May 11, 2007

Happy Mother's Day!

Last year at this time we'd been living in the house just under a month and our concrete walk was poured that very day. We chose to mark our handprints in it as a remembrance of all the work that went into the house.

We started at the east end of the walk. I remember Smiley's hands were so light you had to press extra hard on them. By the way, Lisa would kill me if I failed to mention she's nearly six months pregnant in these pictures.

We gave up on that spot, deciding the cement was already too set. A faint imprint remains, however.

We moved on to a spot closer to the front of the house.

Lu was out and about with her Grandma and returned to join the party.

The final result?

Window salesmen, drainage ditches, musical beds, and a picture of Socialist! Oh My!

A rare productive weekend for me.

On Friday, with the help of one of my maintenance guys, I moved our new king bed into the house. Getting it in despite 40 mph wind gusts and tornado watches was grand; getting it inside and up our narrow stairs was a downright miracle.

That replaced the California King that we've had for nearly a decade. It was well past its prime and Lisa's back had been feeling the effects. For that reason we've spent much of 2008 playing musical beds. Many a night Lisa would wind up in YaYa's bed, with the kids either taking our bed or sleeping on their 'couches' on the floor. When the kids took our bed I'd grab LuLu's, in part because it put me closer to the baby and, well, because it was the best bed in the house.

Mind you, all was well in the marriage department but you can imagine what news of our 'sleeping in seperate rooms' did for the rumour mill.  

Afterwards, as the rain came down, I noticed the northwest corner of our lot was a lake. That's the same place where the old 1892 wall leaked, but it wasn't raining that hard. It turns out part of the neighbors gutter was blown off by a storm (when??) and all the water from his gutters was dumping out right there. I contacted him and, for the time being, we dug a trench to channel the water away from my house. It worked, as there were no leaks despite heavy rain, but I'm not going to swear an oath that it was the sole reason for our water problems (tho' of course I'm hoping it is).

Then the window guy showed up and gave his spiel. I'm embarrassed to say I signed up for his services (after thinking it over for a day). His product was high quality, his references impeccable, his written guarantees sound,and his face very familar. As it turns out I've met him before, as he's best friends with a radio guy I've done business with at work. Small world and all that, eh?

Pricewise he was about double what it would cost for me to buy standard, over the counter windows at Menards and install them myself. That last part is laughable, because there wasno way I was capable of doing them myself. I proved that on Sunday.

Saturday was spent at a one of YaYa's  friend's First Communion, but Sunday morning Socialist came over at my request.

You might remember that in the fall of last year I took apart Socialist's shed and transported it to my backyard. He told me it was free for the taking, but that if I wanted his help putting it up it would have to wait until spring.

Well, here it is 6 months or so later and all I had completed was the floor and three walls. So I asked for his help.

In 90 minutes we got the walls and roof put up, minus shingles. It would have taken 70 minutes were it not for the fact that I continuously stripped screws, missed 2x4's, nearly tipped over the ladder, and generally made a nusicance of myself.

On rare days, when I'm in the zone,  I could put the pyramids together with my bare hands and a hammer, but 90% of the time I look like the guy in shop safety films that chops his own hand off.

If it wasn't myself I was talking about, I would accuse the guy of intentionally tanking it to get out of work.

Sadly, not true.

In the end Socialist dubbed the shed "Whacky Shack" because no one remembered how the thing went back together, and some parts had warped during the harsh winter.

I remembered it being slightly prettier before the move. Here's some pre-dissemble pics.

Whatever. I'll finish it up, give it a good paint job and a Danny-is-a-paranoid lock of suitable heft, and away we go.

After I finished the shed the window salesman came over to finalize some paperwork and brought his 5 year old daughter along to play with LuLu. I take that as a good sign. I don't think he'd bring his kid into the deal if he had an intention of screwing us over.

Or he could be a sociopath. Either/or.

So, a busy, productive weekend. How was yours?

Bleepin' Home Improvement Salesmen

You know, I'm starting to get a little insulted by all these contractors who stop by my house to solicit work.

Yes, I know the roof is old and has seen better days. That's why wer're looking to replace it. Yes, I also know the windows are old enough to have seen FDR's first term. Thanks for pointing that out. And thanks ever so much for leaving the one thousandth home improvement flyer on my screen door.

But the kicker? The lawn service that stopped by last year with a flyer advertising a $19.95 special,  took a look at my barren and brown lawn, then crossed out the sale price and scribbled 'call me for a quote'.

That was last year, mind you, before a summer's worth of lawn work and seeding.

Tonight I was feeding the kids dinner when Smiley ran in and grunted, gesturing to the front door. There again was a contractor, this one looking to give me a quote on the windows.

As it turns out the windows are one of the three things we are hoping to have done this year, so I asked him to return at a better time - Lis, that means Friday at 7 pm - but geesh.

I suppose just by agreeing to the estimate I validated his approach, but doesn't anyone ever just reach out and slap them?

Even as I was signing up I was nursing a grudge.

"Did you stop at every house on the block, or just the ones that looked like sh**?" I asked.

He hesitated, gauged my temper, deemed me genial, and laughed. "Not every house, but a lot of them. See you Friday."

The bush out front

I'm sorry I haven't been able to catch up on my blog reading list; I promise I'll devote some serious time to it in the next day or so.

* * * *

Crazy weekend, and it went by super fast. We retired early Friday night and from Saturday afternoon until only a few hours ago Lisa and YaYa were out of the house, enjoying a slumber/birthday party for a family friend. Plus LuLu and the baby were at my Mom's and Smiley was at my in-law's, leaving the house to me and me alone.

Party!

Alas, my friends are old and decrepit and could not/would not sally forth to do anything. In retrospect the highlight of the evening was taking one of Lisa's friends across town to pay her cell phone bill.

Whoo-hoo.

But, I did get some projects done around the house, and early Sunday morn Socialist and I went and picked up a dresser Lisa's Aunt donated to LuLu. With that out of the way I borrowed a saw from him and started the next thing on the Honey-do list: the bushes out front.

Now here's the deal. When we bought the house, it had been abandoned for years and the bush in front of the porch was completely overgrown. On New Years Day of 2007 (or maybe Dec 31st, '06) I borrowed some manual hedge clippers and went to town.

These are pics of the bush midway through the effort. When I started it extended halfway into the sidewalk, forcing you to step around it when walking past.

If my memory is right, when it was done I was too tired to bother taking pictures of the end result. Here's the closest I could find to an 'after' shot.

On with the show. The bushes remained universally despised by eveyone but me. "I'd have cut them down the minute I signed the [mortgage] papers," my Dad said.

"They're awful," Lisa would say.

"I like them. I think they look like bonsai trees," I'd say.

"Yeah. If bonsai trees were five feet tall and looked like sh*t"

In time she modified her attack to point out they blocked our view of the kids when they would ride their bikes in front. It did, and that bothered me.She proposed a landscaping plan that was acceptable, and I gave in.

So fine, today I decided to take them down.

Only . .

Only I have this quirk where my conscience aches at killing a plant or tree. Yeah, yeah - I'm not a tree hugger. But put it this way: I'm all for capital punishment, but I'm not volunteering to pull the switch, you know?

So I cut down a bunch of the bush and paused, wracked with guilt. And a jogger goes by and says "Smells nice anyway." and I took a wiff and thought "huh, he's right."

It was very fragrant, almost like the cedar chests that both sets of my grandparent's used. And that got me started on how old the bush must be to be that large, that gnarled, and how it might predate my family's purchase of the house (~1940) and if left alone just might outlive us all.

And I started to think about how maybe my Mom played under it as a kid, or my Grandma stood in its shadow as my Grandpa started to woo her. And maybe it was Great-Grandpa himself that planted it, perhaps to commemorate a big event - like puchasing this house - or as an anniversary gift to my Great-Grandma. Maybe the day it was planted was a big deal.

Or maybe it was just an ugly bush that came with the house and eveyone ignored it for decades.

Either way I stopped, took a step back, and came up with a plan.

An hour or so later Lisa returned and saw me moving branches to the trash. With excitement in her voice she asked if the bush was gone. "Sort of," I said, and took her out front.

"See, it opens up the whole front of the porch. You can see the sidewalk from the rocking chairs, I checked. And it'll bookend that shepard's crook you wanted. And I defy you to tell me they don't look like bonsai now"

She paused. "Dude." That's all she said . . but it said so much.

Sadly, subsequent opinions, voiced by others, also lean towards chopping the thing down.

Dangit, I really do like it. And once I lay some sod, put that shepards crook up, and maybe a small birdfeeder or a stone with our family name on it, I think it'll rock.

Or I can just borrow the saw again.

Tags: blogplugs

Water, Water, and More Water

I just returned from my twice-hourly trip to my basement to monitor and remove the rainwater that is making parts of it a wading pool.

You might remember this happened before, on the day we saw The Lion King, but this time is much worse, with an inch of standing water by the circuit box.

The culprit is clearly the two remaining 1892 Cream City brick foundation walls. We had the north/south walls replaced when we moved in, but the east/west were viewed as sound.

'Sound' maybe, but not waterproof in a deluge. The rain keeps coming today (Greenfield was completely flooded on the eastbound side between 121st and 108th and I was forced to abandon myattempt to reach the freeway and take Sunnyslope Rd. south)

Whatever. The walls still shouldn't leak. But clear as day two spots on the west wall are bringing water in, and one in the northeast corner. The latter is the bad one, pooling water in the kitty litter corner.

Ugh. Ugh. Ugh.

I'll try to tuck up the two walls, and I reckon I'll toss in a sump pump this summer.

Ugh.

* * *

On the upside Lisa and I are going out of town this weekend. We usually take a weekend away after she gives birth, but with the baby 8 months old we only now have time to get out of town.

In fact, it's the first trip we've taken since Disney in '06.

So I probably won't update much until Monday ;) We'll see.

If I don't, enjoy your weekend!

 

Because if it was easy it'd be someone else's life - The Lion King Feb 17th '08 Pt 2

For the record, yes, 'only' between .5 and 1.9 inches of rain fell on parts of Milwaukee on Sunday, but again - the ground was both saturated and frozen, and the storm sewers were in many cases  covered by snow. Water piled up, and it piled up in depth. Here's a pic from the next day's Journal-Sentinel.

So I got home, changed my clothes, tried in vain to dry my boots, and headed out the door. Our plan was to take the van, but just in case things prove too rough, I had cash on me for the bus.

Eureka! As I crossed the threshold I remembered hand warmers I had left over from my trip to see the '05 Inauguration. I'd seen them only the day before, in the basement bathroom. I went downstairs to grab them . . and naturally, there was water in my basement.

My freshly rebuilt for $15,000 in 2007 basement.

There wasn't a lot of water, to be honest, certainly nothing 'measurable'. It looked like someone had taken a bucket of water and spilled it across the room. Most had apparently come up through the storm sewer, while in the northwest corner water had either risen through a crack in the floor or come in from the where the new walls met the original 1891 brick foundation. It was certainly an atypical situation.

Still, not good.

But I didn't have time to deal with it, not if I wanted to make the show. And what could I have done at that moment anyhow? 

I went out and joined the family in the van and, while the water had receded, the roads were still bad enough that we abandoned it at a local McDonalds and crossed the street to the bus stop.

The bus came within minutes, and it was only $5 for all of us to head downtown. (LuLu rode free).

Lu sat with me (quite the Daddy's girl lately) while Lis sat with her young protege. It was a one shot, easy-peezy ride on a clean and friendly bus, a rarity, but a pleasant one. Only one cukoo drunk, and he was on and off the bus within a minute!

Once we got downtown it was a mere one block walk to the theater (albeit across an ice sheet) and we hunkered down and had our lunch in one of the doorways before venturing inside.

A quick pickup of some booster seats, a snack of some roasted cashews, the obligatory purchase of a magnet with the show's logo (to join Annie and A Chorus Line - no idea what happened to 42nd Street's) and it was on to a rough 20 minute wait to be allowed in the theater proper.

The kids did alright for themselves, but it got rough when we faced an additional 30 minute wait in our seats. Crying, whining, YaYa cracking her head on the back of her seat, a tall woman sitting smack dab in front of LuLu . . wow.

[pointless aside: We had four of 5 seats in a balcony row on the right side of the theater (as you faced the stage - is that Stage Left or Stage right?) and we were happy to have the 5th seat as a catch-all for our belongings.

Then right before the musical began the usher brings a woman over to claim the 5th seat, the farthest from the aisle.

"Hmmm.. . Why don't you just take the aisle seat and these folks will move down a bit," the usher VOLUNTEERED to the woman.

"Howabout you don't give away the seat I PAID for?" I roared.

If the woman - who was nice, as it turns out - was cursed enough to be stuck in the corner beside four Slapinions, OFW.]

Back to the kids. They were awful in the moments leading up to the show and Lisa was already saying that she regretted taking them. I would normally have completely agreed, but I had a gut feeling things would turn out OK once the lights went down.

And they were.

Once the show started there was not another peep from YaYa, the theater vet, and while LuLu kept up a steady stream of whispered questions to me (is dat Scar? What kind of animal is dat? Is Musafa dead?) she stayed interested and calm.

Frankly, the biggest disruption came from yours truly. With five minutes before intermission my bladder had all it could take and I had to have the family get up and move into the aisle to let me pass.

The ride home was quick and smooth, with Lu again sitting beside me and getting the chance to pull the 'stop cord' (YaYa having done so on the way out) and soon enough we were home.

I mopped the basement, Lisa baked cookies for the kids, and we all had a peaceful night.

Not a bad way to spend a Sunday, all things considered.

[So how was the musical?

The show was strong and the costuming and scenery absolutely masterful. Do I think it's the greatest show ever? No. It was a bit too reliant on visuals, the additional songs were no vast improvement on the movie, and (in the touring production at least) some of the vocals were weaker than I expected.

I also think it suffers from the typical Disney plot development issues - lots of conflict build-up and characterization followed by an abrupt and simplistic resolution to the problem.

But I will say this: when Simba began to ascend the mountain to assume his reign as king I had literal shivers of pride down my back.

Overall, a heck of a show and something I'm glad Lis paid for the family to see. ]

Tags: YaYa, LuLu, Lion King

J-Land Photo Shoot #127

I enjoyed last weeks contest, so here's another entry in Sometime's I Thinks J-Land Photo Shoot.

The subject this week is OLD.

This is a picture taken on my first tour of the home I live in now, which was vacant for a number of years. 

The cloth electrical wires and old-school fuses above, when combined with a vastly outdated power supply (to my recollection, less than half the juice that flows into a 'normal' home), were not enough to power a modern fridge or washer.

As a result the house had only an old ringer washer and an icebox. As you can imagine we replaced and updated the electical service.

Now that I look at the link above I realize I've posted this pic before, as part of that tour. So, in the interest of not selling the same item twice, here's a shot of the washer I mentioned (there were actually two in the basement).

* * * *

Tonight Lost returns for Season Four, and let the word spread far and wide: knock on my door, call my phone, Nextel me, or otherwise interrupt the glory of watching my favorite show in HD on a big screen (for the first time) and you will face a wrath unseen since the time of the Pharoahs.

Have a nice day!

Tags: Lost, Photo Shoot, Nostalgic Ave

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Crazy Day, a worrisome furnace, a physical and a Big Red Dog

Here's a few pics of the girls as they prepared to depart for school today during Catholic Schools Week.

Today was designated as "Crazy Day" and we took full advantage the opportunity to not hunt and peck for uniforms and matching socks. Not seen in the pics are their mismatched shoes.

 

Smiley got in the act too.

It certainly seemed crazy to be having school in the first place today, with temperatures of -4F,winds of 20 mph, and a wind chill approaching -40F. Many of the Catholic schools in the area are closed - most I think - but ours stays open whenever (Milwaukee) Public Schools give it a go, and so school was in session. Nevermind that MPS is insane and is making thousands of kids wait on bus stops in this weather.

 The wife asked if we should keep the kids home. Heck no, I said - it’s a warm building and a warm meal (we drop them off so there was no bus issue) and that ‘warm building’ was something I couldn’t guarantee here.

You see, at about 5 am I was woken up, in my cozy bedroom on the second floor, by the knock-knock-knocking on my chamber door of my basement furnace.

I headed downstairs thinking of that Dad from A Christmas Story “who closed the damper!"and wondering what magic he had to keep his furnace going. For those who don’t know, my furnace is age-old, certainly older than me.

Me? No clue. So at 6 in the morning I called my friend the Socialist, who said he’d be over in 20 minutes. He arrived promptly and fixed it almost as quickly, lubricating a drive shaft in what he called the ‘squirrel cage’. Maybe, just maybe, we can still hold off on a new furnace until next fall.

Once again Socialist has proved his worth and his loyalty, and I thank him.

 * * * * * *

YaYa and LuLu both had shots yesterday, and YaYa had a comprehensive physical. She weighs 47 pounds and stands 48 inches tall (“You’re almost a square!,” the nurse said) and is in good health.

Her eyesight didn’t come out that great though. It was 20/25 in one eye and 20/40 in the other and she was referred to an eye doctor. Not a big deal, seeing as both her parents wear glasses (I started in 1st grade), but there was some thought she was tanking the test for shi*s and giggles. She’s never shown signs of bad eyesight nor complained about it.

 “Are you sure? Do you have trouble seeing at school?“ my wife asked.

 “No,“ she answered. “Well, sometimes I can’t see the spelling words on the board, but that’s it.”

Oh, well, as long as it’s not affecting something important like your education kid.

 * * *

Lisa ran out of gas on the way home from the physical, and in a bad neighborhood no less, as she missed her original freeway exit. Just wanted my gallant rescue on the record. That’s all. :)

 * * *

I missed A.I. last night but gobbled up four episodes of Family Guy split between several stations. Lisa was laughing because as soon as one episode ended I’d holler “turn on channel 57, Family Guy’s on!”

Sure, I’m doing my usual binge, no doubt followed by a sharp purge in the near future, but for now Family Guy makes me burst out laughing time after time.

Obnoxiously, no less.

Here's a clip of the 'over' sketch from the episode where Stewie and Brian buy a home.

* * *

 I took my measurements on November 11th as my current weight-loss effort started and again last night. Despite a bad week here, the evidence was pretty clear.

 I lost 2 inches in my chest and stomach, an inch in my thighs, a half an inch in my waist, etc.. Last I checked I weighed in at 342, down maybe 30 from my 2007 highpoint.

 I can’t see the difference, although my clothes no longer feel like a girdle. The trick is to keepup the effort and push forward.

 * * *

Re: Clifford the Big Red Dog “Clifford grew so big the Howards’ had to leave their home . . “. That’d be the f*ing day.

Tags: YaYa, LuLu, furnace, Socialist

Three shots of our living room and a chance to show off some of my wife's work

First, a little before and after. Before, circa Jan-Feb of 2007:

And then in September of the same year. Granted, it's mainly cosmetic (except the floors) but impressive all the same.

The painting above the fireplace was done by my wife. She has an impressive knack for the visual arts/crafts/decorating/party-planning. I have none of her skills in that area, but I have her on one point: she has no imagination for stories or make-believe. I'm serious. If you erased all stories from human memory and assigned her, and her alone, to get the ball rolling and come up with a story . well, better luck having me design a prom dress.

Here's another project of hers I find very impressive. She took an old painting we purchased at a yard sale and covered it with four squares of hand-selected fabric. I've always felt this rocked and that is was an imaginative improvement over the original painting.

[Note: I'm sorry the picture leaves a little to be desired. I just dashed upstairs to take the shot (it's 12:49am), flicked on the light, took the photo and dashed out before I woke up my wife. No time to orchestrate a great shot}

Tags: Nostalgia Avenue

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So you think you know cold?

This morning I stumbled downstairs to get ready for work and nearly jumped back in bed in one bound. There was no way I could've braved the temperatures on our first floor in just a pair of shorts.

For good reason. It was -7 degrees (F) outside with a wind chill below that, and my 116 year old house wasn't up to the task of keeping out the weather.

When we bought the long-vacant house last year we converted the unfinished second floor into four bedrooms, all insulated, with new windows and a separate high efficiency furnace.

With the mandatory exception of the bathroom we didn't have the money to do more than surface work to the main floor. And so we face the cold spell with drafty old windows and warped window frames, uninsulated walls more than a century old, screen doors not worth a damn, and main doors so old and past their prime that you can feel the breeze through the wood of the door.

Oh, and a furnance that is honest and truly a few years older than I am.

So I went to work and a few hours later my wife called me to complain about the heat. It was, at the time, 56 degrees on the main floor with a steady draft from all angles. And this with the furnace and a space heater on full blast.

"Keep the kids upstairs," I said, knowing the upstairs was a toasty 71 degrees.

"Look, I know this sounds ghetto," my wife said, "but there's no TV upstairs. There's no way your children are going to stay entertained and calm for 8 hours without at least a little Hannah Montana"

'Tis true. I recognized the wisdom of her words. And yet worse was to come. An hour or so later she called to say that the kitchen faucet no longer worked; the pipes had frozen.

So on the way home I stopped at Home Depot and bought some magnetic vent covers. When I got home I used them to double-seal the vents in the basement and made sure the vents on the 1st floor were open and clear. I called my friend The Socialist who quickly came to my rescue with both advice and a space heater that he set up by the water supply line to thaw out the pipes. I did a patchwork job of closing a dining room window that had jiggled loose and was open 1/4th of an inch.

Within a few hours the temp was up to a balmy 65 degrees. Heaven!

Here's a pic of the baby as she dealt with the cold. Keep in mind this is how she was dressed inside all day.

* * * *

YaYa is selling Girl Scout cookies for Brownies. All interested parties in Milwaukee (who know us) may feel free to contact me for some boxes. Her goal is 150, enough to earn a radio, and so far she is up to 51 after an audacious door to door campaign in this weather! and a telephone sales pitch worthy of a telemarketer.

This burst of entrepreneurial spirit almost makes up for the fact that she and her friend used LuLu's closet rod as a chin up bar and ripped one end right out of the drywall. I swear, keeping the house merely INTACT with four kids around is a chore.

* * *

Random thought:  you know, in the storm that heralded this cold spell's arrival the wind was so strong that it tore our front gate right off? I mean just shorn it off, like a grizzly bear had come and given it a good wallop. Crazy. One more thing to fix, like we needed that.

* * *
I took all the kids to pick up two kid-friendly digital cameras that were on clearance at a local store. I told them they couldn't use them until we fixed the sound on the computer, which is a crock. I'm hoping they actually forget about them long enough to pass them out for their birthdays.

Why would I take them along? Wasn't that counter-productive and foolish given that I was picking up gifts for them? Sure. But I was trying to buy good conduct time with my wife so that I could watch the game in peace.

* * *

At the store I also picked up some Littlest Pet Store pens that came with a tiny car that was RC controlled by a pair of buttons on the pen. Weird but true. Anyway, LuLu's worked great but YaYa's must have had a bum battery. Cue tears and fireworks from YaYa. Thankfully her sister volunteered to borrow her pen out for a few minutes to solve the dilemma.

Later LuLu runs into the dining room claiming her's had stopped working as well. .

"Arrgghhh! It's not working anymore and I don't like it. It's a stoopid car and I hate . . oh, nevermind. It's working", she said. She then smiled, turned, and walked out the door.

I laughed hard enough to not even correct her use of 'stupid' and 'hate', both of which are verbotten around here.

Tags: YaYa, LuLu, cold

Roughly 1400 words of nothing in particular

60% of the work week gone - eyes on the prize baby. eyes on the prize.

It hasn’t been a bad week, actually, although it started out a little guilt-ridden . On the one week anniversary of being stranded with a dead car battery and being helped by a Good Samaritan, I was forced, by company policy to deny help to a customer asking for a jump, thereby earning me one more day in purgatory down the road.

Still, other than that it’s been prety good. Keeping the ol’ spirits up, keeping busy, enjoying my time at home to balance out work.

* * * *

I conducted an odd interview the other day. For those of you who don’t know, one of my Big Dreams was to travel the world as a vagabond after college, changing jobs every other week, getting into fights in Shanghai and falling in love in Stockholm. Didn’t happen, of course, seeing as I met my wife and settled down.

No regrets, mind you. But it turns out this candidate earned a history degree as I did, then traveled the world doing odd jobs, from being a cab driver to a bouncer to an English teacher and a deckhand. He is fond of the local library system (where I worked a number of years), can teach but doesn’t want to (ditto) and wants the job at hand in part just to have time to read and, you guessed it, write.

The other manager who sat in on the interview kept giggling. “It’s like he’s your soul mate,” she said later.

Eh, more like my Bizzaro World Mirror-Image Danny.

* * ** *

Memo to self: I bleeping hate typing in the dark, even as a ‘touch’ typist of 55wpm. It’s darn annoying, but the baby is sleeping in the swing behind me.

* * * *

I’m working on some new graphics to replace the outdated sidebar (man I hate that pic) and the ‘masthead’ I run at the start of each post.

* * * *

One bad thing about the Packers in the Championship game: seven long and tortuous days filled with Packer related this and that, from human interest stories to interviews with players to morons who make snow statues of their favorite players. Two stations have even extended their newscast each night by ten minutes for the duration of the week, thereby knocking out the HD version of the talk shows that are scheduled to run next.

Just watch the &@*# game

* * * *

Stolen Joke: What’s the difference between American Idol and the NFC Championship game?

Answer: American Idol is in Dallas this week.

I watched American Idol, as usual. Not overly exciting,. Weird to see a tamer Simon, but it does appear genuine. Thank goodness he’s finally mocking Paula over her inclination to constantly side with Randy.

Loved the Simon worshiper. Let’s face it, the whole night brought home the point that most folks respect Simon’s word far more than Randy or Paula’s.

That woman from Kelly Clarkson’s home town . . Yowzas. Shame her voice doesn’t match the look because I wouldn’t mind seeing her all season.

To the woman who went off about Simon for no reason, as he simply said she would best be served by singing in a band: he was right, and it wasn’t an insult. You have a good voice for a rock band.

Complaint: I am annoyed and bothered by the fact that AI spends entire 5 minute segments on people that are clearly mentally impaired. Not the kooks, mind you, or the freaks, but the honest to goodness Flowers for Algernon contestants. Poor taste and exploitive. Plenty of ‘normal’ losers to waste airspace on.

By the way, that Princess Leia contestant bothered me greatly. She wasn’t impaired, so she doesn’t fall under the above criticism, but she was obviously suffering from extremely low self esteem and self-loathing. Remember her first tear filled words to her Grandma when she left the audition? I paraphrase, but “They looked at me and just said dork, like always”

And earlier, when they were talking to her and she said that she didn’t find herself remotely attractive . . to me it was painfully obvious that the whole Star Wars/Leia thing was a way of explaining away a failure and salvaging some self esteem.

I used to do that a lot, sabotage my own efforts so that if I failed I could look back and disregard the loss by saying “Pff. It wasn’t like I tried my best. It’s not like the result counts”

It does, and that’s just a way of announcing to the world that you’re uncomfortable in your own skin.

It really bothered me. Sometimes I’m still the little kid who bawled after watching Dr. Detroit and wanted to deliver a bag of groceries to the homeless drunk who approaches Ackroyd in the movie.

And sometimes I feel like a heartless bum. Go figure.

* * * *

I have a shed in my backyard that I took apart and moved from a friends house late this fall. My friend graciously gave itto me for free provided he didn’t have to partake in the move or construction, but one of YaYa’s friend’s Dad lent me a hand. The frame was put back up, three sides went upand then you guessed it, it was on to the 4th or 5th snowiest December on record and the project sat untouched.

Now it’s in the 40’s, there’s no snow and I was gearing up to spend an off day this week working on it . .and the news says we can expect two inches of snow tomorrow followed by bitter cold.

Ain’t life grand?

* * * *

Enough of the Britney Spears coverage. She’s honestly going to kill herself and then the whole world will fall over itself looking to place blame, without bothering to look in the mirror.

Reporters followed her into church and yelled “Are you praying Britney?”. They followed her into church.

Leave her alone.

* * * *

Memo to parents-to-be: four year olds are, day in and day out, as much trouble ,and just as prone to emotional fireworks, as two, three, and five year olds combined.

Now that I mention it, 5 month olds, two year olds, and six year olds aren't a piece of cake either.

* * * * *

I had the misfortune of sitting in a meeting this past week and listening to a local recall-the-elected officials group speak at the request of the board. The speaker was charismatic but very loud and aggressive. Nothing was said that was out of line (save for the fact that I believe this to be a democracy, and if I person in office sucks vote him out, don’t talk to me about a recall ) but the whole atmosphere of desperation and anger in the audience. . Shiver. Not for me, thanks.

* * *

Watched Alvin and the Chipmunks and dang near peed my pants at times. The kids were flat-out laughing out loud too. Unexpectedly a lot of fun.

Wish I could say the same for Eastern Promises. Boring, boring, boring, and excessively violent.

The Sarah Connor Chronicles was very entertaining and well written. Even Lisa liked it. I wonder how long it is until Terminator fatigue sets in though. I mean really, I’m already adding up the ‘bots and wondering how Skynet or John Connor found any time to fight a war with all the tinkering and tampering with time travel. Just between the three movies five cyborgs and one human were sent back in time. In just one episode of the show we’ve seen three cyborgs and four humans that traveled, and presumably at least a few more stuck back in 1963.

If you have time for plans that intricate, shouldn’t you have time to think of a way to stop the whole madness? And if Skynet succeeds, how do they ever know that they need to go back in time to kill Connors? Likewise, if Connors succeeds in stopping Judgment Day, his father never goes back in time to conceive him.

Lose lose in logic land, no?