Game Time

A special Tuesday edition of Age of Empires. Played until nearly 2am Eastern time, which isn't quite so bad for me...

It was another Free for All Game, and the order of survival, from the first knocked out to the eventual winner:

• Amy (Sorry, you and Adam were closest to me, and Adam's score indicated that he was about 3 times more powerful than me at that point, I I headed your direction, but it was a good effort for the first time playing in a very long time...)

• Dave
• Me
• Dad
• Adam

Not sure that they really were in it to play until 2am, but there it is. I'm also not sure when Adam goes back, so I don't know if I will get a rematch any time soon or not.

I am done playing the Aztecs for a while, time to move on to a different civ.

High School AP Biology

I don't know why I was thinking about this today...

My Senior year of High School I took AP Biology. Amy was a Junior then, she was also in that class. (A number of Juniors were. They have no idea that I was a trend setter for them, breaking the "No Junior has taken an AP class here before" barrier in my Junior year I signed up and took AP Math. The guidance councilor was really upset, but I think he was more upset when I passed the thing with flying colors. That's a topic for another day.)

The Biology class was immediately after lunch, which wasn't all that great for me. First off, I worked nearly every night until late, and woke up early for seminary. I would get some lunch in me, and be ready for a nap right as the class was starting. This was ok for me, because I had taken the High School level biology 2 years before, and it wasn't all that different, really. I didn't bother studying anything in the class, I had sort of listened in class, and this kind of behavior really ticked Amy off, so I hear. (It didn't help any that she would study all the time, and I would end up with the higher grade on the tests.) When we did labs, I was always will to be her lab partner at least, you'd think she'd give me some credit for being the one with the scalpel.

(On a side note, we wanted to dissect a cat. The cat the teacher had wasn't preserved properly, and was solid as a rock. We pulled it out, and it was no good, so I took it downstairs to get rid of it. That same day, it was really nice outside, and the principal was on a rampage about people leaving the school for lunch. (It was a closed campus) He had even gotten on the loudspeaker to say that anyone caught leaving the school would get detentions. I walked by the office with my cat-in-a-box, and headed for the door. He stopped me, and asked me where I thought I was going. My response was that I had a dead cat, I was going to throw it in the dumpster. He didn't believe me, I had to show him my dead cat. I don't think it helped that just a couple of days before that, I was walking by the office with an unpeeled banana in my ear. (This was just for his benefit, really, I was trying to bait him.) He came out and asked why I had a banana in my ear. My response: "What's that?" He asked a little louder why I had a banana in my ear. I said "I can't hear you, there's a banana in my ear." Then I smiled and walked off. This is the influence Sesame Street had on my life...)

Anyway, there were a couple of thing to note about the Biology Teacher, Mr. Hemmer. (And Amy should appreciate this.) Mr. Hemmer got excited when he taught. His big bushy eyebrows would start creeping higher and higher on his forehead until you thought they might pop right off and hit the ceiling. His eyes also got wide and bulged out a little. If he caught your direct eyesight, he would stand there staring at you until you looked away. (Sometimes this would be a fun game. Get his eyesight honed in on you, then see how long you could go without either of you blinking. As you can see, I payed lots of attention to the subject matter.) When he said the words "too", "to", or "2", it would last lots longer than it should have. (As in "Toooooooooooo")

The only class is distinctly remember well was the day that for some reason he was talking about enemas. It seems that he enjoyed them. I mean really enjoyed them. He was telling us about how nice they were, and I was thinking to myself that he was a little too excited about the subject really. He went on and on with this funny smile on his face. It was kind of odd.

He retired a few years later. He sent Tara and I a glass candy dish with a Buffalo on it for our wedding. Maybe I stayed awake long enough to make some sort of impression on him.

I got a "4" on the AP exam. Amy got a "3". I don't think she has yet forgiven me for that. It's not like it was my fault, I wasn't really putting any effort into getting a better score, it just happened...

Sleep

Our mattress is shot. (At least my side of the thing is.) As in "you lay on it, and the first thing you notice are the springs in the mattress" shot. This isn't all that comfortable for me, for the past few months, I have had a wool blanket floded up over my side of the bed. If you roll over just right, there is a 1/4 inch drop to the other side. It's kind of annoying.

We went and got a foam mattress topper tonight. It has 2.5" of memory foam and a 1.5" 'down-like' microfiber fill. It was making me sleepy looking at it.

We brought it home, and the directions said you have to spread out the memory foam for 24-72 hours for it to retain it's shape and thickness. This is not something I bargained for. I was ready to use it right away. My 4" of luxurious sleep padding just won't happen tonight. And maybe not tomorrow night, although I'm not sure how we will be able to keep the girls off of it for a full day.

We put the 1.5" microfiber top on the bed, and took off the wool blanket. It's like having abrand new pillow top. I'll keep you updated on how the 4" total solution goes, provided I can force myself out of bed on Wednesday morning after using it. Otherwise, I might have to plug the wireless back in and start "Working from home"...

Marshmallow Tag

Back in our old BYU 73rd ward, (Moon Apartments, Single life) one Spring the activities committee of the ward set up a game of Marshmallow tag. (This is something I remembered because I just found a Ward picture directory Tara had stored away in her chest with some other stuff.)

The object of the game was to not get hit by an opposing player's marshmallow. Church, bathrooms, and bedrooms were off limits. Each person in the ward got a name of someone else in the ward. That was their target. If they successfully tagged someone, they got that person's name, the tagee was out, and the tagger moved on. There were prizes for the end of the game.

Well, this gave me something to do. Something I could dig my teeth into. I started being up on campus more often. I kept a little notebook. If I saw anyone from our ward, I wrote down where I saw them, when I saw them, and what they were doing. I figured it could come in handy if I got that person's name, and it would help if I found out who had me.

I started putting feelers out to figure out who had me. I wanted to avoid that person at all costs. It took me several days work to figure out who had me (including a near miss ambush), but after that, it was easier to avoid them. I kept tabs on the person to see when they were out of the game, then hit them up to find out who knocked them out.

I started climbing out the bathroom window to get out of my apartment. One girl whose name I had worked at the store. I went to the store "to pick up some groceries". I convienently ended up in her lane, kept my hat low on my head, and kept my nose in a magazine. I got up to the checkout, lowered the magazine, and showed her the marshmallow that was in my hand. She had actively been playing the game, the look of disappointment was priceless. I didn't have the same problem at my work, the Data Center was a secured environment, if they walked in the foyer, a bell dinged.

Anyway, having devoted much of my time, efforts, and paranoia to the game, I did fairly well. My roommate Dan eventually got the name of the girl that had my name. I had been very into the game, Dan didn't want to ruin it for me, so he sat on her name. (We agreed to eventually share the prize, he wasn't into the game that much.)

Anyhow, I eventually got Dan's name. By that time, there was only a couple of people in the game. I figured speed was of the essence by that time because there were little pockets of people helping their favorite players. (Mostly roommates.) I figured I needed to get the rest of the players all in the same day. I somehow got a crockpot for the girl whose name I had. (I don't remember how.) I went over and took her out. The next name was an easy target. By the end of the night, I ended up with Dan's name, he let me take the final player besides me, and I went and got her.

Having won the game, it was time for prizes. The prize for winning was an Olive Garden gift certificate. The prize for having the most 'kills' (I had gotten something like 1/3 of all people in the ward) was an Olive Garden gift certificate. Dan and I took 2 girls from the ward to dinner on them.

Netflix - Watch it now

Netflix has a fairly new feature called "Instant Watching". They stream movies for watching. This is a "free" service they are slowly releasing out to customers. I found it available to me today. They have a number of movies available for streaming ("More being added every day!"), many of them are older.

They allow the same number of streaming hours per month as the number of dollars you are paying them per month. For us, that means we can stream 24 hours worth of movies each month. I'll have to play with it a little.

Tara is a little excited about it because they have several movies available that I have in my queue, but she doesn't want to watch. (Like Soylent Green and The Day the Earth Stood Still.)

I'll update here after I have tried it out.

Eating at Wendy's

I had a Spicy Chicken combo with fries and a Dr. Pepper. On first bite, I was reminded of all the times in the past that I've eaten Spicy Chicken sandwiches. I really like the Spicy Chicken sandwich. I remember when it first came out...

It was back in High School, I was working at Wendy's at the time. I used to work the night shift, which they liked I think because when I was working, they could have one less person there. When my friend Jamison and I were there together, they could have less people and we would get done closing the place up faster.

Anyhow, I generally did the grill, sandwich station, and fryers all night. We closed the store at 10pm, at which time I closed down the grill, sandwich station and fryers. Usually we had chicken and fries left over. I would make a baseball to softball sized "fry ball". (Think about it - but those things sure were good.) I would also have a chicken sandwich. It was always a bonus if it was a spicy chicken sandwich. I think our managers never minded this behavior because this food was waste after the store was closed, and we got out early, which got the manager home early...

Occasionally I got to take home a piece of hamburger home for the dog...

At least now when I eat at Wendy's, I don't come home soaked in grease.

Restaurant Review

(AKA Eastern Buffet strikes out again )

We had gotten a coupon for the Eastern Buffet in the mail yesterday. The coupon was one I finally liked, in that the advertising with the coupon listed the prices for the meals, what kids cost, what drinks cost, etc. It was a very nicely thought out thing. The coupon said that children ages 2-5 eat free with 2 paying adults. This was OK by us, it meant Kate's meal was $5, which balanced out nicely since all the other girls would have been free. (And drinks were $1, with free refills)

Anyway, we got there, and there were 2 sides to the restaurant. We weren't exactly sure if the girls would be able to handle themselves properly at the place, they were all a little tired, and I asked if we could sit on the side where no one was. The little Asian fellow at the front counter got very animated about how that side was closed, they couldn't serve anyone over there.

We went and sat down, and presented our coupon and gave the girl our drink orders. About 90 seconds later, the little dude came back and said that the coupon meant only 1 child was free with 2 adults, we needed more adults to get more free children. Well, this wasn't what the coupon said. Also, I had taken the day off work, and ended up working 4 hours or so, so I wasn't really in the mood to deal with this guy's crap. We walked out. On our way out, the girl was headed back with our drink order (I think she even got it wrong.) I told her we were leaving. It was only $3, but it was the principle of the thing. They had a coupon that said "Children 2-5 free with 2 adults", you'd think they meant whatever children come, they don't eat that much. (And it's only $3.) Ruth got back at them by taking the straw they gave her. It was all just silly.

I predict they will be gone within 6 months. (You heard it here first...)

Instead, we went to Wendy's. The employees there were fairly friendly. There was a wait for part of our order, they brought it to our table. When the girl brought it out, Tara asked her if we could get 4 waters. The girl happily got it for us.

Game Time

Age of Empires - Free for all

Listed in order of when they were knocked out.

Drew
Rob (Shull)
Dave
Me
Dad
Brian (Shull) - Who invited that guy, anyway?

Dad's wish when we started was that he not be knocked out first. Looks like he made it. It helps that he had found an island out in the middle of the water and built a nice little wall around it.

I found a new stat in the game. It's called "Fire Dancer Minutes". I had 50492 of them. That seems like a lot.

5 more minutes. I just needed 5 more minutes...

Visiting with Lorin

Tara and I went over tonight to see Lorin. (She was asleep the whole time, Anson had enough energy for the both of them.) She is lots bigger than the last time I saw her.

The little 'project' has been announced, some of you wanted to see the card, so here it is.
It seemed very well received.

Anti-nudity

Lily doesn't like to to have all her clothes off. She really doesn't like to have her clothes off.

Today she had a doctor's appointment. They get her weight without clothing, but she was asleep when we went in, so she went from fully clothed, asleep, and warm, to awake, naked, and mad in a matter of seconds. I set her down on the scale, and she started screaming at the top of her lungs. The nurse turned to take her weight, and Lily peed all over the place.

It was good form, if I do say so. High volume, good arc, and a very effective splash effect. 2 minutes later, I had a clean diaper on her and was holding her, she was happy again.

New security measures are in place

Emma and (mostly) Ruth seem to think that it's fun to occassionally take all the clothes they can out of their dressers and make a giant pile in the middle of their bedroom. Maybe they have too much space.
When they wake up in the morning, they will find there are new security measures in place. latches have been installed on the 3 bottom drawers of their dressers to keep the clothes in. Sure, we'll have to help Emma get into them now when she wants to get dressed, but we shouldn't find some evening a mountain of clothes piled up against the gate to their bedroom, in some sort of great escape attempt...

Vacation Day

Last night, I had an outage scheduled. I scheduled it 7 weeks ago, and we had a number of other groups want to piggy back on for last night, since we were going to have all the DBs down.

We had a HW problem on one of the DB machines, a pretty big SW issue, and a Database that refused to boot back up. All in all, we missed the outage window by 6 hours. I was at work from 9pm last night until just after 12 this afternoon.

Rob got on about 5:30am, and was interested in playing AoE. I really didn't get available for it, after I got home, I slept until nearly 8pm.

I feel like I lost a full day.

Common Sense Media

Netflix appears to now be partnering with a place called Common Sense Media. ("a non-profit organization dedicated to improving kids' media lives")

They rate moves to show if they really are appropriate for kids of the age most likely to want to see the movie. For example, the movie Open Season is rated a "Go" for ages 5 and up. (And our 3 year old thinks it's really funny that they use bunnies as tools and weapons in the movie, by the way.) Their ratings include conciderations for sexual content, violence, language, social behavior, and drugs/alcohol/tobacco.

The movie Close Encounters of the Third Kind is a "Go" for ages 8 and up. Under social behavior, their comment is "Tolerance on an interplanetary level." Hilarious.

Mailbox locator

I've been meaning to do a post on this for a couple of weeks. In the middle of January, the Post Office location that serves mail to our area changed fromt he one downtown to the one in East Bay. We thought this would be a good thing, because the East Bay one was the place we had been dropping our Netflix off at.

After the switch, we noticed that the Netflix dropped off there started taking longer in transit. Both incoming and outgoing sometimes take a while. I actually marked 2 disks missing last week after having waited 7 days for them to arrive back a Netflix. (They showed up the next morning. I wonder if it's some big consipiracy between Netflix and the Postal Service to slow down the flow of DVDs for customers...)

Anyway, We have been experimenting with different locations. The problem is sometimes we don't think of it early enough, and we wonder when the last pickup of the night is for different locations. (East Bay is 9:30pm, but if it's going to take a week, I might as well leash it to a turtle...)

A few weeks ago, I found a site that lists all mailboxes, their location, and the time of the last pickup.It's found at the Mailbox locator site. It's a pretty slick little thing. You can search by town name or zip code. They provide a brief description of how to find the mailbox. (My favorite so far: "Behind Arby's") Selecting a box gives you the pickup times as well as a mini map to the box from Google Maps. The page will also have a picture of the mailbox, if someone has sent one in.

Maybe one of my new hobbies will be taking pictures of mailboxes in odd places. Oh wait, I had a mission companion that had an odd fixation with taking pictures of trains. Never mind.

Game Time

Age of Empires

The guilty parties: Me, Dad, Dave, and Adam. (That's right, he's home from being away playing war games, and what does he do? He plays war games...)

1 vs 3 (AKA me vs the world) - I got beat. And I likely deserved it with some of the trash talk I did earlier in the week.

4 vs 4 (Us vs 4 Hard level comps) - we one

4 of us - Free for all - Dave eventually won on a trade route victory. I was the first one out, although I did walk over Dad's first town center, and he went higher in the map to build a new one. I thought I had inflicted damage to Dave before I left, but it turns out that he didn't need those houses, anyway. Adam performed a well timed attack on my village, it was all over from there.

That's all until next time.

Bad parenting skills

I went to the store to pick up some snacks for tomorrow night's "Late Night Work-a-thon". I took Lily with me so that Tara could have a few minutes to eat her dinner.

By the time I had gotten to the store, I had forgotten that Lily was in the car. (She wasn't making any noise, I got distracted by a car that wasn't paying attention to was he was doing.)

Anyway, about 10 minutes later, I realized that I had brought her with me, but didn't have her. Luckily, the car had been locked on my way in, and I had the front of the car seat covered with a blanker, so no one noticed she was there, but there it is. DCFS will be banging on my door soon.

It wouldn't be so bad if that was my first offense. It happened to me one other time. (Not with Lily, I think that one was Ruth.)

Lily seems to have thought it was funny. I'm sure she was thinking "The car stopped, and it got really quiet. What's going on here?"

Lunch (Day 2)

Today I brought chicken wings into work and cooked them up. This by and far fully made up for getting ripped off yesterday. The guys at work got all excited, and ran out to get ranch and blue cheese from the creamery after I started cooking the wings. (Against my better judgement, but they seemed to like it.)

It seems to have been a hit, one of the guys wanted me to leave the fryer there so we could have wings every day. I needed to clean it, so it came home.

The Ultra Saucer still lives!

Lily tried out the Ultra Saucer tonight. She seems to enjoy it ok. She really likes the music it plays.

On second thought, maybe she's just only tolerating it...

Horseradish

10:45pm - I find myself dipping my Fritos into my Cordon's Horseradish. (Which I hear from the Idaho boys at work is the best Horseradish around. It's an Idaho brand.) Anyway, the Fritos started breaking into the jar. I found myself fishing them out with other Fritos, and consuming a larger than intended amount fo Horseradish. My sinuses are very cleared out for the moment.

Then I notice the ingredients: Grated Horseradish Roots, Water, White Distilled Vinegar, Soybean Oil, Salt, Artificial Flavor, Sodium Metabisulfate and Sodium Benzoate, Sugar, Eggs, Cellulose and Xathan gums, Citric Acid, High Fructose Corn Syrup, Calcium Disodium EDTA, Spices, Lemon Juice.

I'm thinking to myself, this is horseradish. And it's strong horseradish. It's not like anything can grow in it. It's not like it goes bad. It's not like you can taste anything else but the horseradish. Why all the ingredients? Does it really make it better?

I do like it, it is very spicy.

Horseradish Reflux Disease. It's not an affliction for normal people, it's an affliction for stupid people like me.

Too much work.

I've been working too much this week, or at least too much at night. I was on-call at the beginning of the week, and spent 2 nights in a row in the Data Center for 5 or 6 hours. Yesterday, I got home at 3:30(AM), and settled right in for 8 hours of sleep.

Unfortunately, I started getting calls every 30 minutes or so starting at 8am. At 11am, I got a call from someone that was calling to let me know that she had sent me an email. She really didn't have anything else to say. I figured that was it, I gave up and got out of bed.

After having been ripped off for lunch (see below), and having off hours this week for work hours, I am declaring tomorrow "Chicken Wing Day" at work. Several people today said "As in Buffalo Wings?", to which I replied "There is no other way."

Tomorrow is Chicken Wing day, just so you know.

On Sunday night, we are doing our major outage for the year to do patching. And some upgrades, and some other stuff. (People keep piling stuff onto the heap of changes.) Sunday night might be "Dr. Pepper and Potato Chips Night".

Basketball game

We went to a basketball game last night. (That's right ladies and gentleman. My present to Tara for Valentine's day - a trip to a college basketball game.)

The game was good, the right team won. It's been a while since we had been to one. The local team here switched their games to a Wednesday/Saturday schedule, which doesn't work too well with my Tuesdays and Wednesdays at the church schedule.

For those who would like to shout at me now, I would also like to point out that I got an "Ultimate Relaxation System" for her. It's a portable massage chair with built in over the shoulder LED light.

Next year - we're going fishing.

Game Time

Age of Empires

Dad and Dave - 1
Me - 0

Looks like they were ready for me. Rob got online about 3 minutes after we started, and we missed him. (Sorry Rob, I should have called...)

I hear Adam wants to get in on a game Saturday. Looks like we will have to plan something.

Now for a few feable excuses:

1/2 way through the game, Lily woke up. (Tara was gone) She demanded a bottle. It's not all that easy to play a game and feed the baby at the same time.

After feeding Lily, I had to respond to Ruth and Emma screaming at the top of their lungs. (They wanted refills for their bottles.) They also emptied all the clothes out of Ruth's dresser again. There was a reaction from me. When I came back from that one, the computer player on my team was just about knocked out by Dad.

Dave finally figured out what to do with all his horses, which is kind of troublesome.

I spent some time playing Zoo Tycoon this week, I think it got me out of the zone I was in. OR my competition is getting better...

Sorry again Rob.

I got ripped off

Today was a "Quality Improvement Lunch" at work today. That's where they get 1/12 of all engineers together, feed them, and the directors talk about how things are going. Today was my month.

I went by 2 days ago to see what they were planning for lunch. The secretaries in the office said they didn't know, Erik was in charge of the lunch, but they were sure it was going to be good.

I went to the lunch today, and they had pizza. Not even normal pizza, but fancy pizza, and the "pineapple and Canadian bacon" abomination. I turned around and left. (But I did come back for the "talk about how things are going" part.)

Anyway, I feel like I got ripped off. I think next year, when they send out the meeting request, I will reply back and say I can't come because of dietary restrictions. We'll see how that goes.

Costcoites

We are offically "Costcoites". We went over and signed up today. (We signed up for the $100 Executive level, which gives 2% back, or refunds your $50 if you don't get that high on the cash back.)

We spent $150, and didn't really get anything, which is really what you do when you sign up for Costco, right? Emma wants to save her allowance for the $1300 playground/swingset.

We might have gotten more real stuff, but I need to work on the food storage area...

Can't get the thing bought

I've been trying to get my bi-pap submitted for purchase for some time now. My insurance approved 3 months of rental followed by a purchase in Dec 2005. For 10 months, the company I got the unit from submitted rentals only, the insurance started denying the rental after the first 3 months. I finally got the company to submit the purchase in November, but since that time, I have not been able to get the insurance to process the claim. (None of which stops me from using the bi-pap...)

I called 2 weeks ago, the girl said that she would forward the thing to claims, and I should see it post in a week to 10 days. Today the claim still does not show up. I called insurance people back, the guy I talked to did not understand why nothing had yet been done, but he sent a 'reminder' note to claims. He told me I could call back in a few days to see if progress had been made if I want to. (I believe he just gave me license to call every 2 business days until they process the claim. I think I'll have to make myself annoying...)

Sunbeams

Emma's Sunbeam class today had me come in and talk a little bit about her. When I came in, the kids were all facing the other direction, one of the teachers was reading a book to them. Eventually, when it was time, everyone turned around, Emma was suprised to see me there. (She was paying attention to the book, after all.)

The first fact I told them was that Emma likes to dance to Ray Charles. This fact did not impress the other 3 year olds. I told them she currently has a kangaroo theme in her dancing, yet another fact that failed to get a response. (We had thought this was a bunny theme in the dancing, but I found out that it was kangaroo a couple of days ago.)

I pulled out her doll to show, and her hat, no one seemed impressed. Then I pulled out a picture of Emma from a year ago, and for some reason, everyone got excited.

Emma seemed to enjoy being talked about. We talked about how she now has a haircut just like me, how her and Ruth watch a show every morning, and stuff like that. I didn't get into the fact that she's a lefty, it was a tough crowd, after all.

We had several people ask us to substitute for various classes in primary next week. It sounds like half the ward is leaving for the holiday. So far, we didn't say yes to any of them. (The nursery asked, but it's hard to be in the nursery when we have Lily with us. Mary's class asked, but we were the first parents they saw, so Tara told them to call back if they can't get anyone else.)

Cell Phone Hours

I just reset the timer on my cell. Since Aug 26, I have logged 96 hours on the phone. Lifetime for the phone is 264 hours. That's less than 2 years worth. Maybe that's why the phone is showing some signs of age...

Street Lights

On the street alongside our church building, there is a section that the street lights (not traffic lights) randomly decide to work or not. The other night, someone got hit by a car in that section of the road while they were crossing the street. Drew had to go in to work, I heard all the racket they were making getting there from inside the church.

Anyway, that night several of the street lights were out. I drove by last night, and there were 3 lights in a row out, for a total of 1 1/2 blocks. It was pitch black over there. You'd think the city would be out fixing the lights. They've been like that for a long time. (Not always 3 in a row, sometimes 1, 2, 3, or 4 of them will be out, not necessarily all in a row.)

Maybe I need to complain to the city. It is very annoying to be walking in the dark, and the only reason to be in the dark is that the street lights are not working. It's also hard as a driver, you have to be extra careful on that road, lots of students don't seem to have a lick of sense, and will step out into traffic and hope the cars stop. (Some of them even when they are wearing dark clothing, and there is no hope of seeing them.)

Driving a deathtrap

I've been driving Drew's little white car the last few days, I've nicknamed it "the deathtrap". This is mostly due to the fact that it's a little unnerving to drive around with just a lap belt, no shoulder belt. It also reminds me strongly of The Escort, only a little nicer.

The hood to Drew's car bounces a little. The hood to the Escort started bouncing a lot after I accidently rammed a wall.

The steering column feels like Drew's car is starting to have a bit of a ball bearing problem. (It shakes.) The escort used to have a bad bearing problem, I finally got it fixed when I saw someone else driving it, and the wheel was wobbling.

Rob and I used to be able to go 100 MPH down the freeway back from work. If we unrolled the windows, the car would drop to 90MPH, and would refuse to go any faster.

The escort didn't have AC or a good stereo system.

OK, so maybe Drew's car isn't all that bad. Maybe I need to go down to the wrecking yard and try to find a door with a shoulder belt mechanism for Drew...

Game Time

Age of Empires

Me - 1

Dave and Dad - 0

They very nearly beat me early on, had they sent about 2 more waves of soldiers, it would have been all over. (I beat off the last wave they sent and only had about 5 guys left...) Then they built up their armies, but they also let me build up mine. Anyway, it was close.

New shoes

We ordered new sneakers for Mary online the other day. (From the link on the side of my blog under "Shared Items") They came today, Mary seemed excited about it. It worked so well, I ordered a pair for Kate today. They should be here in a couple of days.

We are also thinking about also getting new shoes for Ruth and Emma, we will see what happens.

New Sweaters

The girls wore their new sweaters again on Sunday. Here's another picture.

Lily's Blessing

We blessed Lily at church yesterday. Here's a couple of pictures of her in her blessing dress. (Okay, so all the girls used the dress, maybe I should call it 'the blessing dress')

FYI, the following relatives were there. (For posterity's sake):

Both sets of Grandparents
Tom
Drew and Kaylynn
Coreen
Michelle and her kids

Lefty

Emma is a lefty. There is no getting around it. I think she was born that way.

Yesterday I bought a $3 plastic ball glove with velcro and a ball. Tara tells me that this morning, Emma was trying to put the thing on, but couldn't because she couldn't figure out why her thumb was not fitting properly. How does she know that as a lefty, she needs to have the glove on the right hand? Were we all playing baseball in the pre-existance? Is she just a genius?

It must be hard to be a lefty. We need to get her some left handed scissors. (After the Great Scissors Ban has been lifted) We need to get her a left handed baseball mitt. We need to get her some left handed spoons and forks.

2 Strikes

Kaylynn informed me today that I have 2 strikes against me. The 2nd can Thursday night when I was over there play AoE, I had sat in her chair. She didn't remember what the 1st one was. This reminds me of the time that I bought Tara tickets to a storytime festival and went with her for her birthday. Then she forgot that I had done that for her birthday and assumed she did not get a birthday present. After 9 months of reminding me that no present came, I remembered what I had done. (I was blocking the whole thing out.) The strik against me was immediately removed.

I would say that if you can't remember why you have somethign against someone, you should give it up, but then I would have to start going back to Jiffy Lube again. (I can't remember exactly, but it seems like it had something to do with the brake pads...)

Anyway, my guess is that the 1st strike is my indulging Drew in playing Age of Empires. Can I help it if he rarely beats me and has to keep coming back to try time after time?

2007 Goal Update

#1 - ITRC forums. I am currently at 3847 points, up 4 slots from last time. (Now at slot 156.) There are a number of slots within 100 points of me now, but I haven't posted in about a week or so. (I've been kind of busy)

#2 - Lose Weight - Down to 227. (Another 3 pounds)

#6 - Read books - Up to 3 books for the year, still ahead of schedule.

Book Report

The Baseball Book
Sports Illustrated

This was an interesting book. They put together (what I assume were) their favorite/best baseball articles over the years, mostly editorial pieces on baseball topics more than game recaps or anything like that. The book's format was an article, several pages of pictures, a feature on a particular decade, several pages of pictures, then back to another article. They do this for 300 pages.

Emma and Ruth both spent time looking at the pictures in the book, but I think they both got tired of waiting for the next page when I got to a page with an article on it. They really liked the pictures when they were there...

Thursday Night Fights

Age of Empires III

Tonight we did things slightly different, we did 3 different 2 vs. 2 games, so everyone played with each person once. The results:

Me - 3 wins
Dad - 1 Win
Drew - 1 Win
Dave - 1 Win

I guess it's time for me to move away from using the Aztecs. I'll have to pick a new civ before next week.

Tara's Mom came over to watch the girls so that I could go down to Drew and Kaylyn's place to play. (Not that I couldn't play here, but it was nice for 3 of us to be in the same room for a little while...)

Tara and my Mom went to go see Oklahoma. Tara at least seems to have enjoyed it. (I got them front row balcony tickets.)

To vacation or not to vacation

I've been on vacation the past couple of days, not that they have missed me at work. Each of the last 2 days, I have worked 4 hours. This did not make me happy.

To compinsate, this morning I was in the Data Center, and found some SCSI terminators from some machines we got rid of during the summer. I claimed them and took them to my office.

I use the terminators to anonymously mail to people in Campus mail after they have ticked me off. (It's the little things in life.) Some of the people that generally get a terminator from me don't even know what they are, but I think it's hilarious. I've got a couple of people from today that are definitely getting a terminator in the mail soon.

If I really need the (minor) release, I put the thing in the campus mailer, then drop the thing off in the hall. Someone always picks it up and takes it to the mailbox, off it goes. I call it Pioneer Mail.

A couple of years ago, when my office was upstairs in the building, I used Pioneer Mail exclusively. I did this for about 3 months, until one day in a meeting, one of the student secretaries started talking about how she kept finding mail on the ground upstairs, and kept sticking it in the mailbox. She sounded a little exasperated with the whole thing. I started laughing, which blew my cover. The nice thing is, after a few years, there is no institutional knowledge left, those students graduate, and others are hired, so you can start the thing all over again. Long live Pioneer Mail.

Not supposed to be at work

I'm supposed to be on vacation. It doesn't seem to be sticking very well, I spent some time the last 2 days working on a paper for Friday, I have a meeting scheduled for 3pm, and a meeting tomorrow at 8:30am.

The Bookstore has a problem I need to go in to look at, and there are a few other problems that occured overnight, which I am sure will cause a meeting to occur.

Fun.

Google Reader

I'm now playing with Google Reader. They host the site feeds for you. It looks interesting, and it's OS agnostic.