Month: April 2012

Quote Monday smells funny

/ Shane / Leave a comment

::Oliver rubbing his eye with his sunscreened hand::
Oliver: “Dada, it’s spicy on my hand!”

Evie: “Who do you love more, me or Oliver?”
Me: “Oh honey, I couldn’t pick. I love you both the same amount. ::thinking I am clever:: Who do you love more, me or mama?”
Evie, without a moment’s hesitation: “Mama.”

Evie: “Mama, you smell like broth that is made into pudding.”
…
Evie, to me: “Let’s see what you smell like. Hmm…dirty socks.”

Evie: “Mama! You know I’m not designed to be a maid!”

He’s not moving!

/ Shane / Leave a comment

Have you ever come up on someone who’s sleeping a little *too* deeply, and they look like they were dead? Yeah, well, this pillow‘s not going to help you with that. But it is going to help you freak people out, and what more is there to life?

Alas, poor Lloyd, we hardly knew ye

/ Shane / 1 Comment

Unfortunately, our garden gnome Lloyd is no more.

Lloyd, in happier times

Lloyd had been with me for just under 10 years or so, given as a gift to be a companion to my gargoyle Prince (short for Prince of Darkness of course). Usually we take Lloyd in for the winter, but this year we didn’t. Perhaps he got upset at being left out in the cold, but more likely, someone decided to appropriate our humble garden gnome. And something tells me I’m not going to get a bunch of cute pictures of his travels.

Evie has noticed that he’s not in the garden, but hasn’t caught on yet that he’s gone for good. So far, I haven’t had the heart to tell her. He was certainly a positive part of the garden, and our only protection against the shark (who unfortunately did not get stolen, and still menaces our plot from his lofty plastic perch).

Lloyd, we miss you buddy, and we wish you’d come back. The garden won’t be the same without you. But if you don’t, I can only hope you’ve moved on to greener pastures.

Things That Annoy Me

/ Shane / 2 Comments
  1. “Due to unusually high call volumes, we are unable to answer your call…” ALWAYS. I think someone in the automated phone message industry needs to look up the definition for the word “unusual”. If you have the same amount of call traffic every single day, day in and day out, then it is not, by definition, unusual. It is quite definitely usual.
  2. We had a rare trip to the Olive Garden, and the take home package for our leftovers said, “Microwave and Dishwasher safe”. Okay, microwave I can understand, because somebody (who hates their body and loves the taste of BPA) is probably going to try to warm up their leftovers in that container. But dishwasher safe? Are there any godforsaken souls on this planet who are rich enough to go to Olive Garden, but poor enough to need to keep the little plastic to-go container as their permanent dishes?
  3. When you’re going on a trip and everybody says, “Oh, do you want to borrow my dvd player for in the car?” My friends, lest we forget, we didn’t have DVD players in our cars when we were kids and we somehow survived! It is physically possible to go without tv for five minutes, and it is physically possible for your kids to entertain themselves. Or not. If it comes down to it, they can be bored out of their skull just like I had to be when I was a kid riding in the car. My kids don’t watch tv at home where it actually makes sense to do so, they’re definitely not watching it in the car!
  4. Procrastinators. When you put things off to the last minute, then you *have* to do them then, under a lot of stress. If you do them sooner, you can schedule them better (i.e. when it’s not the worst possible time) and be much less stressed. And then you don’t have to worry about something unexpected cropping up (and it always crops up). It’s not even a question of laziness, because even a lazy person knows it is easier to do things at 2 p.m. on a lazy Sunday than at 2 a.m. when you’re under the gun. After the 50 millionth time this happens, how does one not learn their lesson? I learned this when I was like 8. “But I work better under a deadline,” they say. “I need that stress to get things done!” Phooey. Stop spending so much time rationalizing your bad habits and get your stuff done.
  5. Antibiotic tissues. For what? (Other than the obvious: to create drug-resistant super bacteria.) Seriously, doesn’t everybody know by now that we’re creating super bacteria with this constant onslaught of anti-bacterial stuff? And in this case, for what? To protect people who are rifling through my dirty tissues in the trash? Yuck. Those people deserve to get sick.

Geek and Sundry

/ Shane / 2 Comments

Can we first just take a minute to acknowledge how awesome it is that, in this day and age, someone can just go on the Internet and start their own television network? And I’m not talking about some kind of crappy home-movies, I’m talking about full production budgets with costumes real actors and witty writing. I’m talking about Geek & Sundry.

Geek & Sundry is the youtube channel of Internet royalty Felicia Day (if you know her from nowhere else, you should at least recognize her as Penny from Dr. Horrible’s Sing Along Blog).

My introduction to Geek & Sundry actually came via one of the shows on the Geek & Sundry network, TableTop. I used to love a show called Celebrity Poker Showdown, in which celebrities played poker against each other while throwing out hilarious one liners. TableTop is like that, except instead of regular celebrities, they have geek celebrities, and instead of poker, they play geek board games. The show is hosted by none other than the king of the Internet himself, Wil Wheaton.

I anticipate watching TableTop to learn about awesome new games that I’ve never played before. However, I’m also excited to watch episodes where they play games that I know and love, such as Settlers of Catan:

However, once I was there on the Geek & Sundry network, I started to check out some of the other shows. I swear that someone has tried to get me to watch The Guild before, but I couldn’t find any reference in my email, so I guess it never really happened. However, The Guild is HILARIOUS and awesome, so someone should have recommended it to me if they didn’t. This show is as good as anything you’d find on traditional television, and a must-see if you are a gamer, or know a gamer, or even know what a mmorpg is. There are 6 seasons currently, but a whole season is about an hour long.

But I didn’t stop there! Geek & Sundry led me on to the fantasy and science fiction show Sword and Laser. They’re starting a book club, and they just so happen to have picked The Magicians by Lev Grossman as their first book. I just so happen to be about half way through The Magicians by Lev Grossman. Kismet. This is a book that I have heard tons about, and I’m very excited to read. And now I’m in a book club, which is a first for me.

There are other shows worth being excited about as well, such as Written by a Kid, which hasn’t premiered yet (fantastic premise, professional animators provide animations for stories told by kids).

Anyway, long story short, we have gotten to the point where there are a lot of non-traditional media streams out there, which leads to highly targeted, highly specialized sources that are apparently highly attuned to my own individual wavelength.

In other words, Geek and Sundry.