Soy Señor Zumbero

Oh yes, that i am. Today was the day i got certified to be a ZUMBA! instructor! I feel like i should write a quick rundown of the seminar for posterity... and because i didn't do anything else today at all. I miss my family!

Okay, the seminar was in Midland, which is about two and a half hours away. I was driving off at six in the morning, arrived on time, looked at the clothing, decided i didn't need a sports bra or $55 pair of pants, and tricked myself into buying a shirt. It was the most masculine thing they had. Then we had a really good "Experts Class", which was basically a ZUMBA! class without the fluffy super easy steps. Then we learned why ZUMBA! is the most incredible and awesome fitness program ever, (something having to do with "party like atmosphere" and "fun"), and some other stuff. Like there should be 70% dance moves and 30% "fitness" moves in a ZUMBA! routine (fitness moves being punches or squats), and 70% of songs should be Latin or at least not from the developed West, and the other 30% can be hip-hop or country or rock. Also -- interestingly -- that we're expected to retain 30% of the info and forget 70%. Someone was proud of being able to add 70 and 30.

Then i had lunch (sandwich, plus sushi from Meijer that this one lady didn't want) and learned about how to get your ZUMBA! classes started. Boring boring blah blah blah, i've already got a plan which wasn't even peripherally addressed -- i want to lead classes for the girl clients, and any adult employees, at Wedgwood. There's been very positive interest from everyone i've talked to about this.

Then we learned four basic steps and their variations. Cumbia is the easiest, salsa is fun and pretty easy, merengue features a whole hip circle wobble thing my testosterone saturated body can only barely figure out, and reggaeton is completely wild, crazy, and thirty seconds of it should exhaust anyone. It's also my favorite. Then we practiced and practiced, and finally we had a good little tutorial on how to choreograph songs.

So now i can start leading class! First i have to write up and send out a proposal, choose some music, do some choreography, and... start doing it! Yay!

Date!!!

Today Karen and i went on a date! First, of course, the kids hammed it up for our cameras. Zane in particular, because he's just so so so cute. So then after we took the three smaller people off to be babysat, Karen and i stopped to help a guy put a serpentine belt on his car, which i totally figured out for him, and then we ate ribs (a birthday treat), ate half a baguette and read for almost two hours, which was AWESOME, and then watched the new Batman movie. The Dark Knight. Heath Ledger, creeeeeeepy creepy. So sad.

But it was an excellent date. Good night! ZUMBA! in the morning. I'm excited.

Eleven!

There's eleven cop cars outside my building at work today. I didn't even know we had eleven cop cars in the greater metropolitan area of Grand Rapids. Wow.

I'm exceedingly happy that it's not my unit which is doing so badly, but i'm sure the next door unit could use some prayer. Lots.

Graham!

Our dog had surgery today. He's half beagle, half Springer Spaniel, and Springers are known for getting fatty tumors. Well, he had one which was disgusting and gross, so finally we had the vet chop it off. So now he's lump free, but extremely docile, which is kind of cute. I'm more glad than i would have thought that he didn't die on the operating table. I guess i do love him. Even though he's obnoxious and pee happy.

Last night i went to bed on time. At midnight. It was... refreshing! Good start.

Mmm, kimbap

Kimbap_copy1.jpg??? There's already another picture on my server named kimbap? Oh! There it is! Aww, i feel like my posts from back then were better. Maybe it's because it was summer, and that day we went a bug exhibit.

Today i made kimbap for the first time in AGES. If you can manage to tolerate the low-tide fragrance and flavor of the seaweed, it's got to be one of the most nutritionally balanced foods ever, and certainly the most nutritionally balanced fast (or finger) food. Seriously, you could probably live quite healthily eating nothing but kimbap. Complex carbohydrates, protein in the meat, protein and fat in the eggs, fiber and vitamins in the veggies, and more vitamins and minerals in the seaweed than you could possibly shake a stick at. Shake a stick??? What the...?

Katrina liked it, Zane munched away at whatever selected bits snagged his fancy, and Karen says that Houston devoured it. We forgot how much we like that stuff. I'll make it more often. We'll eat like kings! Or Koreans, which is pretty much the same thing. Except not really. Also? When we lived in Korea, they used a weird linguistic Anglicization scheme where the Korean letters spelling "seaweed" and "rice" turned into kim and bap. But now they use a scheme where the "b" symbol is always always spelled "b", even if it would be better spelled "p", like in "bap". The we lived in Pusan. Now it's Busan. Kimbap is now kimbab. Do not want!

I believe it's Mardi Gras. So i've got half an hour to indulge in... well... i think what i'm giving up for Lent is staying awake late. I'll be going to bed at midnight every single night until Easter. Probably. It's going to be weird. I'll keep us all updated.

My birthday! Yay!

Let me try to get this right this time: I'm thirty seven. Sweet.

I thank Karen for feeding me awesome food, Katrina and Zane and Houston for playing with me, and everyone for letting me sleep in and stuff. And after several days without pictures, i figured i'd put that giant one up there featuring the kids' decorating. Mmm, birthdays.

Katrina took a picture of herself, she took a family portrait and i grilled up some steaks.

I'll be 27 tomorrow

This is the only day i can say "tomorrow i'll be 27" and not be making a stupid joke based on the preconceptions people have about what that phrase means. Tomorrow i'll say "tomorrow i'll be 27! har har har har!" Oh, whoops. Tomorrow i'll actually be 37. Thirty seven. Ten years older than 27.

Yeah. And i left my camera at work. Where i had to restrain one of the kids. First time all year, i believe, which is good. Wow. So anyway, unless i go to work tomorrow on my birthday, on my day off, i'll not have my camera on my birthday! The special day where i get everything my way and everyone fawns on me... except i'm an adult now, so my expectations are a little more realistic.

Pets...?

Hey! My birthday is coming up! And yesterday was the day when analogue TV signals quit being sent out... isn't that right? Lemme check real quick... nope. There's still analogue signals on the air. It was Hugh Laurie on Saturday Night Live. Because hey, it's Saturday night! But it wasn't live, unless it's Christmas again. Weird.

People have fish for pets, right? Sometimes people feel like they have relationships with their fish. Some people have shrimp or little crabs in their tanks. But we eat these? By the dozens, sometimes? So i wonder if anyone ever has lobsters for pets. Because they're cheap and plentiful, as far as big aquarium pets go. But they haven't got much personality.

We're probably going to get a giant African millipede eventually for a pet, and while it won't have any personality, at least we'll be able to handle it. And it'll get used to us. And i hope we don't drop it or squish it on accident. That would be sad.

In praise of poster putty and free software

I think i've talked about this before, but poster putty is awesome stuff for geeks like me. The uses to which i've put it: sticking stuff to walls (duh); sticking stuff like speakers and USB hubs to my desktop; helping dangerous things like razor blades and soldering irons stay where i put them; keeping pretty much anything from coming loose, like circuit boards in my Palm Pilot; and most awesomely, keeping tiny screws in place while working on laptops and other fiddly tiny devices. Poster putty rock rock ROCKS.

FOSS software: this stands for Free Open Source Software. I sang the praises of Rocketdock Wednesday, and it's really cool. Then, i decided to do a screencap of it in action, so i fired up Virtualdub, and then used The GIMP to make an icon with an image swiped from a page i was using Firefox to view. Rocketdock, Virtualdub, The GIMP, Firefox... and then FFDshow as a solve-all video codec solution... all of these are amazing hunks of code, and they are all totally free to use, modify, redistribute, and even sell if you can find a sucker willing to buy. I love it. Other free software i love, but which isn't open source, Winamp, BSPlayer, DVDShrink. The free-software situation is getting really advanced. It's a good time to be an intermediate-to-advanced computer user. :)

Two minute post:

It's JJ's birthday! He's... 34? Okay, yesterday was actually his birthday. I missed it by two hours. He's a really really really cool guy. Happy birthday, brother!

I spent some of my brother's birthday working on Rocketdock icons and fiddling with it. See, Rocketdock is a little doohickey which sits at the top (or wherever) of your computer screen and displays icons. The default icons are relatively good looking, but the really cool part is the way they swoosh around, zooming bigger when your mouse is over them. Then there's a clock, which you can see, and all the icons i made to look square and glossy... then there's popout icons which you can click and then choose from other icons which fling themselves all over your desktop, to only retract once you select one. Very cool. My new idea is to keep my desktop completely clean of all icons except one, and just use Rocketdock for everything else.

Also, i took the day off work. So we got to go to ZUMBA! in the gym at the Y. It was huge and fun. There were at least FIVE guys including me, but probably eighty other people. Then, Houston and i worked on a shelf, Karen and i played World of Goo, and now it's late and my surface temperature is falling, so i'd better get to bed before i become an icicle.

Marshmallow test

Thanks to a suggestion by Tony, we did the marshmallow test today with Katrina and Zane. The marshmallow test: give your children a marshmallow. Tell them that you have some errands to run, and if they can manage to not eat the marshmallow until you return, they will get two marshmallows. Katrina and Zane listened carefully, seemed to clarify in their minds what we were talking about, and then Karen and i lurched off to get lunch ready. As evidenced by video recorded by two cameras we carefully hid on the table in front of Katrina and Zane. Which they ignored, because there's cameras strewn about this house like some houses have... um... food? strewn about. If Karen's parents' house can be called "some houses".

Zane and Katrina pushed their bowls away from themselves. Then, they climbed onto the table to gaze at their treasures. But they resisted for a whole two hundred seconds or so. That's like three minutes. When we came back and praised them and gave them each a second marshmallow, Zane said "Thankyou!" and Katrina said "If I wait again, can I have another one?" She figured it out, the stinker.

New Laptop!

We got our replacement laptop today. It's a Dell, one of their cheapest models, and it's perfectly satisfactory. I'm typing on it right now! The screen is nice and big, and it's got a nice processor -- Intel Core2 Duo. It's shiny. I guess the top is painted metal, which gets fingerprinted, but hopefully not scratched very much. DVD burner... 2gigs of ram... and since it was designed for "the developing world" i hope it'll be durable.

We had a parent teacher conference today for Houston. He's very smart. 99th percentile, whoop whoop. He's reading everything, he gets more abstract concepts in reading and writing, and he already is doing perspective in his drawings. There was a city scene assignment, and every drawing was laid out map-like, with houses sprouting from roads parallel to each other. But Houston's roads were in perspective, with the far one very thin, and being partially occluded by the buildings (featuring three different kinds of roof, might i add) in front of it. Then there were the cars crashing everywhere... I'm very proud of him. If we could just get him to stop playing rough. Impulse control, please, impulse control.

And just now Karen stopped watching House on hulu.com to watch this video. Funny.

So Much Candy!

I almost never take really good pictures of the kids! So there's one of Katrina looking all cute by our front window. The clean, neutral light from that window has provided us with a giant number of very pretty pictures. Here's a picture of Houston with interesting light.

The day after Valentine's day, one might expect there to be a surplus of sweets. One would be correct. I used to be able to eat hundreds, possibly thousands of calories of chocolate and other candy, but i can't do that anymore. So after six Dove Promises and a cookie i was done. What's happening to me? At least that isn't happening to Houston or Katrina. Or Zane. That little boy would eat candy perpetually. Today Karen said "It's time to go home, get pajamas on, brush teeth and go to bed." Zane chirped "Eat CANDY!??!?" Insatiable.

Katrina's Big Birthday Party

When Houston turned five, we had a big shindig. It was the one featuring aliens, i believe, and we played Pin the Body Part on the Alien. There were pictures of aliens strewn about... and the reason i mention all this is that Houston's drawings have since then shown echoes of those alien drawings. Katrina too. Many drawings have multiple stalked eyes, tentacles, tooth-filled, gaping maws. So for sure, when one turns five, it's a birthday one'll remember.

Katrina has loved everything princess-ey since she was able to form opinions, and so obviously we did a princess tea party for her birthday. She loved it! There was Hot Tea Cup, which was inexplicably intoxicatingly fun, Drop the Marshmallow in the Teacup, which i remember playing for my fourth birthday party except with clothes pins and a jar. Then we played duck duck goose, which offered intoxicating fun of a slightly more explicable nature, because kids running in circles is just cute. We danced "like at Aunt Alisha's wedding" said Katrina. Then the piñata bashing commenced. I never liked piñatas because i was too gentle of a child to force myself into the fray. But most of the kids here dove in with abandon once the paper Princess "Please Bash Me Up" Cutie ruptured. Somewhere in there we ate cake and had "tea", with the boys sitting at a little side table by themselves. They seemed to be okay with that.

Karen cooked huge amounts of sweet goods. She and her mom prepared tiny fruit kebabs. I made frosting. Grown ups talked about interesting things. Children squealed. I hope Katrina remembers for the rest of her life.

Oh, and once i find my camera tomorrow, i'll put up a picture or two.

Happy Birthday, Katrina!

Today, Friday the thirteenth, Katrina turns five! She's not our cute little four year old anymore. Oh well.

Karen keeps up with far more blogs than i do, which means "more than three". One of the ones we sometimes look at together is a wedding photographer's blog. We enjoy commenting on the poses, framing, focal lengths, vignetting, blah blah blah. But one thing which mystifies us is the choice to desaturate and drop contrast on pictures, making them look like aged photos from a '60's Vogue magazine. Retro and stuff, but really? For weddings? So i tried that with that picture of Katrina, since it was already not an earth movingly good picture anyway. High ISO pictures with digital cameras aren't nearly as interesting as the same from film. Because film has organic-like grain structure. Unrelated picture of Zane eating noodles.

I missed more than half of Katrina's birthday, since i'm still "gainfully" employed, so the last section of the day, we kind of played and went to the store. Then we had Katrina's choice for supper (macaroni and cheese), cake, and she opened presents. She got a doll, a very large dollhouse Karen found on Craigslist, and we have now left the ranks of households who do not own the game Twister. Houston played Twister somewhere and told me how much fun it was, so we decided to get that for Katrina. Woo hoo. Then she played with her toys, and off to bed with her.

While Karen was reading Katrina's choice of books, my cousin Marty helped me move Houston's toolbench into the basement. It was an incredibly tight squeeze. If i'd made it half an inch taller, I would have needed to disassemble it to get it down there. I don't even understand how i get myself into the basement. I'm way taller than the toolbench. Heavier too, i think. Maybe it's cause i'm lithe and flexible and agile like a puma. Except i'm diurnal.

Oregonian weather!

It's been rainy all day. I love rainy weather. Reminds me of Oregon. Except in Oregon, they put cat's eyes on the road, at least they used to.

In Michigan, things are different. Snowplows scrape the entire road surface all winter. Our economy has been scraping along on the and we can't even afford to fill potholes properly. So driving in the dark in the rain is an exercise in subtlety. You have to watch for differences in reflectivity between paint and asphalt. Or dryer looking road where many tires have trod. Seams in the concrete marking lane differences. It's kind of fun.

I finally installed Windows again. Fresh Windows always makes stuff so much faster. Astonishingly faster.

Last thing; i started making a piñata today for Katrina's birthday party. It's going to be a princess. And with luck, it's going to be extremely cute. I think it'll be a little weird to be bashing the snot out of a cute pink princess hanging from the ceiling. It's not like we hate her, right? We just want to eat her guts. Guts being candy, of course. I'm thinking Bit-o-Honey. I like those. And those pink/white/brown coconut like sweets; i like those too.

Work

I got to volunteer at Degage tonight, which is always fun. I enjoy having a very specific job and being able to do it well. I don't think i'd enjoy doing that, y'know, as my job job. But as a proud holder of a liberal arts bachelor's degree, i'm specifically qualified to be a short order cook.

Okay, i'm gonna go try to fix a laptop with a broken power connector.

Just a couple pictures

Yesterday it was warm enough to go outside and ride bikes! Houston and Katrina and Zane love that activity. They rocked up and down the street for hours. Well, minutes.

Also, Houston can throw a ball in the air and hit it about every time. That's quite something. I still can't hit it every time. And that's about it. I seriously need to get extra sleep tonight. Mmmm, sleeeeeep.

YALP

YALP stands, obviously, for Yet Another LAN Party. It's always weird to make acronyms of acronyms. Houston had a ton of fun. Hey, so did i -- i love playing games over the network. There's just moments, like when i was racing along trying to catch up to Marty, and Houston came roaring up a hill behind me and actually jumped right over my car, his tires smashing into my roof, and zooming off into the distance. Houston is really quite good. I can only beat him because of my decades of experience.

In utterly unrelated news (besides decades) i just recently got into contact with my high school classmates on Facebook. Most of them look very much the same. I look like a colossal dweeb (to myself) in my high school pictures. On the other hand, i took a macro picture of Katrina's eye the other day. She's got the clear blue eyes, with the very cute eye shape. So i took a macro picture of my own eye. I'M HIDEOUS! TURN AWAY I'M A MONSTER!!!!! Wrinkles! Pores! Okay, maybe i'm not a monster, but at least i don't still look like i did in tenth grade.

A bit about Zane

Today Zane announced that we should go to Grandma Moore's house to get a drink of water. Then he modified it to Grandma Martinus' house, which was more reasonable, but still odd since we were at Meijer, near a drinking fountain. And earlier while we were waiting in a parking lot, he recognized Little Caesar's Pizza as a pizza store. Weird, since there's only the most stylized representation of a pizza on the little dude's spear, and it was seen from across five lanes of traffic.

Getting to know Zane's personality is something we're cherishing right now. He's heart bendingly cute.

Coloring

Katrina wanted to color with me today. I preferred to draw and THEN color. Coloring in Precious Moments pictures is stimulating for some, but not for me. I might stoop to a Hello Kitty coloring book, because of my embarrassing penchant for that particular feline.

Oh, and for Pizza Movie Night, we watched Bolt. There was a very funny anti-cat moment in there. Not that i'm anti-cat, but it's interesting how much dark humor may be had at cats' expense, Monty Python's whole cat-whacking scene from The Holy Grail, for instance. Dogs are just too good-natured and trusting, while cats may be seen as aloof, haughty.

So here's my drawing. It's a giant chicken by our house. It's crushing our car. If we ever get a pet chicken, i hope it doesn't grow to be that big.

Katrina's ballet

I should be asleep. Instead, i played GRID, which is really addicting. I really like driving games, and this one is certainly one of the best looking, and sure is fun. Flatout 2 might be a little more fun.

Yesterday i got to take Katrina to her ballet class in the morning. It was so much fun. She's so obedient and careful to do exactly what her teacher wants. I'm looking forward to seeing how she's going to do in school.

Sleep deprived

Stupid computer games. I have been sitting here for dozens of minutes, the good time spent talking to Karen, the medium time spent actually reading interesting things on the internet, and the bad time spent wondering what to write. So i'm going to stop trying, and go to bed. Because sleep is good.

Superbowl!

Karen's friend Karen lives in Pittsburgh, which is where the Steelers are from, and they're the football team which won the Superbowl this year, and i only watched about ten minutes of the game. I walked in JUST as James Harrison had intercepted the pass and was about on the opposing team's 20 yard line. So i got to, utterly randomly, enjoy a record breaking, history making football play. It was really kind of awesome. Not that i will start watching football (or any televised sport) but still it was totally awesome.

Problem is, i only know about that moment. And most of my coworkers are football enthusiasts, so while i can reminisce with them about that play, that's it. It's like talking to a car enthusiast about the AC Cobra, and all you know about it is that it has a big Ford V8 engine. True, but that doesn't make you informed. I think i'll just be happy that i got to see it live.

Sledding-n-stuff

Yay! We went sledding! Houston: YAY!!! Me: YAY coldcoldcold!!! Zane: WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!! The whole time. Thus, "the whole time" was only half an hour. Unless you count the time we spent driving back and forth because "Lafayette" was misspelled as "Leffingwell".

Karen came home to much hugging and running around, we had "Peetut Mooovie AaaiTUH" which is Zanese for pizza and movie night. We watched Rat Race, which is rated PG-13 for language, comic mischief, comedy violence and a partial nudity. We fast forwarded and muted a lot. But there was much laughing. And now i'm trying to figure out how to recuperate from sleep deprivation without actually sleeping. Sleeping is so BORING!