Fun Stuff

Milestones

/ Shane / 1 Comment

Today is Evie’s 9 month “birthday” which I think is a significant milestone because it means she has now been out as long as she was in!  Speaking of milestones, our realtor called yesteday to remind us it was the 1 year anniversary of our closing on our condo.  I can’t believe that was a year ago, but on the other hand, it seems like it was a lot longer than that!  So much has happened since then.

Tomorrow we are planning to get our garden into shape, assuming the weather holds.  It is covered with grass and weeds, so we need to rip all of that up and loosen up all the dirt, and then plant some seeds.  We will buy some of the other things that require plants (tomatoes, green peppers) later.

Here is a physics based puzzle type game.  You have to draw shapes and stuff that are then affected by physics to move a ball to a flag.  It can get complicated where you make fixed mounting points and then hinges, etc.  It was interesting for a while but I didn’t get very far before I gave up.  Physics is hard! 😦

Finally, I will leave you with this.  You know how with Snakes on a Plane you knew everything there was to know about the movie based on he title?  Well, there is a movie scheduled to be released this year named Zombie Strippers!  (the exclamation point is part of the title) What more could you possibly need to know?

Velociraptors, the next great scourge on humanity

/ Shane / 1 Comment

While I spend most of my days worrying about and preparing for the Zombie Apocolypse, we musn’t forget there are many other dangers out there.  Luckily, there are people out there monitoring these other threats such as Humans United Against Robots (HUAR).  But people have mostly forgotten one major threat revealed to us back in 1993; Velociraptors.  They are much faster and craftier than zombies, but luckily there are much fewer of them.  Still, they should be taken seriously and I was pleasantly surprised to discover there are people out there still worrying about their activity.

So, just in case we have any projectionists out there in the audience, here is a comprehensive training video for projectionists in the event of velociraptor attack.  I apologize for the profanity, but you know how projectionists are.  And Canadian projectionists at that!

So, to summarize, don’t forget your Allen key.

What I’m doing

/ Shane / 2 Comments

What I’m watching:

Juno is a really funny, fantastic movie.  Ellen Page is great and really makes the movie.  She is snarky and sarcastic but although I’ve heard complaints otherwise, I didn’t think she was so over the top as to not be believable.  Maybe I’ve just known some really awesome people and the complainers only know boring people.  Anyway, the movie is well written, the soundtrack is quirky, and I would recommend it to anybody.

What I’m reading:

Although I don’t usually stray far from my typical genres (fantasy, sci-fi, horror) I’m really digging this book for its historical aspects.  Of course I am biased since I not only live in Chicago, but specifically in an area that would have been on the grounds of the World’s Columbian Exposition.  Still, it was such an amazing time to be an American (and specifically a Chicagoan) that you can’t help being swept up in it.  I honestly was disappointed when a chapter about the serial killer came up…I was like, “No no, tell me more awesome stuff that was invented for the fair!”  As you read the story you realize what a spectacle it really must have been considering how much stuff is still common knowledge to us 125 years later!

What I’m listening to:

That “quirky soundtrack” mentioned above is due mostly to Kimya Dawson who has about half the songs on the soundtrack (counting Antsy Pants and Moldy Peaches songs).  Although they take some getting used to, her songs get majorly stuck in your head.  So go check her out, especially this song about her anxiety when her baby wasn’t moving.

And if all of that doesn’t keep me busy enough, I can go sign up to play Fantasy Movie Mogul.  Kind of like Fantasy Football, but instead you try to pick movies that will do well in real life.

P.S.  Brother Love asked ME for a friend request on myspace, not the other way around.  How awesome is that??  Totally made my day, even if it is promotional.  Brother Love Rocks AOW!  Summertime baby!

What kind of American English do you Speak?

/ Shane / 5 Comments

Seems fairly accurate…

Your Linguistic Profile:
65% General American English

20% Upper Midwestern
5% Midwestern
5% Yankee
0% Dixie

 

 

City Babies and Brain Reprogramming

/ Shane / 1 Comment

Wow, hello allergies!  Rough couple of days.

Evie is crawling like a maniac now.  She can move a lot faster than you think and she has been giving us a preview of how difficult this next period is going to be.  She isn’t happy sitting still and she gets into stuff that you didn’t even know was there.  She can also go from lying down to sitting up no problem now.  The only problem she has is that she crawls over to something but then when she sits up she is really far away from whatever she was interested in.  She’s still working on that one.

I realized that in her 8 months of life she has never actually touched grass (sure is different growing up in the city!) so last weekend we took her over to the Midway.  She was NOT thrilled!  I thought she would be very interested since it would be a new experience, but she did not like touching the grass.  She tried to hold herself up on her hands and toes and then just froze so she would be touching the grass as little as possible.  She wouldn’t move or in any way let her legs come in contact with the ground.  When Sara tried to help her stand she just picked up her feet so they wouldn’t touch!  I think she would have liked it, but she was just shocked at how different it was.  At the end she was kind of running her fingers through the grass a little bit.  I gave her a flower and she wouldn’t let go of it for anything, but on the way home she broke the head off and then she was done with it.  Maybe next time it won’t be so alien and she can crawl around some.

Okay, here‘s an old link I’ve been saving since Jan. ’07.  Maybe you’ve already seen it.  Maybe you saw it so long ago its retro.  I had to try it out before posting it and then once I did I never got around to actually linking to it.  Supposedly you are can listen to this special sound which is supposed to adjust your brainwaves to wake you up.  I tried it with an open mind, but I don’t think it really works.  I felt maybe a little more awake at the end of it, but it was most likely due to a placebo effect and/or the fact that I might have felt more awake after 20 minutes even if I had done nothing.  But let me know if you think it works, maybe I’ll have to give it another try.