Battlestar Galactica

One day, Sara expressed the tiniest hint of an interest in watching Battlestar Galactica. I was on it like white on rice.

I realize that I am the last one to the geek party that is Battlestar Galactica. I was in serious danger of losing my nerd cred. We’re a little over half way through the series, and I have to say, it’s absolutely as good as anybody ever made it out to be. It is absolutely amazing that this was made for SyFy channel. The production value is as high as anything on a network; good acting, great plots, good special effects. I guess I have to stop thinking of SyFy as the channel that gave us such gems as Sharktopus.

We’ve been watching multiple episodes per night, every night, though we haven’t quite sunken to the level of that clip from Portlandia. I don’t know that I have that much to say about it, other than you should see it if you haven’t. But then again, you have, since I am the last person on earth to see it.

The show has the absolute lamest theme song of all time. It’s like a guy repeatedly playing one key on a piano. It’s not so much a theme song as a pianist with a nervous twitch. Also? Total old guy power. All the old guys steal the show. Edward James Olmos is the man as Admiral Adama. He has more talent in his facial crags alone than most actors have in their whole bodies. I also love Michael Hogan as Col. Tigh, who is deeply flawed, but deeply bad ass. And then here comes Dean Stockwell, clearly the awesomest Cylon. It took me awhile to stop waiting for him to say, “Saam! Ziggy says if we don’t jump now, a Cylon Basestar is going to blow us all to smithereens!” But after I got past that, he ripped it up.

So there you go. We’re watching it, and loving it (even Sara!). It just goes to show you that a good show is a good show, even if it’s science fiction. Watching this just makes me feel sad about all of the awful science fiction t.v. has tried to shove down our collective throats over the years.

Speling

Lately, Evie has been doing a lot of writing. Originally she was asking us constantly to spell things for her, but we eventually convinced her to try to figure it out on her own. Since then she has been scribbling away, writing more or less phonetically. She’s actually amazingly good at it, but sometimes it can be very difficult to figure out what she wrote. For example, she might write something like:

Im Sary For Wat Im Sary For Lav Evie Fram Evie

In addition to some questionable spelling, the letters are not always formed in the most clear manner, and she’s not big on putting spaces between words. It’s very adorable, but it is also extremely tricky: if she hands you a note, you must read it correctly, and not let on that it’s not perfect. It absolutely breaks her heart if she’s written it incorrectly. We try to explain to her how much it means to have something written by her, even if it’s wrong, and how it doesn’t really matter if something is spelled correctly, as long as the person who reads it understands it. Doesn’t matter. Poor girl.

The worst part is that she sometimes tricks you into a trap. You’ll end up spelling something to her, only to have her totally flip out when she realizes that’s not how she’s been spelling something. She’s such a perfectionist. Yesterday I accidentally spelled “love”, only to have her immediately break into tears when I didn’t spell it “lav”, the way she has been spelling it.

It would be impossible to keep up the charade forever because she never misses anything. Inevitably, she’s going to learn how to spell everything correctly, no matter what we do. But I hope we can drag it out a little bit longer. It’s just so cute, and I will be sad when its over.

Quote Monday is tired

Evie: “I took a nap today at school.”
Me: “You must have been really tired.”
Sara: “Maybe that’s because someone was waking you up all night long.”
Me: “No way, every time I went in there [to put Oliver back to sleep], she was snoring.”
Oliver: “Grandma Kathy!”
Sara: “…Grandma Kathy?”
Oliver: “Grandpa Ron!”
Sara: “Do they snore?”
Oliver: “Mmm hmm.”

Busted!

Old Man: “Are they talking yet?”

Whoo boy, are they talking. This was very funny to me. Aside from the fact that Oliver would be pretty old not to be talking, and Evie would be REALLY old not to be talking, they pretty much never stop talking. Talk about a loaded question! 🙂

::Evie crying::
Evie: “I’m not tired!”
Sara: “I didn’t say you were.”
Evie: “Well, you were thinking it!”

I never knew YouTube was so creepy

The other day, I went down a dark and scary road on YouTube.

It started innocuously enough. Someone found my blog by searching for “the dancing gnome scary”, which struck me as odd and/or hilarious. So I did my own search and found this video.

Now, this video is probably very offensive to little people. There is absolutely no reason why this person is scary. He’s just little, with some difficulty walking and dressing himself. However, the way the video is set up and the way the video is filmed, is a little creepy. I think we have been trained to believe that anything filmed with that grainy night vision is automatically creepy.

In any event, the related videos on the side of that led me down a whole cadre of frightening videos. I just couldn’t stop clicking on them. Ghost sightings, unnamed mutant creatures, demons, aliens. There’s a lot of creepy stuff out there! It can be hard to find it, because there’s also a lot of people goofing around and making silly things, but there’s plenty to see if you look.

So turn off the lights, sit back, and enjoy:

Okay Dancers…

Evie has started ballet class. Now, I haven’t had much experience with ballet, so I kind of thought it would be mostly goofing around, maybe learning a little dance routine to perform at the end. I am surprised to learn that it actually looks like ballet, even from the first day. Between almost looking graceful and the little ballerina  (excuse me, dancer) outfit, she looks so grown up!

My favorite part is the funny things they do to teach them the ballet moves, such as bird beaks and open windows, painting the ceiling with your feet, and making peanut butter and jelly sandwiches on your feet. They sound so silly, but when Evie does them you think, “Oh yeah, that actually does look like ballet when you do it.” They’re just really good descriptions.

Anyway, what you really want to see is the adorable video, so without further ado: