Honk honk

So getting the girl to actually sleep in her big girl bed has been harder than expected. Apparently we didn't follow all the rules we should have when considering moving her out of the crib. Rules such as putting the new bed in the same position that the crib was in, letting them help assemble the new bed, letting them pick out bedding they like, etc.

We didn't find this out until 2 1/2 hours after trying to put her down for the night.

She went to bed just fine. Gave her a kiss and shut the door. Wait 10 seconds. Door opens and she sticks her head out. Back to bed. Close door. Wait for door to open. Rinse, repeat.

I went upstairs to see how it was going and just in time...Mandy was getting tired of dealing with the girl. I take a different approach and lay down on the bed with her. She's good for about 10 seconds, then she reaches over, grabs my nose and says, "Honk honk". It's very hard not to laugh when you know you shouldn't encourage her.

She sits up in bed, wants to read a book, wants to turn the musical birds on, wants to see Mommy. I get mad and reason with her. Oh yeah, two year olds don't do reasoning, so i resort to Mandy's tactic of slamming her on to the bed and closing the door. Ten seconds later, door opens a crack. I put her back on the bed, repeat. This time Mandy comes up to relieve me and keeps her company for awhile.

Then it's my turn again.

Finally, after 2-3 hours of this, she nods off and finally drifts off into la-la land.

Then comes the snoring. Just like her mother.

Sigh

I'm the worst intrnetter ever. I swear, I'll be right in the middle of writing something and get just so goddamn bored with what I've just written I can't even be bothered to finish what I'm writing.

Catch me again in two more weeks.

'V'

Remember the old television series 'V'? I don't really, other than the crunching noise the aliens made when they ate cockroaches, which I believe was their favorite snack. Anyway, we've had a steady stream of visitors over the past few weeks, none of which I suspect of being from another planet, I just was thinking that the 'V' in title stood for 'Visitors'.

Nothing wrong with visitors. It's not like we've made so many friends in Portland over the past 10 months that we can't spare a little time to see family and friends. First Mandy's parents came to see us for a week, then our friends Brett and Lexi came up from California. They couldn't make it to our wedding, so they were able to get away for a quick weekend.

It's not easy to entertain, however, with two little kids. It really makes me wonder how others do it. Well, how they do it without seeming like it's killing them inside.

We spent the entire day today changing rooms around. First the guest bed (now that our steady stream of guests has petered out (two shakes and a pull)) was moved down to the living room, along with an extra bookcase (not really extra, we need all the bookshelves we can get, but it doesn't fit in) and an old nightstand.

Next we moved Lexi's crib into the guest room, and magically it turned into Noah's bedroom. Then we had to move Lexi's new twin bed into her room, to turn it in to a big girl's paradise.

Once all the furniture was moved, I had to map-quest my way to southeast Portland to go buy a dining table we had our eyes on. I dropped that off at home, took an old computer to work for a co-worker of mine, and picked up Lexi at daycare while Mandy finished decorating/un-trashing the new rooms. Then I was off again with my bookcase to drop it off at a stranger's house. All in a day's work it was.

Not sure if I got off topic yet or not.

Good going, Hoss!

Just a little shout out to my brotherinlaw Jeffrey D. for getting a favorable mention in The Believer. Get the latest issue to read more about it, but it seems someone at the mag is in love with Jeff .

Sam's fingers

One quick story before bed.

One day I came in to work and found out Sam was going to be out for a week because he broke his fingers. How did he break his fingers, you ask?

Well, a customer came to pick up a dining table one day. Somebody else was in the loading dock of the store, so the customer had parked across the street. Now, the loading dock was about 4 feet above street level, and there were no stairs, so we would put any heavy boxes on the edge of the loading dock, hop down, then grab them again and put them in the cars. So on this day, Sam jumped down, got the box and carried it across the street. Kevin asked him if he needed any help, as it was a pretty heavy box, but Sam brusquely said, "No, I got it" (this was a huge catchphrase of his, as he didn't like to admit ever needing help, because of his special-neediness).

Halfway across the street, Sam dropped the box. The customer asked if maybe this table was broken after the fall, and even though Sam said it was fine, the customer looked at the dented in corner of the box and asked for another one. So Kevin jumps in to the action, goes to the stockroom to get another dining table box (the flat pack kind that you put together yourself if it's not obvious), and carries it across the street and puts it in the customer's car.

By this time, Sam is steamed. He's mad at himself for dropping the box, he's mad at Kevin for asking if he needed help, then coming to his rescue after he made a mess of things. So he carries the box back to the loading dock, hoists it up onto his shoulder, and when he shoves it on to the loading dock, it lands right on his hand and breaks four fingers.

This is typical.

Why things matter

I often find myself wondering about the status quo. Moreso than that, I wonder if there is a status quo, and if so, am I even close to being part of it or am I totally so far off my rocker that I'm like the creepy uncle that parents warn their children about.

This one lady at work keeps telling me how weird I am. I think it's usually after I've said/done something funny, so I think she has a problem with synonyms, but sometimes I'm just not sure. She also says it when I say something direct to her that she's doesn't want to hear. I think it's her way of saying, "You're not doing/acting the way I'd like you to act". The thing is, she's definitely not the first person to tell me that I'm weird. I just happen to think she's kind of odd herself.

But I've always admitted to being off-kilter. I don't really want to be a normal, run of the mill bozo in bad Dockers and boat shoes. But I'd like to think that I could, if I tried. I don't know though.

Everybody has their own quirks. One of mine is that I get passionate about certain issues, but a day later I've forgotten all about it. Or else I'm extremely irritated by the human race and pretty much everybody around me. For example, two days ago I was in the local bookstore looking at magazines. This dude next to me is finished flipping through a magazine, and he just places it back on the rack in some random spot, even though it's home was totally out there in the open. And this really pissed me off. I even muttered under my breath after he left, but I think then I became the weird guy in the bookstore that seemed to be talking to himself. How weird.

This is why I can't get into serious pursuits such as politics...I just can't be bothered. One day I might actually care about the environment, then the next I read an article about some bleeding heart nancy-boy scientist (or Al Gore) and I just want to smack them upside the head. Then I don't care about the environment anymore. And age just makes it worse. I now care about less than ever before. I don't even care about good things I used to care about. I don't care about new music or new bands, nor do I care much about the latest televisions shows or movies. I just like to stand in the aisles of the local bookstore and mutter about the assholes that surround me.

The title is a misnomer, I'm not answering any questions about why things matter -- I guess I'm asking the question.

So I called Kevin

So I called Kevin up today at work. I talk to him every month or two, just to catch up and usually make fun of Sam a little more. I told him that I gave them fake names to protect their identities. He told me I should have used Hector and Carlos for their names, but I told him that sounds kind of racist. He called me a bad name.

Kevin is about 25 years old. He's short, like I already said, and if you watch Entourage, he is very much like Turtle, only not so much in the white-boy rapper vein. He's got a baby face that the girls think is cute, and he pretty much always wears white t-shirts and jeans.

Sam is probably 38 or so by now. He definitely doesn't look this old. I always thought he was about 28 when we worked together. He liked to wear white t-shirts too, but with disastrous results. See, unloading trucks all day tends to get one dirty. Kevin knew how to keep the dirty boxes from rubbing up against his clothing, but Sam lacked dexterity and coordination, so after a long day his shirt would be turning gray, his hair would be disheveled and he's be pretty much a mess.

Doing trucks there was fun and painful. We unloaded boxes from the delivery truck, and formed a fire-line to the elevator. One guy would unload a box, pass it to the middleman, who would then pass it to the third guy, the elevator loader. Loading the elevator required some skill in organization, so it was always Kevin or myself that did this part of the job. Sam would often ask if he could load the elevator, but I would only let him do it if we had a very small truck that day.

In any case, whoever had to be the guy behind Sam always had it bad, because he had a bad habit of touching your balls nearly every time he handed you a box. Again, lack of coordination, and not gayness, is what caused this. You know how when you're folding sheets with someone and you don't know which way they're going to fold it, and you go back and forth in a little sheet-turning dance? This is what working with Sam was like. If you reached for a box one way, he was sure to hand it to you the other way. And for some reason the way he gave it to you was likely to have his hand touching up against your testicles.

We would usually finish doing the truck about 2 pm, and then it was lunchtime. Kevin and I would usually scrape a couple bucks together and buy a pizza, then we'd make Sam go pick it up a couple blocks away. As a reward for going to get it, he could have some of the pizza. This went on for about a year before he started to tire of it. I remember the day when we asked if he wanted to go pick up the pie, and he said, "Why do I always have to go get the pizza?". And Kevin told him, "Because we always pay for it". "Oh yeah", Sam said, and off he went.

The funny thing is, he probably had more money that we ever did. Because Sam was a gambling savant. I don't know how he did it, but he was always going to the casino or buying scratch tickets and winning big. This pissed Kevin off more than anything, because he always lost. Always. He showed me a big stack of losing scratch tickets he kept in his glove box. I asked why he kept them, and he said once a month in Boston they have a drawing where they pick one of these losers to win. You just had to fill out your information on the backside and turn it in and you were entered. He probably spent $300.00 a month on scratch tickets each month, and invariably Sam would walk in on a Monday morning and show us his scratch ticket that won him $500.00. Boy was Kevin steamed.

Sam and Kevin

When I lived in Boston once upon a time, I had two guys who worked for me in the stockroom. I'm going to call them Sam and Kevin, just because they're quite guilty and I probably should protect them from undue ridicule.

Sam was my big problem at work. He has a learning disability and he tends to take a long time to process information. In some cases he doesn't process it at all, in others you wonder exactly was processed, because it surely wasn't the information that was given him. Great guy though, heart of gold. He'd worked at that store for about 5 years at that point, first helping the designers move merchandise around, then later moving to the stockroom. He usually had a pretty one-track mind, but he was a real workhorse because of it, would just keep working and working and working (even if sometimes he was doing it completely wrong).

Kevin was a little Southie punk, except he didn't actually hail from south Boston, he was from Cambridge, living in the shadow of Harvard University. He could have easily been a stand-in for any of the friends of Matt Damon's character in Good Will Hunting, except he's kind of short so he would've looked pretty funny next to the others. He had a real thick Boston accent and always called me Mahk. He told me once he wondered why autistic children got a lot of attention just because they can draw nice. Maybe you're getting the picture of this guy just from that last statement.

Now these were my full time stock guys at this store. It was a little store, and while we could have definitely used a little more help in the stockroom, the three of us did a decent job of keeping things up, along with a couple of part-time night workers.

The whole purpose of this introduction is that I have some pretty good stories to tell about my time there, but I realize it's midnight and I have to get up early in the morning, so I'll stop there and resume tomorrow.

Mini Me

I got a new car yesterday, a 2003 Mini Cooper. It's dark blue with a white roof. It's the S model, which means super-awesome I guess.

I feel like I'm ten years younger. Having driven a minivan for the past 5 years I guess my soul was aging more rapidly than my body. I forgot what it was like to drive a real car, a car with a manual transmission, a car without an armrest.

The ride is certainly bumpier, but it's also such a performance powerhouse. The handling is the best I've ever driven, and I can turn on to a street and be driving the speed of traffic within seconds instead of minutes.

Throbbing

I've got a throbbing in my foot. I just noticed it. I'm sitting in front of the computer desk, leaning back in my chair, with my legs crossed atop my desk. And I see a throbbing in my foot. It's right below my ankle in what I usually think of as the 'weak' part of my foot.

I say weak because it's a place on my foot where the skin is kind of strange. It's more wrinkly than the rest of my foot-skin, like a little triangle of thin-skin, and now it's throbbing. It's maybe going one beat per second at the moment, in-out-in-out. It's kind of like the stomach part in Aliens. I can't get it to stop. I move my foot to a different angle -- no luck. I think it's odd that I just noticed it.

Snow Woe

A funny story about our snowstorm (!) earlier this week. We were closed on Tuesday, but Wednesday we opened at noon, figuring that was enough time to let employees get to work without rushing.

One of my co-workers was bitching about why they made us come in, saying it was still really dangerous and she didn't think it was safe to be out on the road. When I pointed out that she lives closer to the store than anybody else there (she's probably 1/2 a mile to 3/4 of a mile away), she started to cry and put on a show saying how her parents were almost in a bad accident during the snow a long looooonnng time ago and she just gets freaked out by winter driving. Did I stress that they were almost in an accident? Apparently their car spun around a few times but they didn't actually hit anything. What a loser.

I offered to come drive her home that evening if she needed me to, but they ended up closing 3 hours early anyway so it was a moot point.

Sissies.

Just me & my babies

Just me and the kids home today by ourselves. It's the second time we've done it, though Mandy did it for two months before going back to work. It's an incredible test of patience to be home with a 2 year old and a 2 month old, but it can be really funny too. Lexi's at an age where she's repeating a lot of what you say to her, sometimes this is not a good thing. And Noah at two months is starting to smile a lot and you can make him laugh by making funny faces.

Once we get rid of the crying fits and smelly diapers we'll be home free. I can't wait to retire.

Snow Day

Mandy woke me up this morning with the announcement that surely we would have a snow day today, since we've accumulated about 3 inches of snow overnight and it's steadily coming down. That might not be a lot of snow, but in cities like Portland and Seattle where it rarely snows, it's enough to entangle traffic and shut down the entire city.

I haven't had a good snow day in a about 3 years now. Last time was in Seattle, and I lived so close to work that I went in anyway, until they closed an hour after opening. Those of us that had made the trek in went to the bar across the street and had a few beers before returning home. Today I'll have no such luck, since the kids will be staying home with me (and Mandy as soon as she gets back home, she had to go to the store to officially 'close' the store and call people to tell them not to come in). I was thinking of taking Lexi outside to see the snow, but it hit me that she really doesn't have any snow gear and I don't think we're going to buy her boots and gloves just for one day. Who knows though, I bet we can sneak out for a few minutes of frolicking.

Woohoo!

Supersize me

Like many people, I saw Supersize me a couple years ago when it came out. I wouldn't say that it was a life-altering experience, since I never was fooled into thinking that fast food was anything other than bad for you, but for about 6 months after I saw it I didn't go to McDonalds more than a few times.

But, as is the norm, after some time you forget about all the bad stuff and slide back into old habits. I love McDonalds. It's not my favorite fast food joint, but it's cheap and easy and easy to pick up (kind of like my ex-wife ).

So one of my big new years resolutions is to start eating healthier. Notice I didn't say healthy, just healthier. And so far I've been pretty good about it. Two weeks in and I'm pretty proud.

Maybe it helps that I totally cut out smoking last year, so this doesn't seem too difficult. Plus, I figure I spent the past 20 years or so eating whatever I wanted without worrying about the consequences, so it seems like maybe having to exercise some discretion may not be the end of the world. If I drink soda, I drink diet soda. This is because I hate diet soda and I usually only drink about half a can. I've been eating smaller portions, and over the past 2 weeks I've noticed it getting easier to eat smaller amounts. I've been having little snacks more often too to help. And better portions of fruits and vegetables.

The upside: I've lost about 4 pounds in two weeks without having to exercise (ugh!). The downside: I get grumpy when I don't get enough junk food.

For now though it's been positive enough of an experience that I'll keep going for awhile and see what happens.

New Games

I bought the new Final Fantasy XII the other day and after an hour I'd say it's pretty awesome. But then today I downloaded the Vanguard beta client and been playing that the past few hours and that's decent too. Too many games, not enough time. And to illustrate that, Noah is crying in the other room so I've gotta go.

2006 Year in Review

This past year was a good one. A great one actually. I got married, I bought a house, I had a beautiful new baby boy, and my beautiful baby girl is getting smarter by the day. For some reason, however, it never seemed like I got around to being happy.

Why not? I'm just not really a happy person. It seems like I've spent my entire life just trudging through it step-by-step, always looking forward to a future happiness that I expected to one day achieve. It sounds stupid, but I really have always thought that. It's like my book collection--I buy a ton of books. Some to read right away, some just to have, and most with the thought that I will read them at some point in the future. It doesn't matter that I have hundreds of books that I haven't read yet, or that I don't really read as much as I used to, I still fully expect to one day sit down and finish each and every book that I own (as well as those I've yet to buy).

So, rather than come up with the normal new year's resolutions, I'm going to aim big. I'm going to do what I can to enjoy life now, to count my blessings and try to be as happy as possible. I predict this will last all of 2 hours in the new year, but a guy can dream, can't he?

R.I.P. James Brown

1933-2006
The Hardest Working Man in Show Business and the Godfather of Soul.

Radster or Tradio?

Today I went grocery shopping but was first magnetically pulled in to a nearby store I had always meant to check out, mainly out of curiosity. It's one of those dollar-store, remainders of items that never sold type stores. Anyway, pretty dumpy place, as expected, but I did see one totally awesome item I've never even heard of before.

A toaster/radio. That's right, a toaster with a radio built in. Freakin' rad. Though I wonder how the toaster part doesn't burn up the radio part, but I guess the genius that had the bright idea in the first place probably figured out that part easily enough.

No, I didn't buy it. I'm still waiting for the microvee.

Old School

Bought a Playstation One today. I've been trying to play Final Fantasy Tactics on my Playstation 2 for the past few weeks. The first night it worked, then I could never get the disc to read again. It started getting to me. I'd hit the power button and it would start making a horrible grinding noise. After a minute it would go to the screen that said 'disc error'. I'd hit reset, eject, play with the disc a little--nothing.

So last night I bid on one on Ebay. I figured there can't be much competition, and the price was right--$5.00 bid with $10.00 shipping. I got sniped at the last minute so I had to make a stop to a local game store that I visited a few months ago called Game Trader, in Beaverton.

Normally I tend to go to Gamestop. I enjoy their magazine, Game Informer, and the people are usually pretty nice, if a bit geeky (sorry kettle, pot calling). I went by yesterday though, and they informed me that they don't sell the PSone anymore, and the guy suggested Game Trader.

Game Trader is a little skeezy. Well, it's in the Beaverton Mall which is a little skeezy. Actually it's a decent strip mall with major box stores, but there's a little section where you can go inside and somehow all the shops inside are these weird places that cater to specific types. There's a cowboy boot emporium, a Hello Kitty store, a pet shop, and Game Trader (though Powell's Bookstore just opened up a satellite store there, so maybe the place is on the rise).

Game Trader is great for its selection of old school gaming gear. I wouldn't say they had everything you need (I tried to find a copy of Ogre Battle and failed), but they had multiple PSone systems and games, N64, NES and SNES, NeoGeo and more. The guy working there was really nice as well and I'm glad I went. Maybe it's not really skeezy, it's just not polished and glitzy like the EB Games and Gamestop places with only newer type games.

Anyway, I went home and booted it up and Final Fantasy Tactics appeared on the screen and for the next hour (until the baby started crying), things were right with the world.

Who's in control of my videogames?

My wife doesn't play videogames. She thinks there are too many buttons to push and too much stuff to do, so I introduced her to Animal Crossing. She absolutely loved it, both because it was cute, but also because of its simplicity.

Now, I never had as much trouble with controls. I was always quick to pick up on things (maybe because I read the directions first) starting with the Atari 2600, straight on through to the Super Nintendo. Then I started noticing a disturbing trend...too many buttons.

The Nintendo 64 screwed me up with the trigger down beneath, as well as the d-pad and the analog joystick and the 6 buttons to the right and the start buttons. That's 14 buttons that you can push. My mind boggled. So much boggling took place that I never bought a Nintendo 64...I just couldn't hack it.

The Playstation, however, was still manageable. This one had two analog joysticks and bunch of buttons, but at least they made a little more sense, and I didn't have a problem with this, except for maybe the shoulder buttons. With 4 of these it was sometimes easy to forget which buttons controlled which functions. I mainly tried to play easy games that didn't have huge manuals.

The X-box controller wasn't so hot either. It introduced the black and white buttons, which were horribly placed, not to mention that the controllers were huge in size. It took four hands just to hold the bastard. They eventually introduced a smaller version for those of us with baby-hands.

With the X-box 360 controller they got a little closer to a great controller. The shape is nice and fits comfortably, the buttons are pretty intuitive, and it's got a glowing green button, something that the Atari 2600 definitely could have used. Maybe Atari would be in the top 3 of video game makers if they had included this option.

That's why I want to buy a Wii, it has like 3 buttons. How can you go wrong?