My So Called Life

Halloweeny Weekend

/ Shane / 4 Comments

On Friday, Evie and I really got into the Halloween spirit. We got out the Halloween decorations and decorated the whole house, including a Halloween tablecloth that only covers like 75% of the table. We also made Halloween sugar cookies, shaped like bats, cats, pumpkins and Frankensteins. This pretty much wrapped up the whole day since we had to make the dough in the morning, the cookies around lunch and then make and use the frosting in the afternoon.

Evie was already impatient for Halloween, and this didn’t help much. She has been asking multiple times per day, “Is it Halloween yet?” We tried to get some supplies for her costume over the weekend, but we had some pretty bad luck. We also haven’t carved the pumpkins yet because I was worried they wouldn’t last until Halloween. So we still have some Halloweenin’ to do before the big event.

The other news of the weekend was the big used book sale in our neighborhood. We managed to nab 55 children’s books for the grand total of $19! (Actually, it was even better when you consider it was 52 books for $13, the last 3 books being $2 each) We haven’t even gotten a chance to read them all yet.

The grand prize as far as Evie was concerned was a big, hardcover Curious George collection, with about 7 of the original stories in there. I am sure they were the original ones because they contain many things that would no longer be appropriate for kids books, such as George smoking a relaxing pipe, or George getting high by huffing ether and then passing out. I am not kidding, that is in there! I have to say though, those original stories are so much better than the newer, more commercialized ones, even if they are a little non-PC.

So Evie demanded this book as soon as we got home and continued to demand more Curious George all the way through. The result was that I read all 400 pages or so straight through as she sat enthralled for about an hour and a half, after which she demanded more. I have no doubt that she would have sat through it again, but my voice was getting raspy and my throat was sore.  “Guess she’s ready for chapter books,” said Sara. I mean, she is 2 after all.

This seems like a Monday post

/ Shane / Leave a comment

Evie: “Mommy, which season is your favorite?”
Sara (with a confused look): “…Season 2?”
Shane: ::laughing::
Sara: “Ooooh, spring! I couldn’t figure out what she meant, the only other answer I could think of was ‘pepper’!”

In a bit of shameless self-promotion, you can go over and check out Alexis’ post about their recent visit. Her post is much nicer than mine, including nice pictures. Okay, it’s sort of narcissistic, but I make this promise to you: I will link to any blogger’s post that says nice things about me or shows nice pictures of my daughter (as long as they don’t also say horrible, unrelated things in the post). That’s just how I roll.

I mentioned before about Evie’s interesting take on telling time. Every morning, before we can eat breakfast, Evie makes me put on her “watch” so she can look at it, see it is time for breakfast, and then take it off. I think she has her units messed up, because lately she’s been telling the time as, “Quarter past pounds”.

I thought I said before (but I couldn’t find it to link to it) that when you ask Evie how she slept, (not how long) she says, “30 hours”. I think she has gotten the idea somehow that “30 hours” is a phrase that is synonymous with a lot, because she told Sara, “I love you 30 hours. That’s how much I love you mommy.”

She has been telling Sara in the morning that, “I was in a tent and I zipped it up and then I slept and then I came back here.” So if you see a tiny form sneaking out the bedroom window, she’s probably just off to her nightly camping trip.

I was trying to get Evie to give me Echo, for no better reason than she didn’t want to give it to me. I kept demanding and she kept saying no, until finally she said, “I am not giving up daddy! That’s the truth!”

Sara: “What did you and daddy have for supper?”
Evie: “Bacon.”
Sara: “What else did you have besides bacon?”
Evie: “Bacon. And more bacon. And more bacon…”

People are turning 30

/ Shane / 1 Comment

A friend of mine from back home was having a birthday party and, since we didn’t have any plans, we decided “why not?” and hit the road. It also gave us a good excuse to grab some pumpkins from my dad’s house. Unfortunately my mom wasn’t home, but it kind of worked out for a relaxing weekend.

Despite the fact that it was really cold outside and we were little  under dressed, we had a great time. Evie in particular was going a mile a minute. She refused to come in from outside, forcing Sara or I to run around after her in the cold outside. She did not feel the cold at all, saying “I do NOT need to warm up!”

If you ask Evie what her favorite part was, she’ll say, “Cake!” Quite frankly, I can’t blame her. The frosting was some of the most delicious cake frosting I have ever eaten. It was fun to see old friends I haven’t seen in a while, but unfortunately, none of them brought their kids! So Evie was the only one.

There was still plenty to keep her occupied, most obviously, feeding the fish. They have a pond and the fish are trained to eat bread, in the scariest possible fashion. They had bread available, so we walked out onto the dock. “Hey, there’s a fish!” I said. Then I sort of looked at the wider picture in a horror movie style camera pan, and I realized that there were a lot of fish. All sitting in the water, silent and motionless, waiting in lines like soldiers. Very creepy. We started to throw little pieces of the bread and the water turned into a bubbling, seething, piranha-style mass. Soon the big fish came in from the deep, tossing the smaller fish out of the way and sometimes jumping out of the water to nab one out of the air. “You swim in this??” we asked incredulously. It looked like every water based horror movie I have ever seen. Evie loved it, couldn’t get enough, even though she mostly dropped her bread close to the dock where it was too shallow for the fish to get.

The fun didn’t stop with the fish either. Evie was obsessed with their golf cart, so they let Sara and me take her for a ride. We ended up by the highway teaching Evie to pump her arm and get semi’s to honk. We swung on a porch swing by a fire and ate smores looking out over the lake. We also ate some good food (other than the cake).

It wasn’t a perfect day, however. Shortly after we got to the party, we got a call from our security service saying our alarm was going off at home. Obviously this was a little scary because we were far, far from home. They sent the police and I never heard back from them. They told me they would call back if there was anything to report, so hypothetically the fact that they didn’t call meant there was nothing to see. In practice though, I would rather have heard, even if they didn’t find anything! Obviously nobody broke into our house, or else I would have run immediately to the computer and blogged it of course. But it was a little nerve wracking to come home a few days later, not knowing what we would find. Chances are Nala set it off (even though she never has before) and if that was the case, I’m sure it scared the crap out of her enough that she won’t do it again.

Brett Favre vs. the Green Bay Packers

/ Shane / 1 Comment

I think I do a pretty good job about not talking about football on this blog, but I would be remiss if I failed to mention the big game last night. Of course I am referring to Brett Favre playing against the team he played for for 15 years.

I think I’ve made my feelings on the whole Favre thing pretty well known, so I won’t go into all that again. But I sure was excited about this game. I was listening to some of the pre-game coverage on the radio in the morning and I literally got chills. I even bumped all of our Monday night shows off the TiVo in anticipation.

In regards to all the hype, I’ve noticed that some people seem to have their facts a little mixed up. I kind of think they know that and did it on purpose to make it a better story. But let’s be quite clear – the Packers did not run Brett Favre out of town. The Packers begged him to come back. The disagreement was over when exactly Favre was going to decide if he was going to play or retire. Remember every football fan in the universe? You were all pretty annoyed with that too. I’ve even heard McCarthy’s now famous “that train has left the station” quote used out of context to imply that he was referring to Favre’s ability. So it’s a good story to pretend like the Packers told Favre, “You’re washed up, we don’t want you anymore!” but that’s not really how it went down.

So the actual game began and I was very excited. Everything quickly went downhill. The Packers put the “offensive” in “offensive line”, taking 8 sacks. They had many, many opportunities in the red zone that they didn’t convert. Overall, however, with the exception of the o-line, they played pretty well. They contained the best RB in the NFL. They moved the ball fairly easily. In fact, between the two, I think Rodgers might have played better than Favre, considering he was scrambling for his life the entire night. At the end of the day, Minnesota was just clearly the better team in almost every aspect, so the fact that they managed to pull within a touchdown at the end was quite impressive.

Watching Favre play against the Packers was not nearly as painful as I thought it would be. In fact, I felt really good for him when they pointed out that Favre became the first person to beat every team in the NFL (obviously he had never beaten the Packers before). I felt good about that, the same way I felt when he got most wins, most yards, and most touchdowns. Like somehow I was a part of that. And quite frankly, I think I am! I might not have caught any passes, but don’t tell me all the positive vibes I’ve sent his way for 15 years didn’t amount to something cosmically.

But man-oh-man did I want the Packers to beat him! Still, everyone is saying, “Oh, Favre really showed them!” I don’t see it that way. The only thing you can compare Favre to is Aaron Rodgers, because that is the only consideration you have if you’re thinking about whether you need to appease Favre or not. And I think anybody watching that game could see that Rodgers is a pretty good QB. The Vikings’ o-line being better than the Packer’s o-line has nothing to do with it.

Every great football unit needs a great nickname. So, in the spirit of the “Gang Green” of the late 80’s Eagles, the “Steel Curtain” of the 70’s Steelers, or the “Purple People Eaters” of the 70’s Vikings, I am now nicknaming the Packer’s offensive line the “Wet Napkins“. Hopefully this new nickname will give them something to aspire to.

The Fracus

/ Shane / 3 Comments

On Friday I wrote a post about the Olympics and Chicago. It went live at 10:49 a.m., as soon as I heard the announcement. I had actually written the post the night before, and I was so sure Chicago was going to be awarded, that I wrote the whole thing as, “Yay, we did it!” So I had to totally re-do the post that morning.

At 11:54 I was notified that my post was promoted to the top story on wordpress.com, where it stayed for the rest of the day as the only Olympic related post. I was pretty excited about this. Too bad I had just completed my important moments in blogging timeline post! As expected, the post proceeded to blow up, dwarfing all of my previous high traffic numbers. I had over 1,500 hits on my blog that day (my previous high was like 150) and around 22 comments on the post, many of them from Brazil (and some not in English!) It remained on the front page Saturday and Sunday, netting me another 28 comments and 1,400 hits and 20 comments and 1,300 hits respectively. So, in three days, my blog had over 4,303 people visit, and that post received 70 comments.

I’m not going to lie, it was a lot of fun. I couldn’t stop compulsively checking it all weekend. I would go away for a few minutes and when I came back, there would be more comments. I was trying to approve the comments as fast as possible to keep the discussion going. It’s kind of funny because I didn’t really put any more time and effort into that post than any of my other posts. So it is kind of interesting to read all of the comments and really analyze that post in detail. I’m guessing my post was picked because it is somewhat informative, with a hometown view, without being critical or nasty. I wonder how much thought they put into picking posts for the front page. It’s probably totally random. 🙂

Anyway, in order to capitalize on the traffic, I put posts up for Saturday and Sunday as well. Many people who stopped did go and check out the next post back, to see if there was anything interesting. What post was it? The Toot Hole. <sarcasm>Lovely. I couldn’t have picked a better one if I tried, that’s exactly the post I would want the world to read. </sarcasm>

As of today the post is still on the front page, though it’s not the top post anymore, moving down 7 spots. I don’t know how often they change it, but it seems like it might be up there for a couple of more days. As much fun as it was to constantly see the stats going up, I don’t exactly feel like personally accomplished. After all, it was more of a “right place at the right time” kind of thing than a “my blog is awesome and deserved it” kind of thing. Still, I guess you make your own luck to some degree, and if you put enough stuff out there, something’s bound to catch on.

So, if you were wondering what was going on here over the weekend, now you know. And knowing is half the battle. The other half is getting your lazy keister off the couch. If only G.I. Joe would have had 10 more seconds each week to explain the second half of the battle, they could have changed the outlook of an entire generation.