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.

Circular Reasoning

/ Shane / 5 Comments

From time to time a puzzle catches my eye and those posts always seem to be popular posts. So here’s another one for you, From the NY Times: Circular Reasoning.

It’s sort of like a crossword puzzle in the sense that each answer feeds into the next, so looking at the clues before and after can help. The hard part is that the clues have so many parts, that even if you get one piece of the clue, it doesn’t mean you’ll get an answer. Here’s an example:

A song with that candy in the title is closely identified with a 1930s actress who later became an American ambassador in Africa. The northern neighbor of the country where she was posted has a two-word name. What’s the second word?

It’s probably not so much what you know, but what you can look up (so Barb, I think you’ll like this one)

So far, I have three answers.

Evie Sayings

/ Shane / 4 Comments

“See you soon, you crocodile!”

Evie said, “I’m a radio.” “Who said that?” asked Sara. “Cee Cee,” Evie replied glumly. “Again.” For the record, she is a radio; she breaks into song constantly.

“I watch Super Readers. Mommy and Daddy watch Google readers.” She’s right again; I do spend a lot of time looking at Google reader.

“…then they spelled rabbit.”
“Do you know how to spell rabbit?”
“I think so…”
“How do you spell it?”
“With letters.”

“We did many fun things, for example, we went to the park!” Sara and I were rolling about this one, the “for example” was just too much.

Evie loves to talk. Talk and talk and talk. There’s really no question where she gets it from, since I’m the same way, so it doesn’t really bother me. But as Sara said, “I was home with her the other day and I think she did 80% of the talking.”

She loves to make up stories. She will go on for hours about the pink dragon with yellow and blue polka dots that lives in the basement and eats broccoli, or what Evie did on the day she visited her imaginary friend Shu Shi‘s house (yes, the name has evolved a little bit) including what they ate for dinner, what Shu Shi’s house looks like, where they went, who said what, what they did, etc.

I could just sit and listen to her talk forever, it never gets old to me. She’s just so creative and imaginative and she always surprises you with an adult turn of phrase. There are probably 10 things a day I wish I could remember. I would have a lot more of these posts if I just followed her around with a pen and paper.

11 years

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Jay Lake had a post the other day that really sort of startled me. He says:

I got serious about writing, as in regular workshop attendance and story submittals, in 1990. I sold my first short story in 2001. That’s eleven years of wandering in the wilderness that all aspiring writers emerge from, working my tail off, collecting my rejections and trying, trying, trying to get better. Add to that my first small press novel sale in 2004, my first trade press novel sale in 2005, and you can see my arc is years-long.

Why is that startling? After all, that’s basically the same story that every author has. It is startling because Jay Lake is a guy who’s A) writes really, really fast, and B) is held up as a super talented up-and-comer, a new guy to the business whose career is really taking off. From the point of view that he’s only been making sales for 8 years, he is a new comer. From the point of view that he wrote for 11 years before making a sale…he’s been around as long as everybody else.

And I ain’t no Jay Lake.

It doesn’t really change anything, in fact, it just confirms what everybody in the world already told me. Right around 10 years or so seems to be a magic number. If I can hang in that long, and I think I can, then I will have earned it. If anything, this makes me more determined to get there.

But I think these posts are going to stay private for a lot longer than I was hoping they would.

Hack IKEA

/ Shane / 1 Comment

IKEA is one the greatest stores ever. If you haven’t been, you need to go. When it was easier for us to get to one, we used to go there as entertainment, or as like a tourist attraction for our out-of-town friends. Not only are the prices ridiculously low, but the interesting things they come up with, especially in terms of storage, are amazing. We have many things in our house from IKEA.

But now you can take it a step further, and check out some unauthorized IKEA hacks. Basically, people take items for sale at IKEA and treat them like raw materials, modifying them or combining them to make new, even more awesome products. Not only do the things look amazing, but the really cool part is the way people can look at something and see its potential to be something else. For example, check out the bench made from a shelving unit, or the more creative retractable coffee table. There are even speakers made from salad bowls. Here is an example of a children’s kitchen set created from one of their shelving units:

We have our own IKEA hack of a sort at our house. We were looking for a T.V. stand or cabinet, but we didn’t like the ones that they had. Instead we bought a small shelving unit, and bought doors for it. On one side we used the regular, opaque door, but on the other side we bought a glass door, so that our TiVo, DVD player, etc. could go on that side and the remote would still work. Then we threaded all the cords out a notch we made in the back. Not as inventive as some of the ones on the site, but I was still proud of it!

Tip: Scroll down to the Top Hacks category on the right to see some of the cooler stuff.