Year: 2014

Kaiju and Cruise Ships

/ Shane / Leave a comment

Last night I had a dream that I was camping with my family. Everything was going fine until giant kaiju rained down from outer space. I immediately knew three things: 1) it was the end of the word, 2) I could not safely travel anywhere, and 3) my tent was probably not going to be adequate protection.

(Full disclosure, about 85% of my dreams involve apocalypse-type scenarios.)

We were all running around trying to make the campground as secure as possible, knowing that it was hopeless but not having any alternative, when suddenly something giant crashed through our outer fence. Rampaging monster? No, here was my Uncle David in a ridiculous captain’s outfit and mirrored shades. Gold fringe on the shoulders and everything.

It turns out that my Uncle David had been preparing for just such a situation and had bought and retrofitted an old cruise ship. It was a combination of armor plated hull and state of the art interior that had also been modified to drive on land. I’m not sure how it was fueled, but since it had been designed to hold so many people, it was well stocked with food and amenities to last all of our lifetimes, and then some. It was virtually indestructable.

Luxurious battlecruiser thus prepared, he was driving around the country picking up Halbachs. Next on the list was my dad, and we set off.

Now that I’m awake and I can look at the whole thing logically, I think I can say with certainty that there is a 30% chance that this is actually how the world ends. It is not outside the realm of possibility that my Uncle Dave (or any number of other Halbachs, I’m looking at you Uncle Jim) is retrofitting a battle cruise ship as we speak. It would also not be totally unexpected if they suddenly showed up in it (wearing a captain’s outfit).

Brain, I Will Defeat You!

/ Shane / Leave a comment

I stayed up too late last night baking bread. Yes, baking bread (also known as being an *extreme party animal*). When I finally crawled into bed at the extremely late hour of 10:30, my sleepy brain whispered to me, “Tomorrow is Friday, you don’t have to get up until 6:30.”

“Seems reasonable,” I mumbled back, setting the alarm. “6:30, yeah. Fridays are different, so I can sleep in. Zzzzzzzzzz.”

At 6:28 this morning I woke with a shock and said, “CURSE YOU TIRED BRAIN! You’ve outwitted me again!”

He may have won this time, but this I vow: from this moment forward, I will devote myself to defeating this brain of mine. He thinks he’s so smart! Let’s see how he fares against an onslaught of Buzzfeed lists, games of Flappy Bird, and Miley Cyrus videos.

I WILL HAVE THE LAST LAUGH!

“I don’t remember”

/ Shane / Leave a comment

It is nearly impossible to get any sort of answer out of Oliver, and it always has been. He really just doesn’t like to stick himself out there, or answer something that might be incorrect. If you ask him any sort of question at all, he reflexively answers “I don’t know” or “I don’t remember”. I think maybe this began as a way to buy himself time to find an answer, but he’s answered this way so often for so long, that he now responds before he actually thinks about the answer to the question. If you asked him his name he would immediately answer, “I don’t remember.”

The only way to get him to answer is to respond, “I know, but what is your guess?” Often, when you ask him to guess, he does have the correct answer when he thinks about it for a second.

I don’t really know what to do about this. It can be extremely frustrating when, question after question, he refuses to make any sort of attempt at an answer. I know that it’s not because he doesn’t know the answer.

In fact, he does not want to do anything to stick out in any way. I noticed that in ballet he never answers any questions when the teacher asks, despite the fact that I know that he knows the answer, and he never volunteers to demonstrate or even to go first in line. I asked him why this was and he just got embarrassed and said, “I just want to do what everyone else is doing.”

It’s a part of his personality, but I do think this has something to do with his sister. He just looks up to her so much, but I notice that whenever he’s in an uncertain situation, he always looks at her to see what she’s doing. She’s his safety blanket, and he gets nervous when she’s not around to set the example. That’s kind of sweet in a way, but my hope is that he blossoms a little bit when he’s in situations without her, such as at school.

I do wish he would just slow down a little bit and think about his answer, instead of reflexively answering “I don’t know”. It’s certainly not a lack of intelligence!

I Hate Taxis

/ Shane / 6 Comments

I have been traveling a lot for work and, since we only have one car, that often means taking a taxi back and forth to the airport.

Hypothetically, taking a taxi isn’t too bad. I call ahead and schedule a taxi to pick me up at my desired time. Everything is nice and automated and they send you a text when they arrive. There’s only one route to the airport. I’ve done it enough times that I know approximately how much it’s going to cost. Easy peasy. However, I’m growing to dislike it so much it’s starting to border on phobia.

There are two types of taxi drivers: the ones that want to make conversation the entire way, and the ones that talk endlessly on their bluetooth headsets in their native language. I VASTLY prefer the latter. Keep in mind these taxi rides are either to the airport at about 4 a.m. or home in rush hour Chicago traffic after a long day of travel. I really don’t feel like debating politics with a cab driver in either of those circumstances. I really don’t. I’d much rather zone out to the soothing sounds of your incomprehensible conversation.

Actually, there is a third kind. Often a driver will think it’s a good idea to harangue me the entire time, in an effort to increase his tip. Mostly this is about how he had to sit out front for so long (despite the fact that I was watching out the window and came out 10 minutes before my scheduled pickup time) and how that costs him money and how really it’s kind of my fault he’s driving in this awful traffic all the way to the airport of all places, so maybe I should just do the right thing when it comes to tip time, you-know-what-I’m-saying? And by the way, did he mention how the city is screwing him over? And the tax man? And gas prices?

There is nothing that upsets me more than feeling like someone is trying to artificially tug at my heartstrings. It certainly doesn’t put me in a tipping mood. How does this work on anybody??

Even in the best of circumstances, tipping people always causes me an unreasonable amount of anxiety. But this is especially true when it’s in some sort of hurried situation (such as trying to pay while hopping out of a taxi at a busy intersection or airport). This is my fault, not theirs, but there it is. Once I get about 15 minutes out from my destination, I start sweating and endlessly calculating all the possible scenarios in my head. “Okay, so I will just give him Y and tell him to keep the change. Is that enough? It’s probably good right? Wait, did I calculate that right? Let me recalculate. Yeah, I think that’s right. Wait, the meter just rolled over to another dollar. Is that still a good tip or should I bump it up to Z?”

That’s my neurosis, and if that were the only problem, I could handle that. However, around the same time I have to start worrying, “How is this guy going to try and screw me over?” and preparing myself to be belligerent (I have to work myself up, just in case, but that’s okay because it’s almost always necessary).

In roughly 8 of my taxi trips, the credit card machine “mysteriously stopped working” about 5 minutes away from the airport. “Oh, sorry sir, you’ll have to pay cash.” To which I respond, “Well, you’ll have to call it into dispatch or else you’re not going to get paid.” Guess what? The credit card machine mysteriously starts working again! EVERY. SINGLE. TIME. I understand they’d rather be paid in cash, but I’m taking two cab rides that are between $65 and $70 each. I’m not carrying $140 in cash, just for the taxi ride. I’m just not.

Since my too-bad-so-sad attitude seemed to be working fairly well, they have recently come up with a new scam. On the last two cab rides I’ve taken, after they claim the credit card machine is broken, they pull out their Square credit card reader for their iPhone. They swipe your card on their iPhone and then you get a charge from “Frank’s Cab Service” rather than the taxi company (and also, I assume, they get to keep your credit card number).

This makes me *extremely uncomfortable*, but I haven’t figured out how to handle this yet. For some reason I feel uncomfortable just flat out refusing, but I don’t know why. One of the times I got away with it by saying I needed the receipt for work, but the other time the guy promised me the receipt would be emailed to me (and it was). So I actually did pay by Square that time, and it seems to have worked out for me. I assume, however, that my luck would most likely not continue to hold on that one.

Long story short: cab drivers are some shady characters and I have to put up with their b.s. on top of paying them a ridiculous amount of money for the privilege of going through airport security.

Not every taxi ride is trouble, but because 85% of my experiences are bad, I spend most of my time fretting and anxious. Time after time I have had to deal with it, until it just becomes the rule, not the exception. The fact that I’ve had so many bad experiences just proves that it’s not just my bad luck: the vast majority of cabbies are just a cut above your average panhandler.

I like the idea of being able to catch a cab when you need it, but the reality is a far cry from the ideal.

Quote Monday contemplates the relationship between wrong doing and money

/ Shane / Leave a comment

Ollie: “If you kill somebody and you don’t have the money to pay for it, you have to go to jail until you die. So don’t kill somebody.”

I think “and you don’t have the money to pay for it” shows an astute understanding of the justice system far beyond his 3 years.

Ollie, whispering: “Mama is rich. I saw how much money she has!”

We’re rich! We’re rich! We can kill whoever we want!

Wait, no, unfortunately he was only referring to her jar of pennies which looks like quite a fortune to him.

Me: “I’m the meanest daddy in the world, never forget it.”
Ollie: “You know what? You’re not mean, but sometimes you do mean things.”

Me: “You know, someday Nala’s going to die and then what are we going to do?”
Sara: “Vacuum.”