Happy new year!

Last night i took out my super-awesome amplifier kit and started assembling it. Basically, there's a little plastic circuit board thing with copper traces running all over, and you have to solder capacitors and resistors and stuff to the circuit board. It was extremely fiddly work, like, the tiniest devices were, um, the size of the broken-off end of a piece of rice. Little rice. If i dropped a piece, i would probably not have found it.

I put it together, and even with the biggest magnifying glass we have in the house, i couldn't find any bridged contacts or cold solders or anything wrong. So i powered it up, and one of the diodes burned up. Rats rats. But it was still fun. And i think i can fix it?

So today while Karen was sick (poor Karen got out of bed, like, three times today) i put together a cheap, far inferior amplifier kit i've had lying around the house since before Houston was born. It uses "hole mount devices" instead of "surface mount devices", which makes it about six thousand times easier to get perfect, and it works flawlessly. Except it's based on a cheap car audio amplifier chip (four, actually), and not the Astonishing Thing of Beauty which is the chip on the amp i burned up. I wish wish i'd used a fuse.

In other news, it's the last day of the year. In fact, there's two hours left, and i'm sitting here writing about amplifiers. Good grief. But our happy fun plans were canceled due to Karen being flu ridden, and after thirty-five new year'ses, it's just not a big deal unless there's a "kickdonkey awesomepants" party to attend or throw. This year it just didn't work out.

So, new year's resolutions: I'll shoot really low this year and resolve to keep my irreplaceable data backed up. And submit a book to more than one publisher. And finish the roof and get tan while doing it.

Overnight!!!

Hey. It's three eleven in the AM, and i'm totally done with my job. Which means i've got nothing to do for the rest of the night but wander up and down the halls now and then making sure the kids aren't dead or in each other's rooms. So i've got until seven in the morning to play UT3 and listen to EDM! That's "a violent shooting game" and "annoyingly repetitive music where none of the instruments are real" respectively.

What also makes me happy is that i've done my job well. The mirror in the staff office doesn't look like a mirror. It looks like a portal into another dimension. The office carpet is Properly Vacuumed (which takes about half an hour for a small sized room). The trash bags have little knots in them to keep them just-so in the cans.

Okay, i'm off to frag some bots.

OW!!!

My tongue still hurts from where i bit it yesterday. A lot.

So to distract myself, allow me to talk about onions and celery.

Onions and celery are like two ends of some kind of culinary spectrum, they're like the same note, but out of phase. I shall explain. Onions, when eaten raw, hit your whole head with a cinder block of pungence. Your sinuses fill with the sharp, nearly sulphuric wave of intense FLAVOR. Not many people i know enjoy such a prospect. Celery, however, is a gentle backrub of taste, insinuating itself without much notice upon the palate, gently conveying a crisp, clean, mountain-breeze of flavor.

However, when cooked the tables are quite floor-scratchingly turned. The presence of onions in cooked food is distinctive, but so pleasant that it's also ubiquitous enough that probably most casual food eaters don't even notice that, say, their meatloaf contains an entire onion chopped finely. There's a warmth, a coziness about cooked onions which agrees with perhaps everyone. Celery, on the other hand, besides retaining its distinctive texture far longer while being cooked, can utterly color the outcome of any dish it's added to. The crispness of flavor of celery's raw incarnation continues into its next life of cookedness, but the character is different by context. It becomes a distinct tang, which may or may not cooperate with the dish's other flavors, or the tastes of the sensitive gourmand. Most cheap canned vegetable soups taste overwhelmingly of CELERY (and burnt beef stock), even if twice as much onion is used as celery in the recipe.

So, when you're making soup or stew, toss that whole Peruvian Vidalia in. But careful with that stick of green!

Wut up, G dog? i mean diaper?

Um, wow. My crazy friend Christian (who, besides being crazy, is LIBERAL!!!) gave us some gDiapers! If you're too lazy to click that whole link over there, the deal with gDiapers is that it's a nifty cloth outer diaper with a waterproof, removable inner liner, with a rad "super absorbent" pad thing which you can flush! So we (who have honorably tried very hard to start using cloth diapers instead of Antichrist-endorsed, communist plot to impurify all of our precious bodily fluids (i mean disposable diapers), but we haven't really gotten that in, um, full swing. Yet. But in the meantime, we're a gFamily! Or at least Zane's going to have a gButt.

In other weblog world friends, our very dear friends Travis and Brooke are in town, so we all went to Panera today, and we had maximum fun time! Except i bit my tongue so hard that i now have a really big cut in my tongue. Like, if it was on my arm, i'd need stitches. Plus, my throat is all owie from being a little bit ill, so i want to eat nice scratchy, spicy foods, but my tongue is like "oh no you don't, Mister The Rest of Me." But i do anyway. Yum, salsa with chips.

Oh, and i also did a caricature today of someone's dad, and they paid me $25. That's a quarter of a hundred dollars! It was weird, but awesome.

Merry Christmas everyone!

I think we did a pretty good job keeping Christmas not about presents or stuff, but about God and Christ. I enjoy it so much! Merry Christmas everyone!

I've not got much more to write besides to point out how hilarious my hair looks in that family picture. I'm totally Rod Stewart with dreadlocks. It's really the baby's corduroy pants behind my head, although i wouldn't mind having beehive teased out dreadlocks, sometimes.

Karen's whole family is there, mom, dad, brothers and sisters and associated loved ones and offspring. Lotsa red. And notice the even, pleasant flash? That's from Karen's new flash which i got her. We've taken a step backwards, though, in using that flash, since it doesn't do metering of its own at all, besides maybe with a thyristor (note to self: figure out if it uses a thyristor) so Karen's stuck taking pictures, previewing them, and adjusting the flash or the lens's F-stop to make the picture turn out. It works out.

Merry Christmas Eve!

Yesterday we opened most of our Moore Family Presents. My favorite present for Karen was a t-shirt which, um, doesn't fit. Rats. Except i also gave her a flash for her big good camera, which combines nicely with the slave flash we've had kicking around our house for millennia. Now pictures she takes don't have to be either blurry because of silly long shutter speeds, or hot and white with redeye and harsh camera-mounted-flash lighting. See Karen's latest gallery to see what i mean. I haven't even checked the pictures out yet!

Karen gave me a couple shirts from ThinkGeek.com, which are completely appropriate for me. One says "Roses are #FF 00 00, Violets are #00 00 FF, and all my base are belong to you". Completely awesome and clever. The other shirt says "2+2=5 for very large values of 2". I wore it today, just to hassle Eric, who continues to persist in the delusion that 0.999 repeating does not equal 1. He's like "it approaches one", so we argued about that for a while today as well. Great fun. And the other Eric quipped that if Blackwater was run by the Prince that Karen was thinking of (Prince the singer from Minneapolis) that Blackwater would instead be called "Purple Rain Water". Now that is freaking hilarious.

Today Houston and Katrina opened their big presents, and we all opened presents from Karen's family. Now, i feel obliged to go on an anti consumerist rant, but i'm not going to. Instead, let me say that it makes such good sense to buy awesome things for your kids because when you do, they can tell that you love them!!! Katrina was opening her dollhouse furniture, and she was hugging Karen and me, her face lighting up with unfettered joy with every chair or piano she'd unearth from the EPS packing material. It's no wonder that parents go into debt to get a fix of that! So i understand. But it's still bad.

Merry Christmas Adam!

Do you ever have a moment where you look behind you and wonder how you just did that? This happens to me once in a while. Usually it has been at work, where someone is going off and trying to kill one of my fellow staff, and all of a sudden i'm on the other side of the table and have the kid firmly in a proper hold, from which they cannot possibly escape or hurt anyone else, besides to tickle me (which happens, and it SUCKS). One time that happened and i caught a shoe the kid threw at us. My staff said it was like The Matrix; the shoe hurtled through the air, and my hand didn't pass through space between where it had been, by my side, and up in the air where it intercepted the shoe.

Well, this morning i was seeping in Katrina's bed. This is an odd reversal -- usually she climbs into our bed sometime during the night. But last night she was "scared" because her "plastic" was "making noise". She has a plastic film storm window, see. And our house is approximately as windtight as an old soggy matchbook. So i said i'd lie down with her for "a while" but i zonked, and even Karen poking me to go to our actual grown-up bed didn't work. So there i was on Katrina's futon, and i heard a WHAM CRASH THUMP KERSLAM, and then, suddenly i was at the bottom of the stairs making all kinds of shocked sympathetic noises and assurances and probably making hilarious faces, if only anyone had been around to photograph them. Alas, the faces are lost to the mists of time, but Karen's got an array of massive bruises to serve as some kind of visual map of the event.

See, Karen fell down the stairs while holding Zane. Karen's got stout environment-mapping software running in her parietal lobe, so she can navigate our treacherous stairs without ever once having an accident. But Zane's pee-soaked self, Karen's slippery socks, and the early hour conflagrated to have her slip, and ride down the stairs pretty much on her butt. She reports thinking many things on the way down the stairs, like "This next stair i HAVE to stop myself!" and "Oh boy, Zane's not liking this. I hope his legs aren't getting hurt." And "Should i get a puppy?" But i didn't think anything, besides being pretty sure that it was Houston falling down the stairs, and being sure that there were going to be bones sticking out of something. But there wasn't. Zane forgot all about it halfway through his diaper and outfit change. And Karen's totally fine. Besides the bruises on her butt, elbow, little finger, back, leg, forearm... The one on her butt is the size and shape of a little Nerf football. It even says "NERF". No, you can't see the picture i took.

Finally, it occurs to me that future generations won't know what a matchbook is. Well, citizens from the future, back when smoking wasn't outlawed by the Ministry of Love, we used to ignite our paper tubes of dried leaves with cardboard sticks tipped with little globs of stuff which would light on fire when you rubbed them on specially treated sandpaper. These cardboard sticks were packaged in a sort of card book, with the flap folding over the matches and tucking into a bit of card near the staple holding the matchbook together. I used to be able to light one of the matches with one hand. I could then let that match light all the others on fire, and watch the whole thing burn crazily. When you don't drink, you have to do something at the bar with your friends when the conversation lulls.

Merry Christmas Animals!

Another random drawing for you all! Rejoice! And stuff.

Today i took my first stab at repairing an Apple product. An iBook G3. Whatever you think about Apple's business model (which can be summed up "overcharge for pretty hardware, but be so freaking cool that your fans convince themselves that it's better that way") one must admit that they make really good looking, well designed hardware. As long as you never need to replace anything. We had to replace the hard drive on this iBook, so i pretty much had to disassemble the whole computer part of the laptop. This contrasts with our utterly pedestrian Compaq laptop which requires the removal of two screws and a little metal panel. And now the iBook won't even POST. Uh, that means Power On Self Test. It won't.

So yeah, sorry for being boring. I need to go wrap presents now.
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Quotes

Karen has exposed the kids to Peter Paul and Mary's famous song, "I'm being swallowed by a boa constrictor", which is from the Shel Silverstein poem. You know, the one where the singer basically gets eaten. We were talking in the car about snakes and what they eat, because Houston was pretty sure that a snake could eat Katrina. I informed them that no, pretty much no snake could actually eat Katrina... none living in North America, that is. I informed the kids that i'd seen a snake eating a mouse, and i explained how non venomous snakes usually need to kill their prey by squeezing it before they'll eat it. Houston wondered how i knew all this. I replied that there were lots of boa constrictors in Peru where i used to live.

Houston said with astonished -- and final -- certainty: "Okay. So you never went out of your house, then."

The other quote is from today. Katrina dripped some water on the ground or broke a toy or something.

She said "Well CRAP!!!" with almost exactly her mother's inflection. I hope i discouraged language like that even though Houston and i were laughing at her. It's not my fault it was funny.

Long video which is Houston's Christmas Program

Um yeah... it's really long, and very very shaky. And it's barely zoomed in enough to tell who you're supposed to be looking at. But it's Houston at his first Christmas concert! It was really awesome to go to.

Houston is a very silly boy. But he's never been one to enthusiastically involve himself in any group activity. Most of his classmates were singing, enough of them loudly to make the event approach cacophony. But Houston sort of stood there... looking shy. Except when he was jumping up and down or shaking his little jingle bell. Or holding it in his mouth.

But he knows the songs, and he stood there bravely, and was entirely cute. It thrilled my daddy-heart to see my little boy doing his thing.

I remember my singing events from my childhood, and i really took them seriously. I could tell that we weren't singing in tune or on rhythm, and i always was a little embarrassed. And i'd NEVER wave to my parents, even though everyone else did. I thought it was unprofessional. But it's okay for me to make faces at Houston (and his cousins, who are right at Christmas-program-age right now) trying to get him to laugh, right?

MY NEW JACKET!!!

Phoebe bought me that jacket for Christmas. Isn't it GREAT????? So stylish. Thank you thank you my sister Phoebe!

I went a little crazy today, and spent most of the day cleaning the kitchen. We had instant mashed potatoes which were "best when used by" 2003. Two questions: why the crap did i buy instant mashed potatoes??? Yuck! Not to insult anyone who can't be bothered to boil potatoes and mash them, but seriously, how hard is it to boil potatoes and then mash them? It's, like, easier than falling off a unicycle. Second question: when did i buy them? Instant mashed potatoes are hardly perishable.

Yeah, and also i'm still working really hard on Houston's book. He really likes the pictures so far. He's seen me working on them, and he laughs, and says "That's a cute picture, Daddy!" Awww, i'm glad. Here's Karen's favorite drawing, and here's one of my faves. Maybe the one where the present is wet is also favorite. They're both favorites.

No time, gotta sleep

That's mostly what i'm working on. Houston's book.

No time to write anything interesting or otherwise, so i'm gonna go to bed now.

Projects Getting Done'r

Done'r is, like, "more done". Today's picture is courtesy of Houston, who drew "Fat" as one of his words for his F-page homework.

I was gonna put these links at the bottom, but this post is a little bit stupid. So here they are: (Karen has links to galleries which are a little bigger, but use plain HTML, while mine use Flash)

The Giraffe Story
The ABC Book for Geeks

I'm a little loopy feeling right now because i worked even though i'm not full steam yet, and i had to restrain a kid twice, and halfway through the second time i had to hand him off to another staff because my pants were falling down. The drawstring in these sweats is cotton, man, and it stretches slowly over the day until i'm clutching my waistband, waddling like a thug. Isn't that a cool look? Oh yeah, and a kid who weighs a good twenty pounds heavier than me ran directly into me accidentally while he was trying to recover from catching a football, and managing the same kind of wardrobe malfunction as i was fated later to experience. I'm happy to say that he's the one who fell crashing to the ground. I was left standing there saying "Charlemagne, why did you just run into me? Ow!"

Oh yeah, and wouldn't it be cool to have a fighting video game where there's characters like "Monk Ladle-Jitsu" who brandishes two ladles, and whose finishing move is to turn you into a bowl of soup which he would sample daintily. "Master Tong" would wield salad tongs, naturally. Then there's the guy with a pen and jumprope. We'd call the game "Ultimate Owie".

Long video about how to toss a pizza crust.

This is from last weekend when we had pizza and watched a movie. Now, i'm kind of feeling a little bit horrible, so i couldn't be bothered to "plug in" my "headphones" so i could "edit" the home video to make it "more understandable" or "less" random. Oh man, aren't scare quotes just a scream? They're better if you do air quotes all the time when you're talking to people in real life. Or if you add "Technically," to the beginning of every sentence. I get a kick out of myself.

Right... so our neighbor kid came over while i was making this pizza, and Katrina wasn't doing a very good job at videography (because, you know, she's three), so i recruited Corbyn to be my cameraman. He did fine, besides putting the camera down for a couple minutes while it was still recording. So that's how to make pizza. My pizza making area is kind of a mess, so i recommend doing a lot more tidying beforehand. Or, do it in the kitchen. That's a good place to cook.

Besides that, my boss at work told me to go home today after i'd worked only three hours, so i came home and collapsed quivering into bed, and slept for about 0.48 x 10¹ hours (that's almost five) so now i feel better, but still tired enough to go to bed soon. By the way, did you know that 0.9 repeating equals 1? Like, EQUALS??? Yeah, i don't understand it either. But when i'm done writing this, i'm going to go read this page, which probably explains how it's possible. But not before saying THANK YOU THANK YOU to my Karen who supported me so much today by letting me huddle beneath the blankets for pretty much all day. You're awesome.

GRRRR-and Rapids

Me and the city ain't getting along right now.

See, we've had this VW Bus sitting in our back yard for the better part of a decade. Like, eight years. We use it as a playhouse. Katrina and Zane love it. They spend hours "driving" to the mall and Grandma's house and Family Fare... and last week Wednesday we got a notice from the city to "Abate" the "Vehicular Nuisance". Plus a $45 bill to pay for the pink piece of paper the fellow taped to our house. Seriously? So i talked to the inspector guy today, and he seems like the kind of guy who will stand by his rules and regulations regardless of the kinds of angry bullying i'm sure he encounters daily. So it seems like there won't be any grace or leniency from him. But there must be a discretionary aspect to what he does. And i can understand how some people stick to The Rules as security, as something sacred and strong, beyond themselves in which to take refuge.

So we've got to a) sell the van and lose the kids' playhouse, b) get the van classified as a structure, and not a disabled vehicle, or c) deal with being in non-compliance, and have to pay fines or go to court or something totally stupid. Oh, or d) get it running and moving, which would mean a new battery, carburettor, and new tires. Um... we're poor? I'll call tomorrow, so expect updates.

We're totally sad. The van has been with us since the year after we were married. It's been the center of insane adventures like the one time it got vaporlock on the freeway and some guy picked me up to get gasoline (i thought it was out) and the guy totally came on to me -- he even groped me!!! -- and after i told him off soundly, i managed to pick Karen up from her job, and then the steering wheel lock engaged in the parking lot leaving us driving in circles until i could somehow take the whole steering column apart. The number 4 piston would rupture anytime we'd drive more than eighty miles at time, leaving us limping along on three cylinders until i found time to yank the engine and replace the pistons and cylinders. We towed it one time after that hole-in-the-piston-thing happened with a U-Haul pickup truck and a $12.00 deer hoist which kept breaking and needing to be tied, leaving us with a shorter and shorter tow rope.

So probably the best memories of the van have been made since it's been parked, and we've played in it. Sigh. Maybe it's time...

Hands

In church today, it occurred to me that i really pay a lot of attention to people's hands. Hands. I guess they're really important to me.

My roommates from college? I can remember their hands. My coworkers? Yep, i remember their hands clearly. Karen quizzed me, and i can even remember the hands of people like Marianne, the girl who used to run up to me while i was at my locker and kiss me and run away. That was almost ten years ago. Karen said it was kind of creepy. I agree with her. It's unintentional, so when i remember people's hands, it's an instant impression, like an image. So Karen's quiz tested my powers of description rather than my ability to remember. It's the remembering part which is weird and out of my control.

So if you know me, i can probably remember and describe your hands using words like "delicate yet competent" or "blunt fingered and strong, with a utilitarian grace". You know, only slightly more meaningful than wine connoisseur words.

When i was a kid, i remember looking at a person's eyes as their most important feature. But since i've been a grown-up, i've thought of people's mouths as their most important feature. Maybe i've been thinking wrong!

Animal Taxi

Hi! It's late, and there's nothing at all to report besides that Katrina's Not So Secret Book is coming along very nicely.

Oh, and also i spent some of my astonishing eBay money on a cheap Woot Sansa e260 mp3 player so i put Rockbox on it. See, Rockbox is an open source firmware solution for certain mp3 players, like many iPods and the irivers and, like, Toshiba and Archos. Now my mp3 player can play Doom. Like, the 3D game that was implicated in the Columbine school shootings of the Twentieth Century. Back in the nineties, full on computers would be doing well to be able to play Doom. And now a pocket music player can duplicate it. Amazing. Plus, it does gapless playback, which is very important to me, whose favorite albums are hurt a lot with gaps between tracks. For instance, think of the orchestral swoops of Lisa Gerrard's "Sacrifice" going into the synthesized ambiant -- morphing to heavily sawtooth wave'd bass line -- of Lost.It.com's "Animal", which you* will agree is one of the most amazing, inspired mixing moments ever pressed to CD. Now think of the same thing with a half second gap and a faint *click!* between tracks! ANATHEMA!!!

*by "you" of course, i mean Dave and JJ, and nobody else. Here's the album i'm talking about, as though anyone cares.

Tiger and stuff.

Yep, i'm working on books. I can't write more, because i need to go to bed!

Hmm, nevermind. I'm doing a lot of working on Katrina's book right in front of her. I'm not trying to hide anything at all. When she gets the book, she'll recognize all the artwork already, but you know, i think that's okay. In fact, perhaps her being aware of the whole process will make it more special even. I mean, there's plenty of books with incredible illustrations which i can't even hope to compete with, and those books are certainly enjoyable to me, as an adult, but the kids don't seem to care much. But since Daddy painted the pictures, and memorably so, since Katrina painted with me yesterday, the book she'll be getting (all our kids are getting books from us this year) will hopefully be even more special.

Plus, i anticipate these books catapulting Karen and i into the stratosphere of wealth and high society. Yes, we're poised to become the next forces to be reckoned with in the high stakes, fast moving world of children's book authors and illustrators... i know Madonna has published kids' books. Hillary Clinton too, maybe.

A story with Katrina and Houston!

Two days ago i raved about Katrina's generosity. Yesterday it was me and Houston's time out. But today, allow me to share a little story about both of 'em.

I was clearing the table after that macaroni and cheese, and i popped my head back into the living room just in time to see a hard bound kid's book (ever read about "Tacky the Penguin"? Very funny) fly across the room and ricochet off the side of Houston's head. Katrina kind of squeaked, Zane looked at both of his siblings with his "eyebrows" raised (he doesn't really have eyebrows yet, but he gets this look of seriousness when bad stuff happens that he's concerned about) and of course Houston wailed in pain. The book really got his upper ear. Like, there was a little scratch.

So Katrina went to Uh-Oh time right away, i comforted Houston, and then a moment later, Katrina started complaining about being so cold. Houston said between sobs (and i have no idea why he's speaking of himself in the third person):

"You're cold, Katrina? But Katrina, why would you throw a book at Houston's head when you're cold? That doesn't make any sense!!!"

A day with Houston

Today i got to take Houston to his school today for a pizza party! I was totally looking forward to it until we were barely done eating our pizza, when they said all the kids would be whisked off to a room somewhere so we could watch a forty minute video (edited very poorly) all about how dads should volunteer in schools. I tried my best to sleep while it was showing since i totally believe that it's such an awesome idea and please let me do it, but i wasn't rude enough to actually put my head down. When it was done, i signed up to spend two days at his school, and picked Houston up. He showed me some of his artwork, which is great, and then we went to the car. We agreed that the pizza party was not as fun as we'd hoped, so we went to Meijer to look at toys and stuff.

There are lots of guns in the toy area of Meijer. I would love to see the statistics of how many gun toys are being sold now, and how many there were pre 9/11. Houston and i talked about the war in Iraq, and fascinatingly, he suggested building walls in Iraq so people would stop hurting each other (how awesome is that? my five year old coming up with projects which were actually carried out by the US military... although it probably says more about the policy makers in charge of the Rumsfeld era military than how smart my kid is) and also suggested giving people messages on paper. Messages that say "don't hurt each other". Awesome.

Then we came inside and finished off the pizza i'd made for Karen and Katrina and Zane. It was a Vitale's crust, Spartan brand sauce (with a surprise anise seed or two! yum!) and onions, green peppers, tomato and mushrooms. Now, i don't like onions or green peppers or tomatoes on pizza, but this was still dang good pizza. But then, Houston found an earwig on the floor of our house. Now, Karen, 1) earwigs really really don't hide in your ears and get stuck, 2) earwigs don't like it inside, but they're curious and it's freezing outside. So when they're found indoors it's because it's warm in here and they're curious. So don't gross out. But the earwig was seriously really cute. I picked it up and it crawled around on me for probably ten minutes as Houston and i watched it clean its antennae and face and look explore the crags of my hands. Nobody will believe me, but an earwig cleaning its face is really cute. They do pretty much exactly what cats do, the lick-wipe-lick-wipe thing. And of course the antenna cleaning routine is cute too, but cats don't have anything analogous to antennae. Okay okay, maybe a cat's eyebrow whiskers serve as feelers just like earwig antennae, but cats can't grab their whiskers in their paws and clean them off with their mouths a bit at a time.

Generous Girl

We went to Family Fare today (our kids' favorite store, since the routine of getting a bag of popcorn and then a "treat", which is an eighth (which other word features the string of letters "ghth"?) of a muffin -- Family Fare knows kids, i guess) where we bought stuff like diaper wipes and fish. When we got home, Katrina and Zane went to quiet time, and minutes later, Katrina came downstairs with four pennies in her little fist. She put them carefully in my hand and said "Here Daddy. That's for Family Fare."

She was helping me pay for the fish and diaper wipes. Awwwwwwww! There aren't enough w's in the world.

Later i asked her why she'd given me the money, and she said something which i don't think made sense even to her before she said it but who cares... and i just think of her sitting in her room by herself playing with her stuff, and she looked at her money jar with its dozen coins (she's constantly giving Houston her coins) and she thought of our trip to the store... She's just such a generous sweetie.

Two Weblog Features for Your Scrutiny:

I updated the weblog software behind Wanito's World. It's pretty cool. So here's the deal. Popup image links like this old style one (which, incongruously*, is the only new photograph in today's post) are possible, but there's a really cool new method for looking at images... this one, for example. But it's kind of obnoxious because the whole site greys out while the image is loading, which could take a while on account of my narrow tubes. You know, my bandwidth.

*Wikipedia's article on irony says that "incongruity" is not in most English speakers' active vocabulary. So obviously, i had to use it in a sentence.

And the other cool this is:
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Bread.

They sell this bread stuff with a flour mixture and yeast, and you mix it up and poof, three hours later you have bread! The central kitchen at Wedgwood gets all kinds of random food stuffs donated from lawyer's offices or the zoo or whatever, including bizarre things like peach pit kernel cookies. Yesterday, we got potato bread mix from Germany. So whenever i'd made bread, i'd done it the alchemist's way with warm sugar water, yeast, letting it proof for hours in a moist oven... oh the humanity! But this German bread mix process was fairly painless. And it was really good. I'll have to do that here at home.

Also, one of the kids at work has a horrible children's size guitar, warped and cracked, with the strings nearly an inch from the fretboard. I performed Pearl Jam's "Jeremy" using it. It's really bad. Someday i'll put it up on YouTube.

Finally, it was the year's worst day for driving. There was an ice storm, causing a crust of ice to form over the slight snow cover. I didn't crash or die on the way home, and i thank God! It was scary.