Major Disaster!

Houston is so cool. Today, he was playing in the sandbox, and suddenly said "Oh wow, that was a major disaster! A major disaster!" Katrina, entranced, said "Yeah, Mister Disaster!" Oh man, where does he get this stuff. And i forgot to mention yesterday that Houston and Katrina got kazoos from Sunday School. Of course, they obeyed gravity, so they fell often, while we stood about chatting with grown up friends about things terminally boring to five year olds -- cloth diapers and online poker. One time when Houston dropped his kazoo, he did a cartwheel and, when his hands were on the floor, picked up the kazoo. Wow. That's totally a Matrix move. Neo did that in the lobby scene with an MP5.

Seriously cool.

Katrina, on the other hand, is hot. And barfy. We went blueberry picking again. By the way, there's no pesticides or fertilizers sprayed on the plants after the fruit forms. I guess they "do something" to the bushes early in the season, and the girl said the geography of the blueberry patch is really good to keep the pests away. Plus, there's high tension electricity wires buzzing overhead, which certainly contributes to the massive size of some of the berries. Anyway, Katrina didn't even want to get out of the car. She was really hot after we got home, and then crawled onto the couch to sleep. She came to me later and said "I want to throw up. Please hold my hair back." Awwww! Later, she did throw up a little bit on our carpet, but only a couple drops escaped my hand. Seriously. I caught barf with my hand. Isn't that weird?

God loves the NORTH BLOODZ and us too!

That's a late 60's Chevy Impala. It's a pretty car. But the rims, while being horribly non-authentic and hamper performance and utility, are very flashy, very stylish, and very, very cool. Awesome. It's owned by one of my coworkers. Who is doubtlessly single with no kids.

So yesterday i was changing the headlights in our car, and Houston and Katrina and Zane were out there, throwing sticks, smelling flowers and watching me like a hawk for any hint that i might be leaving, respectively, and Houston said "Can i poke this stick into the exhaust pipe?" and i said "No, there's baffling in the exhaust system.... uh, that's not the exhaust pipe, that's an air intake and you can probably poke--" and that's when i saw the NAIL carefully perched with the head of the nail on the pavement, and the pointed bit resting on the tire tread. "Hey!" i said to Houston, "look at that! A nail!"

Soon it became apparent that all of the tires of both of our vehicles had nails perched like that in front and behind, so that if we'd driven away we would have ended up with four flat tires, eight if we'd both driven our cars without seeing the nails. However, God chose to allow the perpetrators to work their mischief the night after i'd taken a special walk to the parts store with the kids from work to buy headlights, prompted by one of them failing (divinely controlled metal fatigue in the filament), and i couldn't install them until the next day because i didn't have a wrench at work. Furthermore, God prompted Houston to "randomly" want to poke a stick into an air intake. So God saved us about a thousand dollars.

We called the cops, and they sent a guy over to take a report. He was very friendly, and asked us if we had any enemies. No, Karen and i both said, even though we can both be kind of rude to our dear neighbor kid blesshisheart who comes over seven thousand times an hour to download "beats" with my computer... but he's a good kid. Houston ran importantly up and down the sidewalk checking all the other neighborhood cars for nails, and since there were none, we wondered if this attack must be directed at us. Rats, Karen and i thought, we like all the people we know nearby. And we're as unlikely as anyone to be targets of random vandalism. Which is to say that we're as likely as anyone, but still, the chances aren't high.

But then, this morning at church, we saw "NORTH BLOODZ" scratched into the paint near our minivan's rear tire. Which makes me think this is a juvenile (delinquent) gang motivated stunt. Gang initiation, even. Aah, gangs. The tragic result of a society where families are non-existent, abusive or at least dysfunctional. Gangs give kids a desperately needed sense of belonging, of being loved and nurtured. So, Mr. NORTH BLOODZ, i'm very glad your stunt didn't cost us anything besides scratched paint. And God loves you. And if you ever give us an opportunity, we'll demonstrate what a loving family looks like, and we... you know... ahem... love you, um, because God... says we have to.

Cereal Sandwich

I'm experimenting with not posting every day. But the kids keep doing really cute things, like this Cereal Sandwich that Houston invented. He was very proud of having invented this, and watched happily as i ate the whole thing. I was... hungry, i guess. Plus, look at the kid! He's wearing a Tigger costume! On a 85F degree day! He's nuts.

And Katrina... i took the kids out (it was so hot that i drove instead of walked!!!) and we stopped at this place which sells scooters. The proprietor said "Is she three? She's pretty!!!" And she totally is. I'm practicing my withering glare for when she's a teenager and we go to the store together.

Annual Blueberry Entry

Witness the seventh picture named "blueberries.jpg" in my weblog. Seven pictures. Wanna see the rest? No? Then don't click here, here, here, here, here, and definitely not here. I really like blueberries.

Every year i go to pick blueberries for the first time, and the cheerful cynic in me anticipates disappointment. But every year, i go bonkers. They are so delicious. There's nothing i don't like about blueberries, besides perhaps that they don't pick themselves from the bushes and collect themselves in delightful assortments of size and ripeness in the palm of my hands. That would be better, but only slightly better. The flavor: a warm, spicy rush of brain-filling taste, with a precocious astringent tang, if you choose your berries that way. The texture: Karen is turned off by the little crown at the bottom of the fruits, but for me, the prickles delight my mouth. And the fact that i can eat enough of them to feel stuffed, even starting from an empty stomach, but never feel ill. Finally, after an afternoon filling up on sun-warmed berries, picked seconds before consumption, i feel elated. Almost as though there's something psychoactive about blueberries. There isn't... i checked. All i know is that i grin for hours after stuffing myself with blueberries.

Karen picked a TON of berries, and Houston did really well too. Katrina got about half the bottom of her bucket filled, but then she ate and spilled those. I got a double layer in the bottom of my bucket, but then Zane started clamoring for MORE BLUEBERRIES which sounds like this in Zane Language "AAAAAAAAAAA". So i put the bucket down on the ground in front of him. He tipped it enough to see what was in there, and dug in with both hands, shoveling them into his mouth. One wonders if blueberry fanaticism is hereditary.

Totally long, rambling, and political. Have at it!

...socialism is bad if you are a christian. and i don’t get why...
--Karla

Um... i am flattered to be consulted thus, and i hope to attract comments which will flesh out my nearly unintelligible response.

In the US, socialism and communism have been linked in the popular mind, and since the persecution of Christians by communist states like China and the USSR is widely known, socialism is seen by a great many Christians as one of those bad -isms. In more modern politics, socialism is the direction "liberals" lean toward, while conservatives prefer less regulated capitalism. Conservative politics also include such noble causes as not killing fetuses, and making gay people stop being gay. At least, that's how those issues seem to be understood by most Christians, and there's clear support for not killing fetuses and avoiding sexual impurity in scripture.

I think this is unique to US politics. I see nothing about either a progressive or conservative agenda to attract either end of the moral agenda. But i'm pretty sure a lot of what's going on has to do with the history of communist states being anti-Christian, and liberals being homosexual abortionists.

There's also the fact that the political right has done a fantastic job appealing to morally conservative Evangelicals. There's people (hopefully fewer and fewer of them) who seem to sincerely believe that if you vote non-Republican, then you literally can not be a Christian. It's impossible. Even intelligent people i love very much have said things like "You've got to be CRAZY or STUPID to vote Democrat!" Um...?

My personal quest in politics is to find what most closely matches the idea of the Kingdom of God as laid out by Jesus and the apostles, and try to support those kinds of things. Issues like abortion and gay rights are hot buttons in the conservative Christian community, and any politician who delivers a few key phrases can guarantee himself (or -- unlikely -- herself) a hefty amount of support based on those two issues. But how about the disadvantaged? Poor people are poor for a reason, and while Jesus says "the poor will always be among you", that doesn't mean "those lazy slackers are hopeless, let them help themselves and get successful like you did". Or how about the sick: Jesus spent tons of time and effort healing the sick. And American conservative politicians seem fairly happy with the system we've got going right now, with only the worthy taxpayer who has a full time job with benefits getting the healing they need. Let's talk about global poverty. I think it was famous "Christ-Worshipping Agnostic" Kurt Vonnegut who said something like "I see no justification for why I should have so much, while my neighbor should have so little." I completely agree. I complain to myself that gasoline costs three bucks and change per gallon. But i can afford it! I have two fricking cars! And a scooter! I spend more per day on gasoline than the world's poorest billions spend on their very nourishment! This is outrageous, and not least because i tolerate the outrageousness of it. And, um, social projects, socialized medicine, and friendly foreign relations have been policies of progressive Democrats.

Capitalism works (when it works) because people are greedy. Greed is, according to scripture bad. Socialism doesn't work (when it doesn't work) because people are greedy. One could say that capitalism "gives up" on human nature, and instead runs with it, letting people trample and back-stab their way to power and wealth. One could say that socialism is naively idealistic, and is doomed to failure because people will "work the system", and perhaps even immoral because when the richer portion of society provide for the poorer, the lesser will be humiliated and dehumanized.

So, since i am utterly cynical about the government and the political process, i want earnestly for our American leadership to present a face to the world which is utterly different than the face the world has come to know and fear. With that in mind, i fully support Barack Obama, even though he's one of the mainstream candidates, and is a polished, professional politician. Yech. With Obama's face as the face of America, maybe the poverty stricken masses will think "Hey, there's hope!!!" So, like the Evangelical who will vote based on the pro-life, anti-gay-rights boxes ticked on their card, i will vote for Obama because he's a black man whose middle name is Hussein. Black; CHECK! Middle name Hussein; CHECK!
___more___

Why is wakeboarding so tiring?

We all went up to a cottage which some of our families are borrowing, and it's on the lake, and there's a jetski and a boat at our disposal, and plenty of food. It's good to be an American. So i demonstrated my freedom by going wakeboarding. I can get up every single time, which is quite an accomplishment, i suppose. And once i'm up, i can go outside the wake and zoom about and cross the wake... but it's SO TIRING! I don't know why, but i could only go out for maybe five minutes and my poor hand felt like a claw, and my legs would seriously hardly hold me up. And now i'm all sore. I guess i'm getting older, i'm not getting any lighter (not getting heavier either, praise God!) and i've been pretty busy.

To compensate for all the carbon we spilled into the atmosphere this weekend, what with driving all over the LP (lower peninsula, for you Michijargon ingnorati) and running a 900cc 2 stroke in the jetski (not really, it's a Sea-Doo), we've started line drying our clothes. This makes me feel genuinely good for saving money, not wasting energy, and it reminds me of how my clothes used to smell and feel when we lived in Peru. And it's weird - they smell mostly the same. One would expect wet towels hanging in the open air until dry to absorb different smells when the surroundings are as different as "Amazon Rain Forest" and "Midwest American Urban".

When we were on the personal watercraft (proper generic term for "jetski" and "Sea-Doo") with Houston, i drove in circles again, and tipped us over. Rats. Houston was scared a lot, but still seemed upbeat about the whole experience a while later.

And now, i'm off to keep reading HP7.

I forgot

Yesterday i went on at length about DLP, and i forgot why. See, on Thursday, i went to Grand Rapids' newest movie theater complex to watch the newest Harry Potter movie, again. It was good the second time, although i believe i actually fell very lightly asleep for a few minutes towards the end. But the reason i'd mentioned DLP yesterday was that the movie was shown with a DLP projector. I don't know what the specifications of cinema projectors are, but i must say that the quality difference is obvious. Most easy to spot is the fact that there's no "cigarette burns" signaling upcoming reel changes. Those are the oval white ringed black marks which appear in the upper right hand corner of the screen several times per film. And then, there's no flicker. See, a film projector must show black for a fraction of a second so the film can advance to the next frame, but DLP doesn't have that limitation. So long panning shots are not as torturous as they are in standard theaters. See movies in DLP. Same ticket price, better experience.

So anyway, as i was typing that, Mum got on the chat and told me that my fifteen year old brother Josiah broke his arm! He was swinging on a playground swingset! I suspect "swinging" is a euphemism for "using swingset as energy storage device for massive air and sick aerial stunts", but unless they got it on video, we may never know. I broke my leg once. I broke my brother in law's arm once. It sucks. Both of them sucked. It hurts really bad. Ouch. And not to make light of a broken bone, with surgery needed and the depression and lifestyle changes that go along with an event like that (i had dreams of running through fields with the wind in my hair when my leg was healing), check out how cool my Houston is, and how cool my shorts are. They're totally comfortable and feel like the kind of shorts i love, so i don't even think about it when i'm wearing them. Then i see myself in a mirror or window and am shocked every time. It's awesome. My brother Antony gave them to me, and JJ gave them to him. I fully expect to give them to Josiah someday, and he'll have to give them to Houston. It's destiny.

And that was a perfect sentence to end my post with, but i needed to say that i caught two flies today. Caught in my hand. They both buzzed frantically, but i held them tight until i showed them to Houston and Katrina, and then they flew away with a great story to tell their friends. "It ain't eated ya??? Or squishdid ya???" "No!!! Ain't that weird!!! It ain't even hurted me!!!"

DLP by TI, and HP

DLP = Digital Light Processing, a technology which projects movies and whatever else by reflecting light with a super fancy mirror with teensy tiny sections arranged in a grid, and each section can flap around super fast to reflect light onto the screen, or away from it. There's a whirling wheel of color in the path of the light, which makes the image... you know... color. It's all extremely clever, and i didn't explain it very well, so if you really care, i'll direct you to Wikipedia's article on the subject. I heard about DLP back in the day and my head almost exploded because it's such a clever invention.

TI = Texas Instruments. They employed the people who invented DLP. They also made my first computer, a Speak and Spell. The Speak and Spell would say "Say it", expecting me to read the work on the VFD (that means vacuum florescent display, the glowy, multisegmented displays almost every VCR and DVD player uses) screen. But it sounded like "Shhayhhid" and i didn't understand at first. And the letter W was hilariously pronounced something like "Dahh-buhhlll-you"... funny. I liked my Speak and Spell. The code which made it run couldn't have been more than a few hundred K, so i sincerely wish there was some java-based emulator of the machine on the internet. The only version i ever found used samples recorded from the speaker of a Speak and Spell.

HP = Harry Potter. Karen's gone, at the release party. She's undoubtedly giddy with anticipation and trepidation... i should invent a new word: anticepidation. She's also conflicted. Should she devour the book in seven hours? Or should she savor each finely crafted phrase? If she devours and then re-reads and savors, she'll already know what happens, which will be a massive letdown, kind of.

So anyway, Karen's out of the house. The kids are asleep. There's no ebook of HP book 7 out yet on the IRC networks, and this post is chock full of acronyms. CFOA, if you will. So i'll quit writing now, brush my teeth, and go to bed! I've got the kids ALL DAY tomorrow!

Racism on the job site!

Our church is partnering with Habit for Humanity in building a 3 family condominium unit a few miles from my house. Well, i got to go help out today, which was rewarding since i got to hammer and saw and carry stuff. And i knew what i was doing! I forgot that i know how to frame houses.

First just a little naivety. The job site is in south Grand Rapids, which is run down, poor, and more than half of the population is black. I overheard two guys talking, and one of them said, with a tone of mild but pleasant surprise, "You know, this neighborhood seems actually kind of safe! In the daytime, at least. Because, you know, there's lots of people walking around. Ladies, especially." Um... welcome to the Not-Suburbs.

But then while i was on break, an older guy asked me why i wear my hair this way, and after my standard speech about recognizing the plight of the disadvantaged blah blah blah, he asked me what i thought about immigration. This seemed like a springboard for some crazy political discussion, so i played Mister Neutral, "Both sides have compelling points". But sure enough, the conversation soon turned from generalizations to talk of "illegals" and "those Mexicans". The poor fellow actually said something like this: (i will blockquote this to make it obvious it's not me speaking)

What they oughta do is give all the illegals a couple months to get out, and then put a bounty on their heads. Yeah, like a fifty dollar bounty for bringin' 'em in. Then when they get enough, load 'em on a bus and take them to the border. But they don't take them all the way to the border. They stop off at a hospital, and there they castrate the men and get the women's tubes tied, and then i guarantee you, they'd be footin' it pell mell for Mexico. Hitchhiking, walking whatever!

Flabbergasted, i told him that his idea was outrageously extreme, (yes, he actually said castrated -- he probably meant sterilized, which is better but still!!!) but not wishing to engage in simple disagreements, i brought up outsourcing to Mexico and elsewhere, and expressed my own outrage that when we send jobs overseas, but deny the workers access to our country, we're basically saying to them "You're good enough to bolt my cars together, but there's no way i want you living in my neighborhood!"

Which caused me to ponder the term Illegals -- this seems like an okay thing to call someone. Why are illegal immigrants illegal? It's because the government (which we've all agreed is controlled by a few enormously wealthy white men and a few more enormous multinational corporations and their lobbyists) says they're illegal. My specially selected experience with illegal immigrants shows me that they're about as upstanding citizens as the rest of us. They work hard, they usually pay taxes, they love their families and are just people, trying to make their way in the world. I don't see the looming threat to our Way Of Life or whatever that immigrants pose. Someone explain? And no fair saying "they smell funny".

Scooter!

Karen talks about how she can't draw and stuff. Well, i thought we'd established back when she drew all the pictures for Katrina's tappy shoes book that she could draw, but she persists that she can't. But look at that picture! Seriously cute, huh? I can't get enough of her drawing style. She does these little irregular things which look like artfully intentional goofs, but she claims they're actual goofs. No, i disagree. She's just naturally good. Wow.

So anyway, i won an auction for a scooter. It's way better than anything i was planning on getting, but it's (barely) within our price range. It will rock! When i pick it up... and stuff... from Tennessee.

Hey man, wanna buy some grass?

Seriously. I have six rolls of grass left over from doing our back yard. Like, sod. I really wanted to push the wheelbarrow around our neighborhood asking people if they wanted to buy some grass (duuuude) but, you know, i was busy with other stuff, like eating pizza (munchies?) and tweaking my sprinkler system. I can't think of any way to make "sprinkler system" sound drug related. But yes, i have a sprinkler system now. See, what i did was buy two "chick-chick-chick-tststststststs-chick-chick" style sprinklers, put them in opposing corners of our yard, and cut old garden hoses so they're the right length to stay semi-permanently in place. And i have a massively-on-sale sprinkler timer hooked up to our back yard water spigot. It'll come on every morning to water our totally lush, verdant lawn. Our back yard with the lush verdant lawn in our back yard. It's totally weird to have any proper ground covering in our back yard. It's been weeds, dirt and dog poop back there for years and years.

Okay, i'll shut up about our back yard. Except to say that it was only about a month ago that Karen was like "Let's take pictures of Chellie in the back yard" and i was like "Eew gross, with the dog poop and weeds?" So now i'm not embarrassed by our back yard any more! It's awesome.

Other things we've done recently: i built the railing by our stairs, making our house probably acceptable to Child Protective Services, if they were ever to make a surprise visit. I don't think they would have liked the Plunge Of Death that was there before. I fixed the gaping holes in the plaster in our stairway. I finished our downstairs floors. We painted the hippie room a less hippie like color. And now we got the back yard sorted out, with a cute brick path, a repositioned sandbox, a little brick platform for the table, wood chips in that part, and grass (lush, verdant grass) on the other half. I'm all motivated by all this success. Now i want to fix our chimney and tear up our roof and put insulation between the roof and the ceiling. There's shingles falling off. My excuse has always been that we don't have a ladder. But now we do, cause Karen's dad let us borrow his.

Speaking of Karen's dad, he borrowed a trailer from someone, brought it over here with his Suburban (which has operating costs of about $20 per mile because of gas prices and stuff). Then he took me to a place where you can get free wood chips, and shoveled wood chips for about half an hour. Then he shoveled them into a wheelbarrow and pushed them into the back yard. Then he drove to Ludema's sod farm, about 20 minutes away, had a ton of grass put into the trailer (seriously, a ton) and drove back. Then he loaded the ton of grass into the wheelbarrow and pushed that into the back yard where he unloaded it. He prepared the area beside our VW Bus for sod. Then he ate pizza with us. Freeloader. Karen's mom raked wood chips, watched the kids, moved disgusting garbage, weeded, watered our front garden area... yeah, we have AWESOME family! Thanks guys!

Back in pictures!

We're really really ridiculously good looking. And now that i have pictures, i'm feeling quite the opposite of eloquent. Well, instead of writing a thousand words, i'll put more pictures.

That's on the camping trip. The woods were verdant. Lush and verdant. My favorite part of the camping trip was going into the woods to hike vaguely marked trails.

Katrina put on her "Tappy Shoes" today and went outside to demonstrate how awesome they were to run in. Well, she rocketed down the sidewalk, and then slipped and fell on her butt right as she arrived where i was crouching to take pictures. She got up, whimpered bravely, grabbed her sore butt and acknowledged that the tappy shoes might be not so good for running. She has always been a very slow runner, but she seems to really like running, and is getting much better. She's almost up to "fast".

Tonight, Houston and Katrina wanted me to play a game where "Everyday is your birthday, so you get special presents every day!" Houston was five, and tomorrow would be six, and so on. He's pretty good at math. He understood that in six days he'd be eleven. So the game is like this: you get a present for yourself, wrap it in a blanket, and all the presents everyone's gotten goes into a pile. Then each of us gets all the presents. It's totally mind blowingly awesome. It is. Seriously. Okay, not really. But i'm playing with my kids, which really is awesome.

We're painting!

Go look at Karen's post -- it's totally cute. I could describe what we're doing, but Karen's post is funny and descriptive, and has pictures. Pictures. I don't know where my camera is. Maybe it's touring the Alps.

Back from camping

I'm happy to report that the camping trip wasn't as bad as i feared. It was... good. It's becoming clearer to me that my priorities are simply with my Karen and our kids, and anything that keeps me away from them isn't going to cause me to leap with enthusiasm. I'll engage and do my part with ersatz enthusiasm, but most of my thoughts would be at home.

Hmm, a Cedar Point trip followed by an all night LAN party with all my favorite people there might capture my imagination...

But anyway, it rained the second and third days, but the weather was mostly awesome. We went on a really cool hike the second day, where i went to grab a little twig which was SOFT and turned out to be an amazingly well camouflaged caterpillar, protruding from the end of an identically colored stick. It actually weirded me out for a second. The walk was through forest and mountains, which reminded me both of Korea and Oregon.

The third day, we went on a hike up a trail in the Tahquamenon Falls State Park area. It was also beautiful and fun, but there weren't any interesting insects. That night, we had a kid go off and destroy one of our canopy things and one of the other staff had to restrain him. Yech. That's the first time since my buddy Mark's been the activity therapist for my work that there has been a kid needing to get restrained on a camping trip. Sigh. And the next day, we came home.

I have a new respect for the residents who must be with the rest of the kids constantly. Many of them can be astonishingly annoying, which makes sense when you realize that being astonishingly annoying has saved some of these kids' lives. It's hard to get people to stop behaviors that are survival skills.

But i'm home now. The kids are overjoyed to see me. Graham is ecstatic. Karen's happy, and we're planning home improvements and landscaping for the weekend and stuff. It'll be so nice to get the back yard all done!

I'll miss you, family!

I'm going camping tomorrow for four days without any of my family. I'll be leaving very early. And here is, unfortunately, nearly the last things i said to Houston and Katrina:

Me: I'll miss you!
Houston: Why?
Me: I'm going camping tomorrow.
H: Can i go too???
Me: No, only people who work at Wedgwood and kids who live at Wedgwood can go.
H: You could ask!
Me: [after explaining how the kids at WW can be very naughty] I don't want you to go.
H: [face crumples, curls into near-fetal position, tears well up in eyes] Sob!!!
Me: Oh! Do you think i don't want you to go because i don't love you???
H: [nods, tears now streaming down face]
Me: No no no, honey! I love you so much and i want to be with you, but i can't!

Poor kid. I promised that we'll go camping together sometime.

On to:
Katrina: [coming downstairs] I wanna have pajamas on.
Me: Um, okay. [we go upstairs, and i get a flimsy shirt for her]
Katrina: No, that one will be too cold!
Me: It's really hot right now. You can't wear hot pajamas right now.
Katrina: I want the warm pajamas! I'm so cold!
Me: Katrina, feel your face. Feel your hair. They're soaking wet. That's because you're sweating. It's very hot. You can wear this shirt or no pajamas, but no warm pajamas.
Katrina: [with trembling chin, puts arms up to get the shirt on, which sticks to her sweating skin] Okay...

So basically, i'm really not looking forward to this camping trip. I'll be going with people i like, and it's, you know, camping... but the kids we're going with are just so bad. I really should say "needy" instead of bad. But they do need constant attention. They have very little group cohesion, and what little there is is being shattered constantly by behavior my logical adult mind can only call outrageously idiotic. Well, there's a little clear lake, and i can go swimming every single morning in the cool, glassy, undisturbed water. So that'll be cool. And it's only four days, which will pass quickly enough, even if it's hellish. In fact, if it's hellish, it'll go faster.
___more___

seven seven seven

One year, one month and one day ago, (6-6-06) some horror movie was released, which was directed by John Moore... John Moore? Anyway, i haven't heard of any rumors or special events surrounding this day. I mean, what better day for Harry Potter book 7 to be released? Serious lapse in marketing, in my opinion. Or how about Jesus coming back? I mean, there has been plenty of wacko theories explaining why Jesus should come back on certain dates, because our human centered, human invented Gregorian calendar is probably pretty much the same one God, the maker and master of the universe uses. Yeah...

We ate breakfast with Travis and Brooke today! We like them a lot. I had an omelet. I didn't like it a lot.

Oh. I just searched for 7/7/07 and got an article listing things anticipated for today:

• Record numbers of marriages
• Extreme busyness at casinos everywhere (which guarantees that 7/7/07 will be lucky for casino owners everywhere)
• Tupac is expected to resurface from his faked death today... i'll go check cnn.com right away

Katrina's funny.

I'm always saying how Katrina has a really good sense of humor, but it's tough to describe a four year old's jokes without making them seem like utter nonsense. But today i asked her while we were at the mall play area if she'd made any friends to play with. She said "No." But then she got her little "I'm making a joke" smile and said "Houston!" That's a good funny for a four year old.

I should be in bed because i'm really tired. But Karen's a wreck -- she was barfing and everything this morning. So i came home after a whole hour at work to relieve her. I spent most of the day out of the house with the kids. I like my kids.

Next week i'll be camping with the kids from work. I'm trying to enter into this experience with optimistic enthusiasm, but there's this thing called abject pessimism which is working against me. See, yesterday i watched two kids escalate each other until they were fist fighting. Like, slamming each other's heads into the wall fighting. When they stopped because they got worn out, they both got mad at me for not breaking them up. Gah the illogic! But this kind of behavior isn't as abnormal as it was a few months ago. Oh man. At least i like the kids we have living here. You know, my little guys and my little girl. Aww, so cute!

Fireworks!

We saw fireworks! I've been looking forward to this event for months -- i think i asked work to get me the night off five or six times, just to make sure. But in the back of my mind, i was wondering if i was setting myself up to be disappointed. But i wasn't. It was totally awesome. We sat in the same spot as last year, and it was just as good. There was a breeze which brought ash (Houston kept calling it "rash") falling on us. Well, mostly what we felt was chunks of cardboard. It was totally awesome. The show we go to is a little town, but they only do one show a year, so whoever is in charge really tries to do it right. They succeed. The show doesn't go on for too long, but it's by no means short. There's enough fireworks to rivet your attention, but not too many to overstimulate or confuse you. And the finale filled my entire frame of vision. All i could do was stare, open mouthed, in wonder. Wow.

Fireworks and blueberries. Two things that make me blather on like a fanboy.

And we got to go with lots of cool people we like. So... what's your favorite insect? Or arthropod, which means you can choose a spider or crab or shrimp or something. My quick list: 1) dragonfly 2) firefly 3) cricket 3) butterfly (tie) 5) earwig. And way at the bottom, the only insect i really don't like: uglybugs. Okay, they're actually called crane flies, but they're repulsive. They're like, zombie bugs who fly blindly into stuff and break legs off and go "Uhhhnhnhnnnnnn" like some rotting, undead wraith insect. Yech.

Monster Van!!!

We saw that Odyssey in the parking lot today. Oh yeah. It was our van. I GIMP'ed it up. :)

Karen's working on a massive DVD slideshow project with all the photos she scanned last week in Iowa, so she could use time at home by herself. So i took the kids to my buddy Dave W.'s house, whose wife just had a baby last Thursday. The baby is their fourth girl, and she's astonishingly cute. And then we went to the grocery store, and had a picnic on the grassy area near the parking lot, and i seemed to detect "What's That White Trash Doing Here" looks from the Jenison (read "White Abercrombie Suburb") natives. But Houston was cute. He raced cars by running pell-mell along the grass near the parking lot. He also posed in silly ways, staring right at the cars. Aaah, he develops personality.

I can be spontaneous...

"I can be spontaneous. Watch this... uhh..."

So today, the kids and i were playing outside, and we strung a whole roll of string between a couple trees. And some rope. We did some experiments illustrating sound waves and harmonics, and sprung twigs high into the sky. I wonder if Houston and Katrina (and Zane, but he mostly was interested in dirt) will still find my goofy schemes of avoiding boredom interesting when they're fifteen and thirteen. And eleven.

Still tired!

I'm still really tired. And work was pretty sucky today, but i overcame the odds and kept the unit safe and sane. Plus, i got a kid who's really obnoxious respited (that means he's at another unit) for a night. I will prevail, with my cool head and, um, strong, well shaped fingernails.

Besides that, i don't have much to say. I'm really looking forward to actually getting an inhabitable back yard. I didn't really care -- i figured i'd spend time outside either walking through the neighborhoods of Grand Rapids, or i'd chill with the lil' homies out front, watching cars zoom past booming bass and cigarette smoke wafting out the windows. But the back yard, once we finish the ground with bark mulch one one half, and sod on the other, will be an amazingly fun place to be! It'll be cool. We'll be able to chill with the lil' homies out back, with nothing wafting through our pristine air besides general urban pollution.

And it's so fun to have the family back together again. When they were all gone for that week, i think i put food in Graham's bowl once. But since they've been back, he needs his usual one bowl per day. Weird. I ate about the same amount when they were gone.