good twenty minutes buying a box of #4 diapers and wipes and smelling up the men's room. Mothers, i salute you!

Organizing and disorganizing

Okay, Dan talked a few weeks ago about this autostitch program which somehow magically stitches your pictures together into nifty panoramas, and i was reading it like "yeah, big whoop, i can do that with The GIMP" but i decided to give it a go today on the four image panorama i took of the basement as we were organizing it today. AMAZING!!!! It's, like, an epiphany! So that's the "organizing" part. Oh... here's the full size picture.

The "disorganizing" part is Houston's handiwork from today's quiet time. My awareness of this started with his lie: "Daddy! When I woke up my car was broken!" I'm like "Houston, tell the truth." so he came clean - "Um, I broke it Daddy. I wanted to see what was inside it." Yeah. So this is what he meant. Sigh. I like how the parts are carefully laid out, not touching each other. As long as he's not taking apart my valuable stuff, i guess i'm okay with this. It's his model, he can destroy it if he wants, i guess. One wonders if he'll be interested in repairing it.

Oh... and here's a panorama of that little tableau - except the perpetrator is cuddled down to sleep there. In our bed again. Bedtime issues continue in the Moore house. This time it was Katrina doing the pestering.

Finally (mostly so you don't notice that we have a spray can of lithium grease on our night stand) here's a link that's been fairly popular around here recently. :)

Houston's model and... i spend nearly all day asleep.

I slept nearly all day today. I woke up at the first moments of the PM, which meant i slept all of the AM through - from around 11:30 yesterday night to noon today. An enormous Thank You goes out to my precious wife, who tolerated my apparent laziness with gracious, loving tolerance. Endorsement, even. She was like "Go sleep, honey! You need it!" Yeah, then being awake was such a chore, that around 3:00 in the afternoon i took a three hour nap. I drank some coffee around 8:00pm, so we'll see if that conspires with the my astonishing marathon of sleep today to keep me awake.

Houston and i worked on his model he got last year for Christmas. He seemed to enjoy it, although at this point the details are all that's left. Since he's four and all, he just wants to play with it. So far i've had to tell him repeatedly, "wait, don't play with it yet!" and "if you want to play with it, it'll probably end up breaking before long. It's a model, not a toy." Once it's done, and we've taken lots of pictures, and shown some people, i'm totally okay with him playing with it, and breaking it. It's his toy, after all.

When i was four or five, my parents gave me a little Sopwith Camel model (that's a World War I biplane), which i assembled with that smelly, solventerrific glue, got a ton of amazed comments from my parents' friends "wow, you built that?" and then threw it to see if it would fly. Answer? Well if you define "fly" as "parabolic arc into the ground and then breaking" then sure, it flew. It flew perfectly. And i don't remember being upset by it breaking. So if Houston wants to break his model, that's okay with me, i suppose.

Oh... and then i asked him if he'd like a model again, and he said "Ooh yes. I'd like a model airplane. Or tank. Or... a model monster truck." I'm like SCORREEE!!! because that's what i got him. Grave Digger, to be exact, although i don't really approve of the ghost like imagery on the sides of the truck. Maybe i'll take the decal sheet out and glue brown paper to the pictures on the box.
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Wow - totally about race and culture.

I read Andrew's comment on my "equality" post, and wrote bit by bit, line by line, a paper about diversity and culture, particularly Urban Hiphop culture. It's probably not very interesting, and i don't feel very well, so only read if you're interested. Duh. Like you wouldn't.

Okay, good news! Houston and Katrina love each other! Katrina went up to Houston today and spontaneously hugged him! Houston gently hugged back! I took a picture! It's up there!!! My so happy! Uh, speaking of which, Katrina has more emotional awareness than nearly every kid at work. The kids at work have to write journal entries every day, and i see things like: "I think that I am feeling so very very very excited to see what we are having to eat for dinner tonight after study time." Can you tell that those journals need to be one page long? But Katrina, on the other hand, will say "My so excited!" when we're about to go into a store she likes. Or "My so happy!" when we're going to her grandma's house. Or "My so sad" when her blanket is in the wash. She also says "My so glad!" And "My so full", which means lots of stuff. She's like... Emotioney McEmotion.

Is that getting old yet? Didn't think so. So click on the link below and prepare to read something lengthy.
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Still no picture

Wow. Here's a bad story: Houston and Katrina were still awake when i got home a little while ago, Karen was upstairs talking to them, and Zane was asleep in his car seat. Tumbleweed blew across the desert*. This is something of a reversal of the usual order of things. Usually, my eldest two are asleep upstairs, Karen is down here nursing Zane (or very very rarely not nursing Zane). I went upstairs to say hi, and received gratifying hugs of love from Houston and Katrina. I came downstairs and talked with Lovie McLove (that's Slangy McSlang for "Karen") and a minute later i heard Katrina screeching in distress. I went upstairs and found out that Houston had gotten off his bed and was hitting the side of Katrina's face. She was curled up on her bed trying to cover her head. Oh man.

"Go into Zane's room and lie down in the closet!" said i with a stern voice. Katrina allowed herself to be consoled gradually until she could tell me what happened: "My don't know, Houston hit my ear." I asked her to show me what he had done, and she balled up her cute little spherical fist and gently bonked my cheek right by my ear. Okay seriously, it was so cute and so sad at the same time. She's so precious. Her little ear was pink from the abuse.

Then i went in to Houston and gave him the most serious and lovingly "mean" talk i've ever given him. I held his arms so he'd have to look at me and repeated about twenty times "You must not hit". All my most persuasive reasons for why you can't hit seemed to be lost on the kid, and i know he's only four, but still, can i get him to look serious about it at least? Instead he's looking around, answering questions, kind of hanging out until Daddy quits being all weird. Well, he's not even allowed to look at my computer (videos or games) until Tuesday, and then we've taken all games like FlatOut2 and Need For Speed Carbon off. I just don't know what's going on, but maybe the exposure to the car related violence has something to do with it. We'll keep you posted.

In other news, somebody spun out right in front of me on the freeway. The person decided to cut across a pile of snow to be able to exit, and ended up facing oncoming traffic. I put my hazards on and managed to block traffic kind of so the poor person could breathe and shove his or her heart back into place and get back on the road proper. Then she (i could see long girl-styled hair) (and it was a Suzuki Sidekick - perfect girl car... cute 4x4) and i proceeded at about 19 miles per hour up until where we both ended up getting off the freeway. And know what? Not a single signal from either blinker the whole time. What's with Michiganders and not using blinkers?

Okay, on other other news, i tied a bunch of wood onto the top of our minivan, and it actually fell off on the road. It's slushy and gross today, (perhaps the base for our expected winter ground cover?) so the wood got all wet. Luckily, it was damaged already and was cheaper than fingernail clippings, so i wasn't too upset. But i still picked it up off the street and tied it back on and held it too, all the way home. I need some longer twine.

I have more stuff to write, but i gotta go now. Stupid ADD hyperfocus thing.

*Oh wow, i forgot to mention this, but when we went out to Famous Dave's for my birthday a month and a half ago, there was tumbleweed blowing down the street. October? Suburban Michigan??? Tumbleweed????? So incongruous! And gauche! Heh... it wasn't gauche at all, i just wanted to use that in a sentence, since of all the people i've ever know, only Andrew (Jungle Biker) actually used that word in conversation. It was a surprise. Other linguistic surprises: one of the kids just yesterday called someone ersatz, as opposed to genuine. And the kid who was being called ersatz knows what doppelganger means. Heh - Firefox 2.0's spellcheck doesn't recognize that word.

equality

There's a big long comment on yesterday's post, so check it out if you want... in lieu of anything deep in this post. Besides unfathomable depths of shallow narcissism, that is.

Now that i think of it, i'm pretty sure i'm deeply shallow. If that even means anything.

Zane is sitting in my lap right now refusing to be asleep. Maybe he's suffering from the same problem i have - it's really hard to sleep when you're playing on the computer. He's watching Paul Oakenfold, Faster Kill Pussycat feat. Brittany Murphy. She can really sing, which is weird - usually actors cum singers come with industrial strength suckitude. Paris Hilton, i'm looking at you. But that Murphy chick? She's good! There's confidence, no obvious overprocessing, she can do compelling modulation and vibrato... Check her out! It's a really sweet song, too.

"Equality?" i hear the title-reading among you saying, "buh wha-?" Real eloquent, Churchill. Right... so see the picture up there? It's Secret Miss L's cutie pie daughter, whose name isn't Bella, but it may as well be. But see, today i didn't take any pictures of my own kids! Not even Needy McSneed* Zane! So i gotta put other people's kids on my blog? What's up with that? Karen does an amazing job at keeping her post photos well and fairly balanced between our three kids, but i don't even come close. I wonder if Houston, Katrina and Zane and Hypothetical Future Child slash Children will care? If they do, how much responsibility for that will be ours as parents? Will they ever read this? Seriously, these weblogs of ours are nearly three years worth of almost daily posts. That's gotta be close to what... a thousand words? :)


*Karen started that the other day with Zane when he was snorting a lot. She was calling him Snorty McSnort. It was really funny. Then she was talking to Beth and called Brad Pitt "Hottie McHot". I had to laugh a lot.