My So Called Life

One Nusiance Cat for Sale

/ Shane / 10 Comments

I am not very happy with the cat.

Just with her general day-to-day activities, the cat always hovers just below my annoyance threshold. I’m talking about the way she constantly begs for food, the way she steals your seat even if you’re only going to be gone for 1 microsecond, the way she’s constantly pestering you for attention, or the way she sometimes gets in a “I’m going to eat your arm when you’re not expecting it” mood.  But most specifically, the problem is the way she wakes Evie up every morning by intentionally meowing outside her door at 5 a.m. until she wakes up. At least once  a day that cat causes me to grit my teeth. Literally grit my teeth.

So, the cat is already pushing its limits with me on a daily basis and any extra thing, any minor infraction, just pushes me over the top. This was not a minor infraction. What happened was, the litter box is in the downstairs bathroom, hidden discretely behind a curtain. The bathroom upstairs has the same layout as the downstairs bathroom, but we hadn’t installed the curtain because we used to use that area as a diaper changing station. So when I installed the curtain, Nala said, “Hey! Good on ya! I hate walking all the way downstairs for my wonderfully private bathroom!” (No, she did, I actually heard her say that)(Actually, I wish I had, it could have saved me from what came next)

But it is even worse than you are imagining. Because of the curtain to contain the smell, it took a while for us to notice. Because the dirty diaper bin is behind the curtain, when we did start noticing a smell, we didn’t think too much of it. And because Nala was using A BAG OF EVIE’S BATH TOYS as a potty, the smell was also somewhat contained. So when I finally did get curious enough to investigate, I discovered probably a weeks worth of bathroom usage covering the floor and pouring out of a bag of my daughter’s toys.

If you don’t have a cat, rest assured that there is something particularly awful about the smell of cat urine. It claws into your brain and won’t let go. I have tried every chemical we have to get rid of the smell, and it is still there. And this wasn’t helped by the fact that after I would get done cleaning it, I would open the curtain up for it to dry out and Nala would help herself to the bathroom again. You see, once a cat decides where it wants to go to the bathroom, you can’t convince them otherwise.

Let me ask you, what value does a cat add? We used to use her as our main form of guest entertainment, but we have a kid for that now. What does a cat do that’s so fantastic that I have to take a shower in urine smell every morning? How does it balance out?

Why do I have to put up with this??

Young Guns 1 vs Young Guns 2

/ Shane / 7 Comments

There was a fine movie franchise at the end of the ’80s known as Young Guns, about the life and times of Billy the Kid. I have seen these movies more times that I can count. The main actors are Emilio Estevez, Kiefer Sutherland and Lou Diamond Phillips. In addition, Young Guns I had Charlie Sheen, and Young Guns II had Christian Slater.

There has been some debate recently about which of these two movies are better. I had mostly maintained that Young Guns II was better, but, as I’ve grown older, I’ve been kind of leaning towards Young Guns I.  So obviously, the only way to settle this is with a poll. I don’t want to sway people too much one way or the other, but I will provide you with some good parts to jog your memory:

Young Guns I:

The scene where they are all on peyote is hilarious. “Did you guys see the size of that chicken?”

The end of the movie when they are surrounded in the house is just plain awesome.
“Hey, Peppin. I see you got Charley Crawford down there with you.”
“Yeah, that’s right, Bonney. We got a whole -”
[Billy leans out the window and shoots Crawford]
“Hey, Peppin. Charley Crawford’s not with you anymore.”

One thing I don’t like about this movie is the whole storyline with Doc and that girl.

Young Guns II:

Blaze of Glory by Bon Jovi, ’nuff said.

I liked Christian Slater’s character (Arkansas Dave Rudabaugh), and I liked the interplay between him and Billy better than interaction between Billy and Charlie Sheen in YGI.

The part where Dave stabs Chavez through the arm and then Chavez says, “You want your knife back?”

The whole storyline of Pat Garrett chasing Billy was very intriguing.

“Hello Bob!”
[Shoots Bob with a rifle that has eighteen dimes instead of bullets]
“Goodbye Bob! Best dollar eighty I ever spent.”

So, now I put you to the question:

Anybody looking for some real estate?

/ Shane / Leave a comment

Here’s a really nice house, with some nice neighbors. I’d go so far as to say you will never find better neighbors…the Obamas. Of course, you can’t actually go and see the house or make a bid until you have been vetted by the secret service. In fact, I can attest that you can’t even get onto the street to see the “for sale” sign.

You can see the floor plans here. As you can see, the current configuration is only for 8 bedrooms, 5 baths, but there is plenty of room to expand that. The entire bottom floor is just storage room (their laundry room is significantly bigger than their kitchen). I think you could probably get 12 bedrooms out of that. So this would be a pretty expensive house *without* taking the house next door into account.

Unfortunately, they didn’t set an asking price. But, considering they have an entire “sales team” to handle the requests, I think it is safe to say it will be pricey (even though they say it is a “fixer upper”). The interesting thing is that they paid only $35,000 for it in 1973. You might say, “But $35k meant something different in 1973. That was actually a lot of money!” Well, it was more than it is now, but according to the calculation Sara looked up, $35,000.00 in 1973 had about the same buying power as $173,130.59 in 2009. And that house would probably be over $3 million now, even without the president.

But I digress. Buy the house and you’ll be pretty close to some other nice neighbors. I might even let you invite me over for a beer summit (as long as, you know, you don’t actually expect me to drink beer).

Misc.

/ Shane / 4 Comments

I just have a lot of random miscellany to update on, so here you go, in no particular order:

Some Norwegians came to visit. Meg, I really appreciate the effort you put into keeping in touch with me. I can’t count the number of friends that I’ve regrettably lost contact with since college. And giving me bacon / cheese popcorn doesn’t hurt either (although it wasn’t all that bacony, mostly just tasted like cheese popcorn).

Evie finally learned how to jump on Friday. She’s a little behind schedule on that one, so I was working on it with her. I’d like to think that my excellent advice to “put your feet together, bend your knees, and push with your toes” are what put her over the top. She’s going through a bit of a trying phase at the moment, so, after our initial giggling and hugging fit, the fact that we wanted her to jump again pretty much guaranteed she wouldn’t. She did jump some more on Sunday though.

Everyone was sick, back to back. It took each of us about 4 days to shake it, so we had a rough patch for about 12 days.

American History X, good movie!  Really good! Has anyone seen it? Oh yeah, Sara and I were the last people on earth who hadn’t.

We finally checked out the Harry Potter exhibit at the MSI. It was pretty cool, and well done, but not exactly what I expected. It’s pretty much a tour through a bunch of movie props. Since it was in the museum of SCIENCE and INDUSTRY, I kind of thought it would be like explaining about the special effects, or like “real life invisibility” exhibits or something. Not just, “Here’s the clothes Ron wore in this scene…” Also, our scheduled time was before the museum opened, which was pretty confusing to begin with, but they had a lot of trouble getting people lined up for the right times and stuff. You’d think for the money they’re pulling down, they could have invested in a couple of signs or something. Still, it was fun. I can’t say if it was worth the price of admission or not, since it was free for us.

Football is officially underway, and what better way to start the season than to beat the Bears? And the best part? I get the double win in the morning when I get to ride to work and listen to Chicago sports talk radio rehash the game!

We had fun at the 57th Street Children’s Book Festival over the weekend. Every year that we go, Evie enjoys it a little bit more as she gets old enough to appreciate the events. We listened to a story teller, made a crown, dug for pirate treasure, attended a music class, watched a dance troupe, painted and glued a paper box, and danced to some music (including jumping on some bubble wrap). Side note, Sara said, “Jeeze, there sure are a lot of pirate themed things here.” When will people realize, it is not me who is obsessed with pirates, but rather all rational human beings who are obsessed with pirates when confronted with their awesomeness.

Finally, the other day I opened the back door to discover an enormous spider web over the opening, trapping us inside. Right in the middle of the web, directly at eye level, sat Lillith the spider queen, bigger’n a quarter. I quickly slammed the door shut before she could spray venom in my eyes. Now I ask you, what could that mean with the web directly across the door opening like that, other than this enormous spider was trying to catch humans? Finally I took it out with a broom, shrieking and cursing the whole time. The spider sat for a while on the porch, memorizing my face before slowly sauntering under a potted plant. I could have squished her with the broom (at least so I told myself…that was a big spider) but do I really need the wrath of all the spiders in the world for killing their queen? No sir, I do not. So I let her go and the next day she had spun her human trap over Evie’s chair on the porch. That’s right, I put a little fear into her and she decided to try for smaller prey. Me 1, spider queen 0.

Camping

/ Shane / 3 Comments

Over the weekend we went camping and it was fantastic. Beautiful, perfect weather every day. We had lots of family, lots of guitar playing, some playing on the beach and some of the best, most creative food I have ever had camping.

In years past, we had one person buy all the food and everybody paid them. However, that puts entirely too much responsibility on one person, both to buy, plan, and transport all of the food, but it also makes them the defacto food master to make all the meals as well. So instead, we came up with a new scheme that I think makes a lot more sense. Every person is assigned one meal, to do with what they wish. We gave some suggestions so that people wouldn’t have overlapping meals, but other than that it was fair game. This worked out well for a few reasons. First, when people were divying up the money last year, it seemed like a lot of money for food. Now, they are spending the same amount of money, but it doesn’t seem like it. I don’t know if that made sense or not. Second, it forces everyone to do the work of at least one meal. Third, it is still a lot easier than planning food for yourself for the whole week. You only have to think about one meal, and once that’s out of the way, you’re off the hook. Finally, as a side effect of #3, because people only have to focus their energies on one meal, they can come up with some fantastic stuff.

Case in point, one morning for breakfast we had fresh doughnuts.

doughnuts

This was followed later for lunch by fresh french fries.

french fries

Both cases involved using a dutch oven as a deep fryer; loading it up with oil and heating that oil in the coals. The doughnuts were then rolled in either sugar or powdered sugar. Seriously, this was straight out of “Dutch Oven Cookin’ with Cee Dub“! To be able to eat food like that while camping was amazing. The doughnuts in particular were a big hit; we consumed 60 of them.

Most of the rest of the food was pretty standard, however, that wasn’t the only campfire food experiment. There was also an incident involving jiffy pop extended over the flames on the top of a shovel, with gloves to protect hands. The popcorn came out fine, but it didn’t work quite as well as the one actually cooked over the stove. I also used some brilliant pudgie pie makers that were double wide, enabling you to cook two at the same time.

As for Evie, she greatly improved her steering ability with the tricycle. She can at least keep it going in the direction she wants, although it is no straight line. We also had a lot of fun inventing games to play with the parachute. Evie enjoyed it the most, but I think the rest of the campers enjoyed it the second most. It’s not everyday you see grown adults whooping and hollering and skipping to their loo (oh yes, there is blackmail video).

We also hit up New Buffalo’s legendary restaurant Redamaks, something that I’ve longed to do for years after seeing countless billboards. The result? It was actually quite excellent. As Sara said, “I’ve never seen a menu with so much fried stuff.” It was a little strange with the paper plates and plastic silverware, but the food was exactly what I needed at that moment.

Finally, what would a camping trip be without some jowling? Jowling is when you shake your head back and forth with your lower jaw sort of hanging loose, and then have somebody snap a picture. This leaves your face in all sorts of weird positions, like you have a crooked face, or a palsy of some sort, or got punched by an invisible prize fighter. For example…

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