Pickle Pops – Maybe I should try some after all

/ Shane / 8 Comments

Okay, I like pickles.  I would go so far as to say I *love* pickles.  But nonetheless, they seem disgusting to me in frozen form and I’m not sure how I feel about them being in kids lunches.  Call me old fashioned, but why not just give them a regular old pickle?  But I definitely think getting away from the name “Pickle Sickle” was a good move.

That link was courtesy of InteractiveReader, and speaking of which, this quiz is courtesy of her boyfriend, whom I am currently blogstalking.  You know, to make sure he’s right for her and stuff.  It’s practically a duty.  I’m sure she would ask me to do it herself, but that would be impolite.

I am Rickets. Hear your bones go boing.
Which Horrible Affliction are you?
A Rum and Monkey disease.

I feel pretty good about Rickets.  It feels kind of old world and dignified, as diseases go.  Any disease with the tagline “Hear your bones go boing” can’t really be all that bad.  Plus, since it is almost wiped out in the 1st world, it sort of has a nostalgia factor.

Today marks the first day that anybody pulled over to tell us how adorable Evie is.  We were walking back from the garden and they just stopped their car in the street to tell us.  So perhaps I am not just being a proud pappa in thinking she is indeed adorable!

Commander Mark

/ Shane / 9 Comments

Today’s post is dedicated to Commander Mark Kistler. 

He’s like pretty much the awesomest man ever.  I used to watch his shows when I was little, like The Secret City and The Draw Squad.  That was back when he was Commander Mark and he wore the jump suit with the pencils and everything.  In fact, he even came to my school!  I still have the drawings I made that day.  Also, he would have this enormous drawing and at the end of every episode he would add on a little bit to it.  I took to doing that also and I think I still have that somewhere as well.  Later, when I was about in middle school, I would hurry home to watch the Imagination Station.  He lost the jump suit and all by then, but everything else in the show was pretty much the same.  We still drew like ninjas (“Hiiiiii draw-draw-draw”) and learned how to shade (“shade, shade shade…we love to shade”) and draw in 3D.  Every drawing somehow involved a guy leaning out of a space ship to hand you a twinkie with “action lines” to show he was waving.

Anyway, I forget what made me think of him today, but he was definitely a highlight of my childhood.  Looks like he’s still out there and still doing school assemblies, God love him.  If I were in charge of a school I would have him out so fast his head would spin!

The Incident

/ Shane / 4 Comments

So we had our first “incident” with Evie the other day.  She was trying to stand up in the bathtub (no matter how many times I try to tell her…) and her feet slipped out from under her and she came down chin first on the side.  I quickly picked her up to comfort her, but I could tell it was a bad one.  She did the thing where she is so upset that she cries out all of her breath and then there is a long silence due to the fact that she is so upset she can’t breathe in, followed by a huge intake of breath and then the loudest scream she can manage.  You can judge how upset she is / how loud the scream is going to be based on how long the preceding silence was.  This one was so long that I tried reminding her to breathe, fearing that she was so upset she would forget to.  And when she let that one out, boy howdy it was a howler.  Sara didn’t come in because usually at that time of night when Evie is already tired, if Evie sees Sara and then Sara leaves, Evie can’t handle it.  So I was holding Evie and I looked down and saw that the shoulder of my shirt where her head was resting was bright crimson with blood.  I said, “Sara, I need you” in what I thought was a very calm voice but Sara later said that she could tell by my tone there would be blood (and not in the oil discovery, I drink your milkshake kind of way).  She had a lot of blood dripping out of her mouth and she wouldn’t let us see, but I’m guessing that her two teeth on the bottom cut her gums on the top.

Anyway, she recovered quickly and it didn’t require going to the doctor or anything, but it was still interesting.

In other news, I watched The Notebook the other day.  Between that and the cupcake place, I fear I am becoming a stereotype.
(Note that I would have loved to just embed a youtube video, but apparently NBC made sure none where out there.  Enjoy that commercial!)

One last thing, the folks over at Improv Everywhere have spun off a blog to coordinate all of the mayhem ensuing across the globe.  So go over to Urban Prankster to keep abreast of all the best “scenes” and perhaps participate if one comes up near you.

Business Class

/ Shane / Leave a comment

And by business class, I mean the measure of my character, not the mode by which I traveled.

Today I had to fly to Washington D.C. to give a demo and then flew back the same day, all of this in a suit and tie.  I felt very important and very professional very hmm hmm hmm and very awesome.  The only thing I was missing was a blackberry that I could use to importantly send text messages and other business missives such as, “We’re here” “Yep, we just landed” “I’ll let you know when I get off” like the person sitting next to me where I could read over his shoulder.  But if I hadn’t been able to read I would have thought he was doing important business stuff, especially since he had to get right on it the minute the plane was on the ground.

The only bad thing was that I had to get up at 3:30 in the morning and I didn’t sleep on the plane.  So I should probably go to bed, huh?

Happy Father’s Day

/ Shane / 2 Comments

In honor of my very first Father’s Day ever, Sara was gracious enough to sleep in and let me spend some very early quality time with my daughter!

Evie got me a frame and some paper and some special non-toxic baby finger paints to make me a picture to hang in the dining room.  We haven’t made it yet, I’m not sure when we’re going to.  Sara bought me a wall clock.  I’m not quite sure where to hang it yet since it is too nice to go in any of the rooms that currently don’t have clocks.  A clock might seem like a strange present, but you have to understand that I love clocks.  I couldn’t even tell you why.  Big huge wall clocks, like this:

I don’t know what it is about clocks exactly, but I just like them and I always look at them at Target or where ever (for some reason Target has good clocks) and it was a good present.  One time we wnt in a clock store and Sara practically had to drag me out.

Anyway, since it’s Father’s Day and all, here is a really good game to waste some time on.  It is a 2D / Flash version of the console game Portal.  I know Meg was the first person to tell me that I personally would really like Portal, but I have since heard from many sources that it is a really good game.  Since I don’t have an XBox 360, I guess I will have to settle for the Flash version.  I haven’t beaten it yet, but I’m somewhere in the 30s.