Look! A picture! Of me!!!

Okay, so when our KIA was sitting in the garage during our vacation to New York, the alternator rusted and refused to turn. I replaced the alternator, but was in a giant hurry, so i didn't put the belt on the power steering pump and AC compressor, which is okay, because i never use the AC, and i'm so gigantically macho, i don't need no stinking power steering either. Karen didn't like the no-power-steering thing... So today after i finished the roof (which has been waterproof, but is now totally snow-proof, and we'll never have an ice dam let water leak anywhere ever again) i figured that as long as i was dirty, i'd pop the belt back on the power steering pump.

But the power steering pump got messed up. There's a slotted shaft which has vanes which are slightly spring-loaded, and wipe the inside of a off-center (to the shaft) cylinder. There's inlet and outlet in to the cylinder... okay, i'm not explaining this very well (oh! i found a picture, but suffice it to say that now when i stress the power steering system, it growls and howls hilariously loudly. Sigh. I didn't even know that a power steering system COULD do that. I mean, everything, including the slotted shaft and impeller vanes is immersed in hydraulic fluid. Which is a kind of oil.

Oh well. I'm hoping it sorts itself out.

Experimenting with kids from work

Today at work i took a small cookie, placed it in a small bowl, and placed that on the counter. Then i looked at one of the kids and said "Bart, you are NOT allowed to eat this." So i walked away, keeping the cookie in my peripheral vision. Bart immediately picked up the cookie and started nibbling on it. I scolded him and said "I am not joking, Bart, you are NOT allowed to eat that cookie." So Bart picked it up and took another tiny nibble. Earlier that day, i had talked with Bart about "urge control" and "frustration management", which he seemed to develop a working understanding of. But he remains the most deficient kid i've ever seen in those areas. I mean, i don't know if it's possible to have less than zero impulse control, like, in the negatives, but if it is, he does.

When i took the cookie from him, and crumbled it into the sink and washed it down the drain, Bart seemed a bit put out.

Tomorrow it'll be the "You may eat this quarter-cookie right now, or get a whole cookie in five minutes" trick to see what he does.

Fun!

Also, in my other job (i have TWO JOBS!!! i'm blessed) i started the dance which goes to "La Vida Es Un Carnaval" to the music "La Negra Tiene Tumbao". I was almost a minute into the song when i realized my error, and had to stop the whole class to find the "Carnaval" one so we could dance it. Whoops! Also, it turns out that the "Zumba Posse Grand Rapids" has a website. It is GRZUMBA dot com, and is a hilarious mixture of animated-gif-heavy amateur web design and prefabricated web site templates. If you get far enough into the menu system on the left, you'll get links for "Zero Debt Solutions"... so i'm not really sure what's going on there.

But there's a lot of videos of Tara, my favorite ZUMBA! instructor. And i want to be part of the Zumba Posse Grand Rapids.

Fun!

About teh ZUMBA!

Back in June i started offering ZUMBA! classes at Wedgwood. At first, a bunch of people showed up, and lots of kids, and they were pretty enthusiastic. But then summer came, and no paying people came (staff or teachers, who'd toss me three bucks per class CHEAP!) and kids started not coming anymore. So i kind of quit even going. I wonder if anyone's noticed yet.

But it is so much fun! I know people who're doing (or at least starting, which isn't the same thing) P90X, which is a ninety day workout plan which makes you seriously fit, in a ridiculously short amount of time. But it's just WORK. You have to spend at least an hour a day doing various kinds of push ups, pull ups, sit ups, and simple weight lifting. It would be kind of neat to have, like, a ripped torso... but... who cares? It's not like i need huge muscles at work, and Karen loves me just like i am. I don't care about impressing other people. ...except maybe i do, being such a show off. But not enough to actually work out ugh.

Okay... rambling... but today in my funnest ZUMBA! class of the week, i was noticing that many of the people, even some of the long-time-regulars participate, and do very well, but they look quite grim the whole time. How can you dance to very cool music with lots of people and look grim? "I take my ZUMBA! very seriously." Nope. Don't get it.

Yesterday was Houston and my date!

Yesterday after my ZUMBA! class, Houston and i discussed where we'd want to go for our date. He said "The Children's Museum", but it was going to be closed by the time we got there. So he thought and thought, and then: "Craig's Cruisers!" So there we went.

We got to ride the go karts twice, because the first time, some rowdy kids were crashing the whole time and they had to shut the race down. Houston and i and another dad-son team were allowed to go again for free because we'd been so careful to follow the rules.

The other activity Houston wanted to do was the high ropes course. He leaped and frolicked like a mountain goat high on coffee beans. Then, for much too long, he played the games which give tickets. When i was a kid, i never -- NEVER -- played those ticket games. I never even wanted to. I kind of thought everybody who did play them was ... stupid. Probably it was my parents who showed me the mathematical absurdity of the whole system, but i don't remember any conversation of that sort, so maybe i figured it out on my own.

But seriously, why would i blow ten bucks on games to win tickets which can get me three bucks worth of crappy plastic already-broken junk? But... Houston wanted to play. The ticket games can be fun, and when you see people sitting in front of machines with yards of tickets spewing from the front, it does make you want to start pumping the money into them. Kind of.

At the same time... the games i did want to play were racing games or shooting games. Houston gets his fill of racing games for free, and they look much much better than the ones at the arcade. So maybe i'll forgive him his ticket-lust.

After the money on our card ran out, we went to Steak-N-Shake. Retro fast food, and not cool-retro, just retro. Houston and i sat there for about an hour, and talked. Can birds fly with just one wing? Why not? What would you do if an airplane you were on landed in the Hudson River? And Houston says some silly things. Often they're just silly, but sometimes, they're silly-clever, and i love that. A lot.

When the date was over, i asked Houston what his favorite thing was, and he reported that the go-karts were his favorite thing. When i said that sitting talking to him was my favorite thing, he said "Really???" and screwed up his face. Affirmative, said i, and he spent a second or two being pensive. I hope he was processing in his little brain that i LOVE him, and talking with him is one of the coolest things in the world.

Get busy!

I'm proud of how hard i worked today. I awoke at six thirty, worked at my "real job" until i got to leave early around one, then i bought some shingles. When i came home, i made a really sturdy ladder out of 2x4s, (normal boards that you build house walls out of) and kind of rebuilt part of the roof, and then started putting up the shingles. It was raining, sometimes hard. It was kind of awesome. I like doing stuff like that -- roofing in the rain. While i was building the ladder (also in the rain), Katrina was holding an umbrella and handing me nails. She was adorably helpful, and full of compliments: "That looks like a really great ladder, Dad!" And after that, i led a ZUMBA! class. Whew.

So there's some bible verse which talks about how sweet is the rest of the hardworking. Tonight my rest will be sweet. So far Karen and i have rested by watching The Office. Jim was really mad.

Also, Houston made a first-gen Scion xB out of paper! I just can't say enough how much i love watching my kids do this kind of stuff.

Hyena

I guess it is possible to have a pet hyena. They're still incredibly strong and frightening, though. Like, they had one in the Tower of London which tore up a floorboard in its enclosure "without any apparent effort", and they do eat bones. Just kind of munch them down. Like pretzels. The only land animal with a stronger bite is the Tazmanian Devil, which also eats bones.

I'm fascinated by that picture. At first i thought it was fake, because of the unnatural stance of the hyena on the ground, but then hyenas always look unnatural to me because i'm used to looking at dogs, and hyenas aren't even closely related to dogs. Also, i thought that the absurdly thick chain part of the leash was just for the gnarly look, but then i remembered that hyenas munch bones like pretzels. Anything not thick steel would present a mere mild annoyance to any hyena wishing to be liberated of its leash.

A brief kid update

The other day, Houston made a menu. One of the featured items is that: "Macaroni and Me", which is, of course, a bowl of macaroni with random body parts thrown in. So. Awesome. Awesome in a gruesome, horrifying way, but awesome. Notice the head with the tongue sticking out.

Katrina has taken school completely to heart. She has been finding signs and copying them down. Today i found a piece of paper featuring, in a whimsically embellished script, the word "Decaf". Thrills my heart.

I got to substitute for the normal Tuesday night ZUMBA! teacher today. We were about perfectly on time. I would have had five minutes to get ready. But Zane had a pooptastrophe. I don't need to go into any details, besides to say that he had to go to the play area without any socks, and it took me about ten minutes to clean up. Ugh.

Funny

There's another one of Houston's jokes. He is just funny!

Today it's Beth's birthday! Happy birthday, Beth! So to celebrate, we ate yummy desert that Karen makes, went to ZUMBA! to burn off all the calories and more, and then ate chicken salad pitas sandwiches. They were amazing. I ate six.

I love ZUMBA!

Also, on the show House, which stars my fifteen-year-older identical twin, Hugh Laurie, started with a parkour chase scene. If i was fifteen years younger, and was in as good shape as i am, i would totally try to get into parkour. But back then they hadn't invented it yet.

Okay

Recently somewhere i was asked what my favorite word was. I tried to come up with something creative like salamander, but upon further reflection, i have settled on a favorite word:

okay

That's it. I like it because its origins are shrouded in uncertainty. It's nearly universal (on earth... just to specify). Seriously, i could say "okay" to almost any human on the planet, and they'd understand. It's short. It's easy -- fun! -- to say. It's, like, totally the most useful word ever. Besides, like, "like". Also, it just occurred to me, when you say "okay", your facial expression follows closely the surprise-acceptance cycle that we do when, for instance, we see an old friend unexpectedly. "Oh...? Hey!!!" Okay! Maybe this is why it's bee so successful across human culture. Finally, every time i write it out with the four letters, it helps me confirm my own suspicions that i'm more correct than people who just write OK. Even though there is no consensus correct form... whatever.


The word "okay" represents in essence what is so cool about language. It is a humble little bisyllable of nonsense. Nobody knows for sure where it came from. And yet the little blurt of sound has fundamental, almost intrinsic meaning.

More about work!

This time i'm not going to talk about working on the roof. Because i still haven't finished that. It's waterproof, and better insulated than it's ever been, so i'm not horribly worried about it. But even the good tar paper i have up there shouldn't be exposed for more than a few days. Monday, i promise.

No, i'm going to talk for just a minute about work, where i get paid. GRRRR. We have a couple boys who are really obnoxious. Like... okay. One of the kids has been horrifically abused and neglected, but all he wants to do is get under other kids' skin. So he'll pester the other kids until they go off, or he'll get himself cornered until he attacks staff. Then, i have to restrain him and put him in the locked room, which feels (i'm sure) like abuse and neglect.

There's some purely hedonistic metric of societal success which talks about aggregate happiness or pleasure. According to this system, a society is successful when the most amount of pleasant experiences are had by its members. Some of -- many of -- our kids would seriously increase the success of our society if they were to cease to exist. It's really really sad. I must remind myself again and again that even the most horrifyingly messed up kids we've had are image bearers, and have the intrinsic value of a spark or two of God's creativity and personality in there somewhere.

Roof!

Ugh. Roofing is hard work. However, i got it mostly done. First, i tore off the two layers of shingles using my custom built shingle ripper. It works very well. Then, i removed two of the boards which form the surface of the roof. Okay, if any materials scientist or engineer is reading this, please would you explain to me what makes ordinary boards, exposed to a few decades of being part of a roof, get so weak that i can tear them apart with my bare hands? These are eight by one inch boards, pine, and not weathered looking at all, but once i got the end of the boards up, i could pull on them and rend them into giant splintery chunks. I felt kind of manly. Manly mixed with annoyed because you can't reuse lumber that's torn into splintery hunks.

After removing the boards, i found the cozy nest of the squirrels. It was mostly leaves. Which is weird. I don't think i was expecting to find little furniture or anything, but besides a disorderly pile of green leaves and a packed down bowl shaped depression, there wasn't much to the nest. I suppose birds' nests are such marvels of tidy construction, so that's what i was hoping to see. Well, the squirrels' building materials were rejected as too dirty and flammable, and nice inert fiberglass insulation was layered down between the roof and ceiling. Oh -- and i did patch the big hole in the ceiling.

I didn't put new boards up, because 1x8 boards are really expensive. Even for cheap and nasty knot filled pine. Instead, i cut OSFB into board shapes, and nailed that up there. Oh... and i rebuilt a section of the edge of the roof, which had rotted away. That's where the squirrels were getting in. Once the roof surface was clean and sound, i carefully and thoroughly secured some heavy duty tar paper down. It'll have to do for tonight and tomorrow morning, and maybe even all of Friday.

And it is fine. We've been having problems with "ice dams" every year. See, heat from the house melts the snow on the the roof. So water flows down to the overhang of the roof, and off the edge of the roof. There it forms lovely little icicles. The icicles become giant, monstrous, skull crushing ice pillars (especially where the roof isn't insulated at all) which not only have lots of ice hanging down, but also have a large dam structure on the edge of the roof. Water pools there, and then gets under whatever materials you've roofed your house with. Now, our house must have been built before people understood this, because the roofing i've torn off has been horribly inadequate to keep ice dams under control. A single layer of shingles with nothing under them besides boards will totally leak. You need at least a layer of decent tar paper. But i'm going to put down aluminum flashing, two layers of tar paper an aluminum edging strip, AND a good set of shingles down. Humph on people who build stuff wrong.

Squirrels Are Eating Our Ceiling!

Seriously. Squirrels really are eating our ceiling. This is part of the peril of living in an old house. And not having lots of disposable income to do things like "painting" and "keeping squirrels from eating the ceiling". Notice the picture of our ceiling, which as of yesterday, didn't have a large crack, and wasn't dribbling dried leaves and insulation materials. I keep waiting for a pink, naked squirrel baby to fall through.

So i guess tomorrow morning i'll tear the shingles off that little section of the roof, clear out the squirrel condos, seal it up with boards, and put down a new roof. It'll take me one morning. Or one morning and a night. Expect updates tomorrow.

Stuffed Animals Take Over the World

Houston wrote a book. Jonathan Rand is the author Houston reads most often, so his book features tricks like ending a chapter on a mini cliffhanger -- a curbhanger if you will. I'm impressed. So here i will copy the book, misspellings and all.

Stuffed Animals Take Over the World
Chapter 1
Wene I was walking doun the street, a Webkin flew over me. I skreamed. It was a zombey, a flying zombey. Then I felt something grabe my leg, then another. I looked behind me. What i saw was freeke.
Chapter 2
Stufed animiles were ataking me! I skreamed. I tried to run, but the stufed animels were suking me into the ground! I maniged to eskape riping the eyes out fo a stuffed dog. I don't think i made the dog very happy, because he fell to teh ground howlling! He went "Aooooo! Aooooo!" Stufing was fling out of his eyes. I was skriming!
Chapter 3
I ran home still skriming! When I was home I said "What's for lunch?"
Mom said "Why are you all dirty?"
I told her what hapened. She grounded me because i was going to give the kids nightmares. But she was going to beleve me soon.
Chapter 4
I took a walk in the forest. I came thew a bunch of trees and found a ship, a spaceship. I read STUFFED ANIMIL SPACECRAFT. I sneaked over to the spaceship and checed in side it. I found a ton of werde 3 leged quacking things that were ducks from another planet! I tryed to pet it but it opened its mouth to eat a leaf and it had razor sharp fangs. I screamed! But the stuffed anamils had herd me. Thay had sorounded the ship. I was vary skared and I jumped on the stufed animils and all of them started to have stufing come fling out of thar eyes and it covered hte erth. The end.

CUTE!!!

I'm impressed that this book has no illustrations. Houston has decided to use words to describe things here, not just pictures. He's a little hung up on spelling, and knows there's many errors. So about half way through chapter four, he got a little discouraged, and just finished the story without revisiting the "But she was going to beleve me soon" part.

Hold on

I love the little things that kids say wrong. Wrong, but only wrong because idiomatic language is illogical. So, a list:

Hold off. This is the antonym for hold on. Let go.

Hold on to my breath. Omit "on to" and you get what this means.

String bread. Analogous to string cheese, which is long and skinny. A baguette.

Asi-asi-asiago cheese. It's a kind of bagel.

Mushrooms and marshmallows are both called mushrooms.


......okay, there's more. I thought this would make a good list, and there's... only five. Maybe i'll think of more.

FDT!!!

Today we had Family Drawing Time. The last time was five months ago, right before we went to New York.

Yeah, i just want to say that our kids can draw! I'm pretty sure Karen said exactly the same thing on her post today, so i'll just put that picture up there, and say Well Done, Katrina! She's got that artistic eye.

Katrina and i go on a debate!

Debate? I wrote that in the subject line... but it's funny so... REALLY, we go on a date. Date. Like, dinner and a movie, except we didn't go to a movie, and "dinner" only barely qualified as food. It's been a while since i ate McDonalds food, and it's grosser than i remember. I think they changed their recipe for fries to be fortified with extra sugar. I mean, they've always dipped their fries in sugar water before freezing to make then brown while frying, but today i tasted it. And the coveted petroleum-based frozen treat Katrina wanted (and ate) was watery and gross. Anyway... i don't need to remind my blog readers that McDonalds is disgusting.

The Grand Rapids Children's Museum was really fun. When i asked Katrina if she wanted to go on a date, she said "I would like to see a movie." So i mentioned the Children's Museum, and that was clearly the preferred choice. I could tell that even before my hearing returned to normal. Katrina kept squealing off and on until we got there, and then she became the queen of preparing all kinds of amazing presentations of plastic vegetables and pastries. And a few rubber koi fish, which Katrina pretend-munched with enthusiasm. We explored other fun things. I was most interested in the engineering kinds of activities, while Katrina loved the fruit, vegetables, chickens, eggs, fish... basically food. She loves it.

After that, we ran to the car, and drove to the restaurant. Katrina specifically asked for one with a play area, and didn't want any of the food besides fries, so that's what she got. She was too tired and shy to actually play for more than five minutes. Again with the cooperative play: she squirmed like crazy while eating, talking giddily with me, while distractedly looking at the play implements. She rocketed off, and returned downcast: "Nobody wants to play with me".

Aww. Also, i don't think Karen or i mentioned it, but yesterday, Katrina voluntarily cleaned Houston's room. She's, like, an angel or something. Must be Karen's side of the family.

Submitted as proof

Houston's seven. Yet behold, he is drawing "three dimensional cars". His words, not mine. Ah Mazing. I am so proud. I'm not sure where this came from. He's not the most effusive member of the family. I think he kind of figured it out on his own. My favorite is the one on the right, which has a shadow under it. Because i've taught Houston that things you draw look anchored to the ground if there's a shadow. Also notice the hastily scribbled clouds and suns. He's getting the wheels Just Right, but the sun? Meh, it's just the source of energy for all living things. Unless you count petroleum derived foodstuffs like Velveeta and McDonalds "Frozen Dairy Treat". But even petroleum was once solar-fed biomass.

Anyway... Katrina is the effusive one. While we were driving back from my first Friday night ZUMBA! class, Katrina spontaneously told me about her day at school:

"Carley brought a turtle shell hat. It looked like a turtle shell, but when you opened it, you could see what looked like a backbone in there. It had a spine. She didn't kill it. She found it in her back yard, so they brought it inside and put it in a cage in the basement, but when they checked on it, it was dead. So they kept the shell, but it was weird, because you could see the spine inside it. And Ethan brought a little parrot. It wasn't real, it was like a stuffed animal. It would be funny if we had pet day, and if I had a button to make Graham get really small, so he could fit in my backpack. Then I could take him to school, and I could push the button and say 'BIG!' and Graham would pop out and start barking!"

That's more words about school than i've EVER heard from Houston. Total.

Zane? He was walking on a damp floor wearing his crocs, and slipped. And obviously, due to the inverted pendulum effect, short people fall over more often than tall people. But he didn't fall over! He caught himself. Seriously, Zane is nimble. And i'm starting to think that he's got the reflexes of a puma. We've been noticing his ability to balance and keep his feet under him for a long time now, but i keep being impressed.

Also, Zane runs up to me a couple times per day recently, shoots me with whatever he's holding, and informs me "Poof! You are covered in chocolate. Now you can eat it." Karen tells me that this is not something he does to other people. I guess it's our thing.

Gross. Karen and i are watching Colbert, and he featured a guy who at a 13 pound hamburger. Gross. Seriously gross.

I made soup at work yesterday and today! It was potato chicken soup yesterday, and nearly all the same ingredients today, omitting the potatoes, and adding rice. Now usually, my soups at work are very "hearty", like with lots of flour to thicken it, and a high ratio of soup solids to water. Because i'm trying to get teenagers to eat it -- teenagers who are even more selfish and inconsiderate than regular teenagers. So if the soup was normal, they'd take all the good stuff, and leave nothing but broth. But this time, i tried to get plenty of good flavorful broth. And surprisingly, it was MORE popular! Don't know why. But maybe i'm getting better at making soup.

Also, i've been using celery and crushed red pepper.

At dinner today, we had Corbyn over. Corbyn, who's not particularly a fan of vegetables, and yet who very quickly finished his large helping of Karen-Spaghetti, (zucchini, tomatoes, mushrooms, onions, garlic). Bless his heart. Each of us told a story about what was the best, worst and funniest thing that happened to us. Katrina's teacher "basically" threw her right into a puddle! And she didn't have a recess. Houston loved his schoolwork so much that he did it during a different activity and got in trouble. Then he got to do that schoolwork during an appropriate time. Zane: "nothing! nothing! nothing! hahaha!" Corbyn got pulled over while walking because he fits the description of a neighborhood criminal. Sigh.

I'm gonna buy me a dog...

Actually, i'm not going to buy me a dog. The kind you have to pay for are too expensive. And the one we got already for free, eleven years ago (happy late birthday, Graham!) is a useless watchdog. Unless we're being burgled by the cat who walks through our front yard.

So we're gonna buy one of these. An auto dialer motion detecting alarm!

I know other stuff happened today... like Houston spelled precipitation, or some such complex word, and we got tires to replace the threadbare ones on our van. So now driving in the upcoming snow will be reasonably safer.

Perhaps not as safe as driving that ex-military truck my mercenary -- um... MISSIONARY -- friend Andrew named Samson. But it never snows in Papua New Guinea. And while impressive, that truck would be a poor choice as a commuter car. Or family car. Or any kind of car unless you need a car to transport freight through jungle where bridges are notorious for disappearing.

Flat tire, and dancing!

One of my jobs used to be to mount and balance tires. The first few times i did it was kind of fun. The novelty! It is a simple task, and dirty, so it became mundane rather quickly. But it's fun to sometimes revisit tasks which were once mundane. Except combing my hair. That's not fun for me. It hurts, and is futile!

Today i got to change our van tire, which randomly decided to spring a spontaneous leak right as Karen got home from church. It wasn't newly pierced, but was leading around a plug which had been installed who-knows-when. The plug seems to have prompted the tire to come apart a little bit right there, causing a bulge in the carcass of the tire, which became more worn than the rest of the tire -- very nearly bald. So i hurled the spare on, and we'll be paying a visit to our good vulcanizers tomorrow.

Also, a few years ago, Cousin Marty pointed me to this DJ, whose mix "Headbanger Vol. 1" was quickly burned onto a CD, and then remained in the aforementioned van for many months. It's still in there, and remains a favorite. Luckily, "Dirty House" (which is the genre of that mix) refers more to the sound of the music than the content, so we can listen to the first three quarters of the mix without worrying about swear words. But there are some later.

So anyway, i pumped this mix through my new amplifier today, and Oh! The cotton was removed from my ears! The sun shone on the mountain! What i mean to say, of course, is that it sounded good, so i danced a lot with the kids and without. This caused dinner to be somewhat delayed. But i'm exceedingly glad that being a professional dancer (of sorts) hasn't caused dancing to be mundane. Quite the opposite. Happy!

Food

So... i like food. Usually, the fresher, the better. Honeycrisp apples straight from the tree! Sun warmed blueberries, fresh from the bush. Strawberries lifted from their beds, dusted off and immediately eaten! Oh, the succulent delights of the freshest food!

Today we visited my ex-coworker Christian at his pinko-hippie commune thing, where he was having a pig roast. He had an entire pig. Roasting. Pig roasts are super yummie, even though you can only really eat so much meat, especially since it becomes mostly shredded up and smothered in sauce. Christian's pig roast was no exception -- DELICIOUS! And the kind of flaming liberals who might want to live in a community living condominium happen to be the kind of people we get along with. So good food and good company.

But i got to help with... the pig. By the time i saw it, all of the skin and much of the meat had been removed. But it was still recognizable as a pig. There it lay, sprawled on the cooking pan bathed in its own rendered down fat. Its legs lay sprawled to the sides. Its head, earless and blackened, had a snout. It was a large, corpulent mass of what used to be a living, snorting animal. But it was dead, and its skeleton was surrounded by delicious meat, which we were ripping off in great dripping hunks with our bare hands. Well... tongs.

I don't know what to think about this. I love spiders and earwigs, for goodness sake! I want to live my life with my eyes wide open, recognizing that each time i consume meat, it means an animal far more complex and beautiful than a spider or earwig had to die a death that was imposed on it, which it would have avoided if it could.

Houston and i had a long conversation about this too. He did most of the talking, and he expressed much the same sentiment. He doesn't like eating chicken, and he didn't want to eat any of the pig. He's okay with cheese and fruit, because no animal had to die to give us those. Myself, i will not stop eating meat. But it goes somewhat against my nature to be party to the destruction of a life for my consumption, just because i'm superior.

But anyway, today i got to eat the freshest pork i've ever eaten. And it was delicious.

Mimic

I never complain about work on my welbog. Not lately, at least, since work is generally kind of okay-tolerable. Plus, i have a job, and in double-digit-unemployment-Michigan, that's good. But we have a really jerky kid right now. I will speak no more of this. Except: urrggghhhhhh.

Today when i got home, Houston wanted to read his magazine with me. It featured mimics, like the jumping spider who holds his front legs above his head and walks in a zigzag pattern like an ant. I saw one of these! It was right outside on our sidewalk. I noticed an ant which walked ever so slightly not like an ant. But it looked identical to an ant until i looked very closely at it. The giveaway? Can you say cephalothorax?

But a cuter mimic than a formicidoid arachnid is my youngest homo sapiens sapiens. Zane listens carefully. Yesterday when i was telling a person on the phone that i'm not a business here, Zane said clearly when i hung up, "This is a residence???"

And then today while we were watching a movie, Zane was messing with his hair. Like, taking little bits of it and twirling it in his fingers. We realized that he was mimicking me when i mess with my dreadlocks! SO CUTE! With his little arms, and his cute blond curls, and his giant head. Awww!

Ugh

I have nothing to say. Ooh, i know! A recipe for pseudo-Frappuccino! Wheee!!!

We'll be making a gallon of mostly milk, with some sweet coffee mixed in.

Make some stupid strong coffee. I'm talking, fill -- FILL -- the filter. Then use half a carafe of water. You should end up with two or three cups (measuring cups) of absurdly strong coffee which should probably not even be emptied down the drain, because you might be violating clean water laws.

Instead of polluting the sewers with industrial strength coffee concentrate, add about a cup of sugar to it, and stir it till it's dissolved. I use less than a whole cup, but i actually like the taste of coffee, and not the syrupy sweet flavor of Starbucks' own Frappuccino. The recipe i found online calls for more than a cup of sugar. Blech.

Then add the coffee you just made to a gallon of 2% milk. Obviously, you'll need to remove enough milk from the jug to make room for the coffee, but i'll leave it up to your resourcefulness to solve that not-very-insurmountable problem. A note about the milk being of the 2% milkfat variety: you can make it with skim milk, but it's just not as good. I think it's kind of gross. You're making this for a treat -- it's not like you'll drink four cups per day, so deal with a little bit of milkfat.

Chill thoroughly! It tastes good very cold. And cold coffee has always given me a better caffeine buzz. Probably psychosomatic, but still...