Month: May 2010

Garden 2.0

/ Shane / Leave a comment

It’s that time of year again…garden time!

The fate of the old garden has been discussed before, so I will not belabor the point. The excellent people of the new garden have been working nonstop to get things ready to go. Evie and I put in a little work, but not nearly as much as some of the folks. And the result looks mighty fine, I might add:

Over the weekend we planted 6 tomato plants, peppers, an eggplant, carrots, chives, basil, and, new this year, some strawberries. I’m already anticipating some delicious produce.

Of course, this being a story involving me, it couldn’t go off without a hitch.

In order to plant our strawberries, we needed to build a box to put them in. Strawberries, left unchecked, will keep coming back every year and expanding, until they take over your garden. So you want to put them in something, so they are contained.

Me, being the handy man around town, went over to Home Depot to get some supplies. This turned out to be beyond me in several ways. It was immediately clear to everyone that I was way out of my element. Let me give you some examples:

Me: “I want to buy some wood to make a strawberry box. Do you guys cut the wood to specification?”
Guy: “You don’t want this wood!”
Me: “I don’t? Why not?”
Guy: “Are you going to eat these strawberries?”
Me, catching on very fast: “This is treated lumber, isn’t it.”

Me: “Is this untreated wood?”
Guy: “Yes. What size are you looking for.”
Me: “…”
Me: “About this big?”
(Note that this conversation was repeated many, many times.”)

Finally I got a piece that looked good. We wanted each side of the box to be 3 feet, so I picked out a board that looked like it was about 12 feet.

Me: “Is this 12 feet?”
Guy: “That’s 10 feet.”
Me: “Let me go get another one.”

Guy: “How do you want this cut?”
Me: “We want 4 pieces.”
Guy: “So, how long?”
Me: “Well, if the board is 12 feet, so if we want 4 pieces, we’d need them to be 4 feet long.”

Now I would like to point out here, that this was really the critical error of the day. However, that guy had every opportunity to see that I was an idiot right there, and stop me. But he didn’t. He cut me 3 pieces 4 feet long. After some very tense conversation with Sara in which I explained what I had just done, we had to go get another board and cut it. We debated having them cut a foot off of each piece, but we were really pushing the limits on what the Home Depot guy was going to put up with from us. Plus we would have had to pay for all the extra cuts (to say nothing of the extra wood we were going to have to buy). Finally, in my mortal embarrassment, I managed to convince Sara to buy the wood as-is, without having the extra cuts, so I could just get out of there as fast as possible. And the Home Depot guy, seeing that I was as clueless as they come and in need of major help, decided not to charge me for the extra piece of wood. (Thank you!)

About this time, Oliver started wailing, which was not helping my stress level. So Sara took the kids out to the car, which should have signaled to me immediately that I had more humiliation in store.

Me: “I can’t find a bar code on the wood.”
Checkout guy, looking at all the boards and not finding a bar code: “What size is it?”
Me: “…”
Me: “I think 1×8”
Checkout guy, sighing: “Can you [hold up the entire line and] run back and get a bar code from some other piece of wood?”
Guy behind us in line: “There is a bar code right there.”
Me: “He’s right!”
Checkout guy: “Oh, I was just taking your word for it that it wasn’t there.”

Okay jerk face, you looked at the wood too and didn’t see it! Man. We finally made our escape and the next morning I cut a foot off each board with a handsaw. Since we didn’t have to pay for the extra wood, and since it only took me about 30 minutes to saw up the wood and assemble the box, we weren’t really out anything. I would say the most embarrassment really could be traced back to this conversation:

Me: “Should I write a blog post about this?”
Sara: “Why not? You embarrass everybody else on there.”

Well, I’m nothing if not fair.

Social Butterfly

/ Shane / 4 Comments

When kids are little, even when they are “playing” with other kids, they’re not really playing with other kids. They’re mostly just playing at the same time as the other kids, who happen to be in close proximity. However, some switch recently flipped over in Evie’s head, where she suddenly noticed other kids. She really just loves to make friends.

Whenever we go to the park now, she’s so excited to talk to the other kids. She runs up to them and says, “My name is Evie, what’s your name?” She also tries to entice them to play whatever game she is playing, such as driving in the little plastic car and announcing casually, in her loudest voice, “The back is open, if anybody wants to sit in it!”

At soccer practice, we’ve been going with the same kids for like 8 weeks now. Suddenly, last weekend, it’s like they noticed each other. Soon Evie and another girl were holding hands and stopping periodically to hug each other. It was the most adorable thing ever. It was hilarious too, as each of them would kick a soccer ball in opposite directions, and then almost pull their arms out of their sockets as they both tried to run after. Eventually another boy joined in with the hand holding, and they almost threatened to destroy the entire practice with their peace, love, and happiness.

The other aspect of this is that she is now learning adult social skills, such as making conversation segues and small talk in order to keep conversation flowing. For example, seeing Nathan’s pop bottle: “I got a water bottle for Christmas from Santa. Have you seen the big girl bed that Santa got me?” which of course leads to her showing him around her room.

The other day she met a random girl at the library and Sara was watching her make small talk with the girl:

Evie: “So, where’s your mommy?”
Random Little Girl: “She’s at work.”
Evie: “My mommy never leaves me. Sometimes my daddy goes to Detroit.”

::General arguing about the moon for quite some time::
Random Little Girl: “The moon doesn’t look like this picture.”
Evie, finally getting fed up: “Sometimes the moon is a circle, and sometimes it is a crescent!”

I love watching her interact with other kids!

Baldness

/ Shane / 4 Comments

My brother visited me this weekend, and while he was here I noticed a disturbing lack of hair on the top of his head. In fact, he kind of has like a blond spot on top combined with thicker, darker patches on the side, giving him a semi-unique look.

One of these guys is my brother

Now, obviously I’m not one to talk when it comes to baldness. But really, I see myself every day, so I don’t think much about my own baldness. This, of course, led to this picture:

Who's the baldest?

So I ask you, who has the most to worry about here?

The case against Nathan:

  • He is 5 years younger, and thus *should* have more hair.
  • His hair is longer, and thus doesn’t look as bald in the picture as it really is.
  • His hair is generally lighter, and his skin is generally darker, so the bald patches don’t show up as much.
  • His baldness is more diffuse, like a general thinning, instead of discreet and more drastic patches of baldness.

The case against Shane:

  • Look at that picture, my goodness.
  • There is an actual reflection on the top of his head from the flash.
  • His forehead (five-head) starts way over the dome of his head, half-way to his ears.

So, there you have it. Speak now or forever hold your peace:

So really, it was their own fault

/ Shane / 1 Comment

Rachael and Nathan were cleaning the gutters at my dad’s house. It is always dangerous to set foot in my dad’s house, because he’s always looking for people to put to work. Now, Rachael is afraid of heights, so she’s army crawling around on the roof, trying to be as careful as she can. Before long, my dad disappears for a little while. When he comes back, he is carrying bottle rockets, which he proceeds to shoot at them. Of course, being on the roof, it is hard for them to escape.

Eventually the bottle rockets ran out, and my siblings were able to descend from the roof. Later, Rachael was talking to my step-mom:

Rachael: “Do you think regular families ask their children to clean the gutters and then shoot bottle rockets at them?”
Sharon: “Well, maybe except that last part. I told you to get rid of those bottle rockets…”

So really, they have no one to blame except their selves. Besides, come on. This was my dad we’re talking about here. They grew up with the guy and they didn’t see that coming?

Nature, isn’t it precious?

/ Shane / 5 Comments

We just can’t stop getting enough horrific nature around here. One thing after another. Listen, why is it that every time we discover a new fish or insect or whatever, it is frightening? Why aren’t things evolving in the direction of cuteness? Well, that’s not the world we live in folks.

Let’s talk about fish.

Longhead Dreamer Anglerfish

Iceland Catshark

Football Fish

Portuguese Dogfish

Double Baited Anglerfish

Why are all these fish being discovered? It turns out, our old pal global warming causing these things to move into new territory, where they are not normally located. So now they’re coming into places where they have contact with humans. Where will they turn up next? Your back yard POOL?

As long as we’re on the topic of this, I saw this one a while ago:

Blob Fish

Turns out that beautiful mug is almost extinct. That’d be a shame, wouldn’t it?

Another crazy fish would be the Snakehead fish:

Snakehead Terror

Of course, anybody (like myself) who has seen Snakehead Terror, would not be surprised about this menace. This little thing can actually walk on land and, “may even climb trees”. That’s right, it not only eats you in the water, it can actually come on land to get you.

So finally, let me close with a new type of nose leach, with teeth 5 times larger than other leaches. I don’t have a good picture of this thing, but it is indeed a parasite which uses it’s giant teeth to attach to the inside of your nose. Don’t worry though, the article is quick to point out that its genitalia aren’t a lot bigger than a red blood cell. So take that, nose leach! I will certainly be gloating over that while you are eating my nose from the inside out.

Links mostly via Sara