City Babies and Brain Reprogramming

/ Shane / 1 Comment

Wow, hello allergies!  Rough couple of days.

Evie is crawling like a maniac now.  She can move a lot faster than you think and she has been giving us a preview of how difficult this next period is going to be.  She isn’t happy sitting still and she gets into stuff that you didn’t even know was there.  She can also go from lying down to sitting up no problem now.  The only problem she has is that she crawls over to something but then when she sits up she is really far away from whatever she was interested in.  She’s still working on that one.

I realized that in her 8 months of life she has never actually touched grass (sure is different growing up in the city!) so last weekend we took her over to the Midway.  She was NOT thrilled!  I thought she would be very interested since it would be a new experience, but she did not like touching the grass.  She tried to hold herself up on her hands and toes and then just froze so she would be touching the grass as little as possible.  She wouldn’t move or in any way let her legs come in contact with the ground.  When Sara tried to help her stand she just picked up her feet so they wouldn’t touch!  I think she would have liked it, but she was just shocked at how different it was.  At the end she was kind of running her fingers through the grass a little bit.  I gave her a flower and she wouldn’t let go of it for anything, but on the way home she broke the head off and then she was done with it.  Maybe next time it won’t be so alien and she can crawl around some.

Okay, here‘s an old link I’ve been saving since Jan. ’07.  Maybe you’ve already seen it.  Maybe you saw it so long ago its retro.  I had to try it out before posting it and then once I did I never got around to actually linking to it.  Supposedly you are can listen to this special sound which is supposed to adjust your brainwaves to wake you up.  I tried it with an open mind, but I don’t think it really works.  I felt maybe a little more awake at the end of it, but it was most likely due to a placebo effect and/or the fact that I might have felt more awake after 20 minutes even if I had done nothing.  But let me know if you think it works, maybe I’ll have to give it another try.

10 Year Class Reunion

/ Shane / 1 Comment

Just in case you happen to have graduated with me (I don’t think any of them read this blog) (losers), the 10 year class reunion will be on July 26th, at 7 p.m. at Dwenger.  If you are interested I can put you in touch with the organizer.

Unfortunately, I don’t think I will be able to go because that is the weekend of my family reunion.  I’m disappointed actually because I was looking forward to going!

Incomunicado

/ Shane / 1 Comment

I will be gone to a conference next week, so I won’t be able to update anything.  It will be interesting because this will be the longest I’ve been away from Evie and the longest Sara will be alone with her.  I know she is nervous about being able to get everything done and get to work on time, etc.  To all you single mothers out there (Hi mom!) I don’t know how you do it, because I can’t imagine not being able to hand her off for a second when you need to make dinner or uh…use the facilities.

Anyway, to hold you over I will leave you with this game.  It is the perfect balance between being slightly challenging so you feel accomplished, but not so challenging that I couldn’t beat it in one day.  Just make a path to get the ball to the box…simple!  All you do is draw lines and let gravity and physics do the rest.  So you’re like learning and stuff while you play!

If you get bored with that one, you can move on to this one.  It is a simple turn based RPG (remember how popular those used to be?)  I haven’t beat it yet, I’m on the one with the submarines.  And if you beat THAT one, you can hit up parts 2, 3, 4, and 5.

P.S.  The Office was off for so long, I almost fell out of love with Jenna Fischer

Audio books = brilliant

/ Shane / 1 Comment

I must be like 100 years old because I am just not interested in listening to music radio anymore, only talk.  Opie and Anthony had such a short tenure here, it is almost not worth mentioning, and normal “safe” morning zoo-type radio disgusts me.  I can’t handle listening to political talk radio of any persuasion because I abhor fanatics and I always end up so mad when I get where ever I’m going.  So after football season ended, I just couldn’t take listening to the radio anymore (you KNOW I wasn’t going to listen to baseball talk) but what the heck was I supposed to do on my extremely boring commute to and from work? (*for NPR see below)

But then on a whim, I discovered that the Chicago public library lets you check out and download audio books for free!

To make a long story short, I tried many (mostly illegal) ways to get the audio books onto CDs to listen to in the car.  Ignoring the price of the blank CDs I would go through (audio book are really long…like 16 hours), most of the methods for cracking the encryption etc. take so many steps and so much effort, it just wasn’t worth it.  I am too lazy even for criminality!  Finally Sara agreed to buy me an mp3 player for my birthday (not an iPod since they’re not compatible with the audio books) and the matter was settled.  For much less than the cost of satellite radio I have basically unlimited entertainment now!  (I’d also like to take this moment to point out that I didn’t get the mp3 player until like 3 months after my birthday and only then because I ordered it myself…Happy Birthday! 😛 )

Oh man, and it is so fantastic!  Thanks to Evie I don’t have much (any) time to read anymore, and that was really killing me.  And now I find more and more reasons to listen to my audio books.  For example, I used to read before bed every night, but had to stop when Evie was in there.  Also, it passes the time when I’m doing dishes, which I hate more than anything in the world except yard work.  So anyway, I am thoroughly enjoying the mp3 player.  Oh yeah, its good for music too.

*What about NPR you might be asking?  I will admit that I stumbled upon NPR a little late, but that might have fit the bill.  By the time I figured out how awesome it was, I was already committed on the mp3 player path and that worked out so well I haven’t really gone back.  Everybody I know already listens, so in my desperation for entertainment I gave it a try.  I used to think what everybody who doesn’t listen to it thinks; that it is boring, random and snooty.  But it turns out the first two end up being the strength of the station.  A story comes on about like the shell mound people of central south america (as opposed to south central america) and you think to your self, “how could I possibly be interested in that?” but then you listen to the whole thing.  And then it jumps to a story about a special filthy hippy school at Waldon pond, and you get sucked into that.  You couldn’t make up a transition more random than the ones they actually have, and surprisingly, it ends up being great.  So anyway, I now listen to NPR when I get a chance, but that’s not often now that I have the mp3 player.

In other news, my vast network of Internet spies has informed me that if you liked the Internet Forum Business Meeting, you will perhaps enjoy the sequel or see what happens when the Internet takes on a funeral.  (Take that Meg) (Aw shoot, I went over to her blog and she already had something better! )

P.S.  I think this marks the first occasion when somebody actually submitted something to me for my blog.  Usually I either find the stuff myself or people send me stuff because I would enjoy it personally and it ends up on here.  It’s going to be Fark around here soon…

Get your paws off me you damned dirty ape

/ Shane / Leave a comment

I guess someone can go pry his gun out of his cold dead hands now.

Now the only question is, should we make him into Soylent Green?