Author: Shane

Evie’s Cat

/ Shane / 1 Comment

Last Christmas, Evie decided that the only thing she really wanted was a little white kitten. Well, I have one cat, thank you very much, and I don’t. need. another. Instead we compromised: I gave Evie yarn and she helped me pick out a cat pattern.

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This is definitely the most complicated pattern I’ve ever tried. I’d start hyperventilating just looking at it. However, if I just focused on doing the next thing, one thing at a time, it actually wasn’t so bad. In fact, I think overall it gave me a lot less trouble then the hat I made for my brother.

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Evie named her cat Snowball and loved her intensely for at least 24 hours. In other words, she lasted about as long as Ollie’s monster Floob.

Evie, being Evie, is not completely satisfied with some of the imperfections. She’s not very keen on the face. As I told her, perhaps a bit too archly, “If you want a perfect cat, buy one from the store. But if you want one that’s made by your daddy with love, you can have this one.”

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Quote Monday requires some explanation

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Evie: “Which potty are you going to use?”
Ollie: “Which potty are YOU going to use?”
Evie: “The back potty.”
Ollie: “Are you teasing me? Are you going to say, ‘Wink wink’?”

This actually started with my brother when we were kids. My mom would say something like, “You’re getting the biggest piece of cake, wink wink” and the rest of us older kids would understand that she was just humoring him. We employed the same strategy with our kids, but Ollie seemed to figure it out pretty quick.

Ollie: “Do wicked witches give people swirlies?”

Because nothing is crueler than a witch, and nothing is more wicked than a swirly.

Stranger: “Did you get your glasses?”
Me: “…what’s that?”
Stranger: “Did you get your sunglasses?”
Me, thinking: “Do I know this guy? Does he think I’m somebody else?”
Stranger: “…because your son just came by and told me alll about it.”

Ollie never met a stranger he couldn’t tell his life story to. I think we have a future blogger on our hands…

Back in MY day, we bought our Internet around back

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When it comes to the Internet, I was what you might call an early adopter.

Back in the Wild West days of the Internet, when you actually had to dial up to your provider with a modem, there were lots and lots of choices for ISPs. These days you more or less have Comcast or Verizon, but back then you could literally just open the phone book and pick a new company.

When I finally got tired of pretending to cancel AOL unless they offered me “50 more hours for free!”, I did exactly that and found a new ISP. In order to sign up for service, I had to drive to their office and pick up an installation disk (and I mean disk, not CD). I wrote down the address and hopped in the car.

When I got to the place, I thought maybe I had written down the wrong address. I drove around the block a few times, but the address clearly pointed to a chinese restaurant. This was a freestanding building, not a strip mall or anything, and there really wasn’t anything else around that could possibly be an Internet provider. Finally, I parked and walked in.

I approached the hostess. “Hi, I, uh, wanted to sign up for the Internet?” I asked, feeling ridiculous. “You have to go around back,” she said, “Knock.”

“Of course!” I thought, gratified that she wasn’t looking at me funny. “You can’t sign up for Internet at a Chinese restaurant; that would be crazy! There must be an office building around back.” But when I got around back there was just a plain, windowless, steel door next to a dumpster. I knocked.

This was the door to the kitchen, and a chef opened it up. I mean a full on chef, with a white apron covered in food stains. “You want Internet?” he asked me. You better believe I wanted his dirty, back-alley Internet.

It did not, unfortunately, come with a side of fried rice, nor did he give me the access numbers inside of a fortune cookie. I filled out a paper with my desired username (an actual piece of paper, your average back door Internet didn’t have fancy-schmancy online forms back then), he gave me an installation disk, and away we went.

And believe it or not, that was probably the best ISP I ever had. They were fast (a blazing 56k!), they were cheap, and when I canceled my service when I went to college, my account was still active for at least 2 years afterwards. When I’d come home for the weekend I used to connect up, and sure enough I was in, despite not paying a dime in years. That back door Internet was the good stuff.

I feel bad for you kids today and your high speed wi fi two step authentication itunes app store. You’ll never get to experience a dial up bulletin board, or get kicked off a chat room because you forgot to disable call waiting, or yell at your little sister for answering the phone to modem squeals even though you clearly told her you were waiting for a friend’s computer to direct dial you so you could play Warcraft II. You’ll buy your Internet from a faceless corporation instead of following your Internet dealer into a dark alley for an installation disk. You probably run virus protection too, and keep all the ports closed on your firewall.

Pansies.

Easter Recap

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Relatively low key Easter this year, though we got some beautiful weather. The Easter Bunny brought a few gifts, but the main thing for Evie was a kit where she can mine for her own gemstones…

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…and Ollie got a hand drill and has spent most of the time since then drilling, screwing, and hammering nails into a piece of wood.

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Evie is in the choir and performed two beautiful songs. It is so fun to see her up there singing her lungs out (there’s no trouble picking out her voice from the crowd) and really enjoying it.

(Side note, I saw someone pause in the communion line and take a selfie on her phone in front of the altar. I wish I were kidding.)

After the service there was an Easter egg hunt but, as usual, all the other kids ran out first and found most of the eggs before we got there. In my experience, Easter egg hunts always seem like a good idea in principle but never quite seem to live up to the hype, and usually end up in a lot of upset kids.
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Unfortunately, Ollie thought Easter would be a great day to be a holy terror (pun intended). All day he was stubborn and short tempered as only a kid can be. He took every opportunity he could to spite us at every turn, up to and including dumping a full cup of milk on the floor in protest over…who knows what. I think because I asked him to wash his hands? Or something else equally awful, I don’t know. It was just that sort of day.

Needless to say, I was pretty grumpy and exhausted at the end of the day, and ready to declare no more Easters ever. On the other hand, now that some time has passed, I’m starting to forget about all of that stuff and only remember Ollie happily pounding nails in the wood and Evie bouncing up and down in time to the music as she sang.

That’s the good thing about memory I guess. As long as someone doesn’t record the bad stuff on his blog.

Turns out I write horror too

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I’m very pleased to announce the sale of my story “Lullabies for a Clockwork Child” to the horror podcast Pseudopod.

I’ve been listening to Pseudopod for a long time (I first blogged about them going on 3 years ago), and it simply can’t be beat for horror audiofiction. I actually write a decent amount of horror, but this is the first I’ve sold.

I have a very active imagination (you might say over active) and therefore as a child I suffered a deep-seated fear of the dark. I spent most every night of my childhood scared witless, and had all sorts of tricks to “forget” to turn the light off. When I was older I slept with the tv on every night so as not to be alone in the dark. (I should say it was rather being NOT alone in the dark that bothered me, but I digress…)

Naturally, I was drawn to horror like a moth to a flame, tempting fate a little too often even though I knew it was a terrible idea and I would regret it later. I tried to ignore my natural fascination, but unfortunately my best friend Chris was also a bit of a horror buff and he subjected me to hours and hours (and hours) of horror movies until eventually I sort of inoculated myself against the genre.

At that point I sort of threw in the towel and said, “Why not?” immersing myself in horror movies, novels, and short stories, and burning myself on that particular flame over and over and over again. What can I say? I guess on some level I like to be terrified.

As always, I’ll keep you posted when it goes up, and in the meantime feel free to check out some of the other creepy tales over at Pseudopod.