Dot was just explaining her arsenal to me.

“Stuffed bunnies are very powerful weapons.  I rub it against the bad guys cheeks and it’s so soft they turn into a stuffed animal”

Also, there are the rainbows

“It shoots little rainbows that are so cute the bad guys’ heads pop off.”

July 9th, 2008 - Posted in Homelife | | 0 Comments

Dad

Er… that would be my Dad.  Anybody who reads this already knows, but my Dad has been diagnosed with esophageal cancer.  He had surgery last Friday to remove a big chunk of his esophagus.  The surgery went well, as these things go, and he’s recovering in the hospital.

We took the kids up to see him briefly over the weekend.  Yakko was the most visibly upset, and couldn’t stay long.  He might have been the only one who really comprehended how much work had been done on Grandpa.  Whacko thought the tubes coming out of him made him look like Iron Man.

At any rate, everyone seems to be doing okay at the moment, and I’ll pretend like that’s a good enough excuse for not having posted in weeks.

May 13th, 2008 - Posted in Homelife | | 0 Comments

Early bird

Dot had been in bed with us as she sometimes is.  She got up without explanation and trundled downstairs.  In my half-sleep, I assumed she was going to lay back down or something.  She came back up a few minutes later complaining that the basement was too dark.

“Why do you need to go to the basement?”

“I want to beat Whacko to the computer.”

A reasonable point, except that it was 4:45 am on a school morning.

“I don’t think you’ll have to worry about that too much, honey…”

April 18th, 2008 - Posted in Homelife | | 0 Comments

Happy Birthday to…

If anyone wants to wish Nancy a happy birthday, it was yesterday.

April 7th, 2008 - Posted in Homelife | | 0 Comments

Taekwondo Test

We didn’t get any pictures, but Whacko, Yakko, went through our Taekwondo testing today.

Assuming we passed (no one told us we didn’t), Yakko, will be a senior blue belt and Whacko and I will be brown belts.

I wound up sparring kids again. Mr. K never lets me play with the grown-ups, which I’ll have to tease him about. But I’ll live.

Whacko got scolded a little for trying to kick his opponent after he’d fallen over. No more UFC viewing for him, I guess.

update 4/3: We did all get our belts last night at the ceremony.  There were supposed to be pictures, but nobody could hold still long enough to get one.

March 31st, 2008 - Posted in Homelife | | 0 Comments

Tom Jones FAQ

Q: What happened to your face?!

A: It got rocked off.

Q: Really? That sounds terrible.

A: Not so much. Happened at a Tom Jones concert.

Q: You went to Tom Jones. On purpose?

A: Yeah, we went with the company. Had a blast. Tom Jones rules.

Q: Why does Tom Jones rule? I thought he was just old.

A: The dude is almost 70, and he’s still an amazing performer. I was expecting an old man on a stool. But he had a great band, completely modern arrangements, and he put on a much better show than a lot artists half his age.

Q: How was the sound? It was probably terrible.

A: No, actually, the Mystic Lake casino has a really modern room. Found out afterwards that it holds about 2100 people, and it’s a really well-groomed room. The bass wasn’t overpowering, and the mix was nice even though they kept the volume low for the mostly over-50 audience.

Q: So he wasn’t boring?

A: Not at all. He had this great rapport with the audience. Always talking, always dancing. He kind of rolled his eyes every once in a while when he knew a line in the song or a bit of banter was cheesy, but it just gave you the feeling that he was letting you in on the joke. Pretty sure he shouted out to “Michigan” rather than “Minnesota” at the beginning, but whattayagonnado?

Q: Good setlist?

A: The guy obviously knows which side his bread is buttered on. Saved the 1-2-3 punch of “She’s A Lady,” “Not Unusual,” and “Sexbomb” until near the end of the show, and closed the encore with Prince’s Kiss, the first time most people in my generation had ever heard of the guy. He might have been pandering to middle America a little by doing country ballads by both George Jones and Merle Haggard, but I didn’t mind.

Q: Check you out. You sound like a fanboy.

A: Yeah, I guess I kind of am. If I wasn’t before last weekend, I sure am now.

Q: Oh my… you… You threw your underwear on the stage, didn’t you?

A: No, but even if I had it wouldn’t have been as good a moment as when one lady got pushed down in her wheelchair so she could throw hers.

March 18th, 2008 - Posted in Homelife, Music | | 1 Comments

Whacko’s book reading

Take a look. Please leave a comment below if you see it, so he can tell his class how many people viewed it.

updated: it’s been up there long enough. I’m sure there will be more, so you’ll just have to stay tuned.

September 17th, 2007 - Posted in Homelife | | 12 Comments

An adventure

Our adventure to Lincoln unexpectedly got split into two separate adventures.

First, the TaeKwonDo tournament. We travelled to Lincoln, NE for the Midwest regional championships, and the boys did us proud.

Yakko got first in his group in both forms and “sparring” (sparring, for yellow belts, consists of doing their one-step exercises back and forth, with the one the judges decide did a better job moving on face the next kid).

Whacko got third in his form. The lasting lesson we’ve learned now is “don’t send the 5-year-old out onto the floor with a full water bottle.” He spent nearly half an hour sitting in his group, and we could see from the stands that he was drinking every few minutes. He got through his form admirably, and then had to sit (and drink) while they went over the sparring rules, and then sit (and drink) while getting his pads on. This was all too much, however, and we think that by the time he actually faced an opponent, he was thinking more about a potty break than he was about getting a strike in. Thus, sadly, he was dispatched in short order in his first round of sparring. He almost immediately talked to the lead judge, and had to be accompanied off the floor to the restrooms.

That aside, though, we had plenty to be proud of. They both did a great job, and they both had some hardware to show off to the grandparents. Our biggest worry going into this was that one would do well and one wouldn’t. We didn’t want it to become yet another thing for them to fight about. As I noted to Yakko in hopes that he wouldn’t gloat, Whacko’s green belt means more is expected of him, he’s younger, and actual sparring is obviously more difficult than trading one-steps. Both kids were good sports about it, though, and there wasn’t too much rivalry.

The second half of our trip wasn’t quite as smooth.

We were on pace for a completely successful trip, headed back from Lincoln and passing north of Omaha, when we suddenly lost power steering in the van. We managed to pull off into a gas station parking lot, but it was apparent as soon as I got out that we weren’t going any farther. So after a few phone calls made it apparent that no help was coming on a saturday afternoon, we got Grandma and Grandpa to come get us. Grandpa and I came back monday and got the thing towed to a nearby service shop. Here’s where something–luck, or providence, or synchronicity, or whatever you want to call it–kicked in.

It just happened that the nearest place (nearest who answered their phone at 9 AM) was a transmission shop. It just happened that they looked at the transmission as well as the water pump that had gone out. He showed us the problem spot while it was on the rack, and it left little doubt: If the water pump hadn’t made us stop, there were some serious problems with the transmission casing (and a differential, which might mean more to you than it does to me) that would have essentially wrecked our poor van completely during the long, desolate run from Omaha to Sioux City.

So here’s the endorsement: if you need to give your custom to gas station or service station on the northern end of Omaha, I’d heartily recommend the helpful folks at the Cubby’s on Mormon Bridge Road or the AAMCO transmission shop on 72nd.

June 26th, 2007 - Posted in Homelife, Parentgeekness | | 0 Comments

Belts, Summer

The whole family (well, except for Dot) tested and earned their next belts this past weekend in TaeKwonDo. Whacko is now a green belt, Yakko has his yellow, and Mom and Dad are senior green. UPS didn’t get the new belts to us in time for the awards ceremony, so we have no pictures.

Whacko, as a new green belt, got fitted for his pads and sat in on his first sparring class. He was a little more tentative than we thought he’d be, but that’s probably just as well. We were worried he was gonna tear into the kid lined up across from him, but he was more preoccupied with how much his helmet itched.

Yakko is done with school as of yesterday. Because there are three kids to watch instead of two, that makes life harder on everyone except me. Not having to get him to school, I get to either sleep later or have extra time to get more accomplished in the mornings. I intend to do the latter, but will probably wind up doing the former.

This also begins Whacko’s last summer as a free kid. Kindergarten starts for him in the fall. We’ll hope he handles it better by then than he did at the meet-and-greet a few weeks ago. Growling at your kindergarten teacher might be an amusing story years down the road, but it’s not an optimal first impression.

May 25th, 2007 - Posted in Homelife | | 0 Comments

The “ease” of the online bracket

Yakko wants to fill out a tournament bracket online. He sees the ad that you can do it for free on SportsLine. He even works hard to get ready for school early so we have about 20 minutes extra. It turns out that signing up for the bracket is “easy.” All you have to do is:

1. Go to sportsline.com
2. Click twice for the same action (the link on the front goes to a page that contains nothing but a link to the actual game).
3. Enter your sportline ID
4. Except you don’t remember your sportsline ID, or even if you have a sportsline ID, so sign up for a new one
5. Except the username you chose is already in use, more or less confirming that you have already signed up at some point
6. Search gmail for your welcome email from sportsline. Fail to find it.
7. Go back to the sportsline tab, and have them send you the password, which apparently you didn’t get to pick because it’s not something you would ever have purposefully made your password.
8. Finally get signed up and go through to the bracket (interesting to note that you can’t continue signup without inviting at least one other email address to receive unsolicited mail from sportsline)
9. The text says you won’t get a “save” button until after the entire bracket is complete. But then after you fill out the whole thing, you find from reading the info box at the top that it doesn’t think you’ve filled out the first region, even though you have. Thus, no save button.
10. Take your son to school, hoping you can get it figured out when you have more than 20 minutes to spare.

This is why there will always be a demand for paper copies of tournament brackets.

March 12th, 2007 - Posted in Homelife | | 0 Comments