Author: Shane

A Love Letter from Evie to her Daddy

/ Shane / 3 Comments

February 008Dad. Sorry, I love you last. Mom first, Nala, Ollie, then you Daddy.

I should point out that Nala is the cat.

One of the dangers of having a socially advanced kid is that she came out of the womb adept at using her love as a weapon. I don’t know where she learned this from, since it’s obviously not something she’s learned from example. Sometimes she’s actively trying to see if she can press your buttons, or punishing you for some perceived transgression. I wouldn’t say it’s exactly an attractive trait.

Unfortunately for her, I am completely immune to this, and I have hung the above declaration over my desk at work (oh yeah, and then posted it on the Internet).

My hope has always been that by ignoring these attempts and not making a big deal about them, she will realize that they don’t work and knock it off. The bad news is that she’s already practicing these skills, and will have honed them to a razor’s edge by the time she’s a teenager. But in the meantime, we can all have a good laugh over it.

What’s that? Oh, I guess I just have something in my eye…

Quote Monday is starting to kind of understand how things work (but not really)

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Me, singing: “Baby it’s cold outside.”
Ollie, singing: “I have to stay in momma’s tummy!”
::Me, laughing::
Ollie: “Because a baby has to stay warm in its momma’s tummy.”

Oliver: “Ooh, look at that eagle!” – as a pigeon soared majestically overhead

Grandma Kathy – “Okay, how far do you want me to count?”
Oliver: “Until 8:30.”

It was about 5:30.

Evie: “If you didn’t want to wake up early, you shouldn’t have invited me over to your house!”

Testicle Eating Fish Caught in Illinois

/ Shane / 1 Comment

Eh? Title get your attention? Oh, it’s real my friends. And it’s coming for your testicles.

Turns out they’ve found a couple of pacu in a lake in Illinois, most likely discarded pets. Pacu are related to piranha, but “much larger” and have “straighter teeth like a human”.

Very well, but where do the testicles come in? Turns out the pacu has previously been introduced in Papa New Guinea:

There, according to British fisherman Jeremy Wade, the pacu is known as the “ball cutter.” In 2011, Wade said locals informed him that two fisherman had died from blood loss after something in the water had bitten off their testicles.

“The locals told me that this thing was like a human in the water, biting at the testicles of fishermen,” Wade said.

You know, biting at the testicles of fishermen, like a human.

Maybe it’s because in the wild, pacu eat nuts (literally and figuratively it seems). Maybe it’s because fish don’t like fishermen, and pacu have the teeth to do something about it. Maybe it’s because people of Papa New Guinea fish pants-less, and pacu find this offensive. Or maybe they’re just mimicking humans, because apparently that’s what humans do to fishermen in Papa New Guinea. Who knows.

But what I do know is that if you’re planning to come swimming in my neck of the woods, gird your loins my friends. Gird your loins.

Things our Kids Should Know (Before College 2030)

/ Shane / 1 Comment

The other day I wrote an article about Things our Kids Should Know Before Starting College. This sparked some debate on Facebook about whether or not balancing your checkbook is already out of date (I say it’s not, but clearly this is not a settled issue).

This begs the obvious question: which pieces of advice WILL be out of date by the time the kids go to college? Should I not recommend that my children remember to charge their car phones or learn how to clean VCR heads? How could I even know what sorts of things will be out of date by the time they are ready to move out on their own?

I think about my grandma and how, in her lifetime, we went from outdoor toilets and horse-drawn carriages to always-connected-cell-phone-computers-in-our-pockets. Surely by the time I die, some of the things common in my life are going to seem as silly and outdated as going without indoor plumbing. But which ones? How could my grandma even have imagined something like an iPad when she was a kid?

No worries my friends, my friend Dan is here to pick up the slack: Things our Kids Should Know (Before College 2030). His (much more useful) list covers everything from augmented reality glasses, how to disable your personal robot, nanoparticle food, and reminders about how to correctly use your personal defense drone (and how to appease the Google/Robot overlords, of course).

Indy Mini-Vacation

/ Shane / 4 Comments

We took a little bit of an extended weekend last week and took a quick trip to visit my sister in Indianapolis.

Let me first start by saying that this is probably the most I’ve ever enjoyed my sister’s dog Luna. I love dogs, but I often don’t love that particular dog. My kids are usually terrified of Luna, and I can’t blame them. She towers over them, and it is very easy to get accidentally scratched or knocked over in her exuberance, to say nothing of slobbery smooches all over your face. The anxiety of the kids kind of rubs off on me. However, this time wasn’t so bad. I don’t know if Luna is calming down as she gets older, if my kids get less anxious as they get older, or maybe it was just being in Luna’s own environment, which was less stressful for all of us. In any case, I think everybody enjoyed Luna a little bit more this time.

Of course, the main thing to do in Indy is go to the Children’s Museum. It is *exhausting* going to that place. It’s so big, and there’s so much to do, but it takes a lot out of you.

Evie enjoyed drawing self-portraits:

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And we all enjoyed reproducing “American Gothic“:

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Sorry Rachael and Matt, I think Sara and Ollie did it best:

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Probably the most exciting thing for me was getting a chance to play Carcassonne. This is a board game that I have heard a lot about, but never had a chance to play. I have to say, it lived up to the hype. There is a lot of strategy, and I can see that each game would be a little bit different. It has a lot of things in common with other games that I like, with no obvious downsides (and you can play with only 2 players!). Plus, I won, so definitely that game is awesome.

The other best part was the awesome chocolate covered cherries Rachael made for me, which were the best I’ve ever eaten, homemade or otherwise. Therefore, I promptly forgot them in her refrigerator.

Evie found time to absolutely massacre Rachael in checkers, and we played a lot of hide and seek (and lots of hide Luna’s treat).

We took a leisurely Monday getting home, with several stops along the way including a stop at Purdue. The kids were pretty excited to see where Sara and I met, lived, and got married, and I enjoyed my trip to the APO office. I’m not sure why I get such a kick out of dropping in there, but it’s fun to see a place where I spent a lot of time, and to look at all the names and pictures of people I haven’t seen in a long time. It sure helps to have a friend of yours be the one in charge of the yearly scrapbook when we were pledging. Sara and I are well represented. And yes, I bragged to my kids about all the plaques with my name on them. (And yes Nathan, I showed them how you won the Friendship Award 6 times, no need to bring it up again in the comments!)

We even had a chance to stop in at Triple XXX and introduce Oliver to the Purvis burger:

February 006

Cheeseburger + Peanut butter = Happy Ollie

The only black mark on our trip was totally our fault. We 1) forgot Ollie’s face steroids, and 2) didn’t bring Evie’s inhaler. This directly resulted in Oliver having a massive, itchy, sore face eczema outbreak, and Evie developing a reoccurring wheeze and cough. And with Evie having breathing trouble, this also lead to a pretty rough night of sleep for the 4 of us, which never helps anything. Sara even asked me if she thought we should bring the inhaler, and I said no. Lesson learned. The problem is that, even with the proper medicine at home, if you don’t nip these problems in the bud, it takes some time to get them back under control.

All in all a good trip though; hopefully Rachael and Matt enjoyed hosting us as much as we enjoyed being there (probably doubtful).