One tired baby

Conversation with a 6 month old

Adam: {unexpected burp}
Me: "What's your last name?"
Adam: {throws up all over Tara}


I won't be asking that question again...

Christmas Tree #2

We have only gotten one of our 2 trees set up so far. The trees take up much less space than the old one did. We may be using the other tree for a ward Christmas party, so it might go up later.

Christmas Tree #1

This is our old Christmas Tree. It was given to us 10 years ago, and it was old then. Last year, we picked up a couple of new trees from Sears, this old tree has been banished to the outdoors. It is kind of sad looking without thousands of lights and hundreds of ornaments on it. It's slightly tilted, and "needs fluffing", as Tara says. I would have our little reindeer out there next to the tree, but I spent so much time trying to figure out which light was bad on a string of lights (there were 3 lights bad...) on Friday that I got demotivated to try to figure out which light is out on the reindeer.

The person that invented Christmas lights was smart. The person that got Christmas lights to fail after a year of use is a genius. An evil genius.

Family picture

We had some pictures taken after church this morning. We were looking for a picture to be able to send out with Christmas cards. I think this was the winner. Lily is this years winner of "the kid that wouldn't smile" contest.

A Thanksgiving tradition

After dinner, I announced we would proceed with a "Payne family Thanksgiving tradition." No one knew what I was talking about, until I said "The playing of video games." We played Mario Kart.

Leftovers! (It's a 1970's B movie...)

We had a bunch of dinner confirmations yesterday afternoon for Thanksgiving dinner. Tara's parents came over, Drew, Tom, Missy, and Steve all came over.

I hear Adam didn't get mashed potatoes today. I made a little extra in his honor. We had apple pie, made easier by the apple slicer Grandma Oaks send a while back, I was the only one who had a piece, and I only had a small piece. There is plenty of it left, and it is very good. Come on over and have some.

Tom requested banana cream pie. I sent the rest home with him. He liked it, but was unwilling to commit to it being the best banana cream pie he has ever had. Mary and Emma readily committed to it.

There was tons of food, and we have tons of leftovers. Anyone and everyone can stop by for leftovers. Or Leftovers!

Fine Print

I think the fine print you find on products is sometimes really funny. It is amazing some of the things you find on labels when you look. I am sure it is a product of all the lawsuits that go around. I remember when McDonald's had that little problem because someone spilled coffee on themselves and got burnt. They sued McDonald's for not letting them know the coffee was hot...

Anyhow I have a potential new regular feature here. I call it "reading the fine print." (Like the "May contain nuts" label on a bag of peanuts...) We will see if it sticks or not.

Today's entry:

I bought a new measuring cup, one of those new angled measuring cups, so you can see the volume being poured while looking from the top. The front label had a "Dishwasher safe, Microwave Safe*" label on it. When you followed the asterisk down to the bottom label, you found "Do not microwave fat (oil, butter, etc.) for longer than 4 minutes."

I thought I did more damage than good on Friday at work...

On Friday I installed an upgraded version of one of my tools on a new server. (This tool lets me perform the same task on multiple machines at the same time. I have all our machines discovered on the old machine.) The newer version has got some new import/export functionality in it that would make it lots faster to migrate to the new one, so I upgraded the tool on the old server. After the upgrade the tool didn't start the way it was supposed to. It looked like it was brain dead. I figured that I just made things worse for me, because now I wouldn't have the old machine to refer to when creating the new stuff on the newer tool. Lots of work was lost.

Imagine my surprise this morning when I went to reinstall a different machine. I got paged that the machine was down. It was the old tool paging me. I went on to the old machine, and the tool was up and running. It looks like it is fully up and functional with the upgraded tool. I actually saved us a lot of time because we have the import/export features now. I actually did get something useful accomplished on Friday.

The fine print in the documentation said that the upgrade would trash the DB if using an Oracle DB. Turns out that this must have been something they forgot to update in the documentation. It looks to me like the tool didn't start right away on Friday because it was busy converting the Oracle DB to whatever it needs now. That's good for me.

Thankgiving shopping list

• Potatoes
• Pie shells
• bananas
• vanilla or banana cream pudding mix
  
• Apples
• berries
  
• ice cream
• whipping cream
• cranberries
• cottage cheese
  
• gravy mix (The good kind)
• Roades frozen dinner rolls
• Sweet potatoes or yams
• Potato chips
  

Don't shout at me. The turkey, stuffing, and pumpkin pie are all being provided by an outside consultant. We already have plenty of green beans and corn. If you think sweet potatoes and yams are the same thing, don't head for the South any time soon. The potato chips are for the cook to snack on while cooking this stuff. It is all about the mashed potatoes anyway...

Dinner

We ate dinner at the table tonight. The girls were well behaved, which is a good sign for the first effort. (At least we didn't get discouraged after the first meal.) Dinner was pot roast, potatoes, and carrots, if it makes a difference. We do have leftovers.

Dinner Benches

I think I just finished the benches for the dinner table. Or at least did as much as these ones will get. Like everything, I have already thought of several different ways I would change these if I started over again, but these will do for now.


Spray paint ended up being a very effective way to paint these things, the paint got all in the little corners and crevices. You can see where the paint soaked in a little, I guess those are the areas that I didn't really get the primer one very well, but I think it gives it character. You can tell it was handmade instead of purchased on the store. (Not sure if that is a good thing, but they are only the second and third benches I have ever made, so I will take it.)

I took a roast out of the freezer tonight so we can have a nice Sunday dinner together tomorrow. I just hope I actually can find some time to get dinner made somewhere in there. (We have the last Ward conference for the year tomorrow. Long day expected.)

Batman: the Brave and the Bold

Cartoon Network has started a new cartoon series Friday nights. Back in the day, there was a comic called "The Brave and The Bold", basically every issue was a teamup of a couple of characters in the DC universe. (A lot of the time it was Batman and someone else.)

It is only 2 episodes into it, but so far I like it. It is kind of fun, the tone of the show is not quite as dark as previous Batman cartoons. They seem to be taking characters that didn't get a lot of face time in previous cartoon series and running with it. It's not too intense for the girls, at least so far, least week they had little cell like guys being saved, this week they have plastic man as the teamup.

Now that I say this, it looks like it is not one next week, but picks up again on Dec 5th. If they keep it up along the lines they have so far, I say it is a keeper...

New gmail themes

Yesterday Gmail rolled out a new feature where you can select themes for your gmail page. I kind of like the change.


This one is called "Planets". I am not sure what planet this is being displayed, but I assume that if you leave the thing on the setting, it will change the background for you from time to time.

This one is called "Ninjas". The ninjas seem a little odd. They annoy me. I won't be using the Ninjas theme...

This one is "Marina" or something like that. It is the 'normal' theme I would pick.

And finally, the funniest of the bunch, a "terminal" theme. It takes me back to my days working the computer room as a student. It would be absolutely perfect if the browser would ring a little bell every time mail came in...

It is also good for stopping people from reading over your shoulder...

Bon Appetit

I have a one year gift subscription I can give for Bon Appetit magazine. Anyone want it?

The taping of the diaper

Lily has developed a habit of taking off all her clothes at night. I finally figured out why she has been doing this tonight. Quite often, we find ourselves chasing Ruth out of Lily's room after Lily has been put to bed. Ruth has differing reasons for being in there, tonight I realized the most popular reason. Ruth goes in there to change clothes. She gets the idea that she can go in and get some dress up stuff out, and strips down. Lily is just following suit.

The problem with this is that after Lily strips down, if her diaper is not a "clean canvas", she will take the diaper off, the diaper and contents end up on the floor. This is not a nice thing to wake up to. It's like "Monday morning at the monkey cages", not that I have ever worked at a zoo or spent any time with real monkeys.

One day last week, I changed her sheets twice, then got some packing tape and taped her diaper around her so she couldn't pull the tabs off. No tape on her skin, that would be mean, but just a row of tape around the diaper where the tabs are. Lily does not like this activity. Since I have been taping the diaper, we have found her stripped down several times, but the diaper remains.

Being the very polite 2 year old she is, this morning (or last night, they kind of blend together) I changed her diaper, and taped her up. She started crying about having to have the diaper taped up, once I got the onesie and pajamas back on her, she stopped crying and said "Thank you." I guess being taped up isn't that bad.

Pumpkin Carving Injury

This past week Emma said she still wanted to carve a pumpkin, I told her in the middle of the week that if she got her room clean by Saturday, I would help her carve a pumpkin. On Friday, Kate and Mary helped her clean her room, and on Saturday Emma made her bed. Pumpkin carving time.

I had bought a junky little carving set at the store before halloween, the little carving knife bent in two within the first minute of carving. I used a boning knife for the rest of the carving, which worked much better.

We used a little plastic template to make a girls face on the pumpkin. Emma seemed to enjoy it. At first she wanted to do the scarecrow template, but that one was rated "Expert", the girl was rated "Intermediate." For some reason, Emma wanted to take some of the insides with her to school, but I vetoed that decision and tossed all the innards in the trash.

I accidentally knocked one of the eyes out of the thing when I was trying to carve it, it still looks ok.

The injury? No blood. We had been keeping all the pumpkins on the front porch. When Emma went to get hers Lily was also out there, Lily took one of the little pumpkins and set it at the top of the steps. After dark, I left the house to go fill the van up with gas (Under $2 a gallon - Filled the tank for under $50...) but I didn't see the little pumpkin, stepped on it, and fell off the porch. My left hand still stung a little this morning, my right hand still hurts, my back is hurt, and my ankle hurts.

We be Lenders and Borrowers

We borrow things sometimes. Sometimes we are slow to return those things.

Things I know we have borrowed and are in our possession:

• Drew's mitre saw
• Drew's router

If there is something else, you had better tell me so I can get it back to you...

We also loan things when people ask, generally. Unless I don't think it is a good idea, then I say no. We generally loan these things out and forget about it until we go looking for that thing again. This can sometimes make it hard to get those things back. Case in point - my old electric scooter. It is lost to time. (It is unclear what happened to the thing, which was taken apart, after Tom moved out of the 200 South apartment...)

Things that we know are loaned out:

• "Mouse" sander and pads - I suspect Tom had this at one point, but his memory is hazy
• "Smallville" seasons 1 and 2 - Tom has this, and is still working his way through it.
• An adult bike - Missy has this, it wouldn't bother me at all of she keeps it and gives it a good home.
• Several muffin tins - This is suspected to be in a box with Missy and Steve's stuff.
• Zoo Tycoon 2 - This is also suspected to be in a box with Missy and Steve's stuff.

Why the post? Because I was going to sand the benches today. I want to have the benches completely done so we can use the big table for Thanksgiving dinner. I looked all over for that silly sander, and finally asked Tara if she had seen it. She reminded me that it was loaned out this summer. If Tom can't find it, I will have to call Drew to see if I can borrow his orbital sander. (Taking back his saw and router at the same time...)

Ono? Oh Yes!

We had plans to go to a play tonight, Tara got her niece Briana to babysit for us, but this morning the people that were going to go with us bailed out. Tara found someone else to go, we were going to dinner before.

This morning I took the minivan into the dealership to get it looked at. The check engine light popped on while we were on vacation, but it didn't go away on by itself, so I decided it was finally time to get it looked at. They ended up replacing some sort of vapor mechanism in the emissions system, and looked over the rest of the car. They also found that the serpentine belt was missing a number of teeth. The dealership was clean out of belts, and a new one will be in middle of next week, but thanks to the factory warranty, I got it all replaced for free, and got a car wash out of the thing.

In the middle of the afternoon, Tara ruined my going out to eat dream by reminding me that we had parent teacher conferences this evening. Anyone care to guess where I would rate meeting with teachers against going out to eat? We hurried through the conferences, the biggest concern brought up by the teachers was that Kate might be reading a little too much, and went to Bamboo Hut. I always get the ono chicken and something else (katsu chicken, usually), then decide I could have had a double portion of ono chicken. Not that there is anything wrong with the katsu.

Steve brought the truck down. I can now get an oil change and get it reregistered. And drive it around. And help people haul things around. First I need to vacuum out the dog hair and kibble that got spilled behind the seat. Looks like they had a good time with it.

The play we saw on campus tonight was a student written play called "Houseboat Honeymoon". The premise? A couple gets married, head for their honeymoon on a houseboat, his completely insane family arrives at the same houseboat for a vacation at the same time. Hilarity ensues.

End of Travelogue.

Another award

We had our annual ward Fall dinner this past Friday. (No Halloween activity this year.) If you remember, last year I won an award for my pumpkin dessert. This year people were supposed to bring a chili or a soup. Tara is co-chair of the activities committee now, and they decided (or were told) to have prizes for the stuff.

I decided Thursday night to work on the soup for the prize. The chili was good, but as a base, I used some chili I made and froze a month or so ago. (Tara couldn't tell I did this, so I guess I pulled it off.) I added some chicken wing sauce to the chili, not enough to over power the chili taste, but enough to just barely tell it was there. It was my little secret, but now you all know.

To make the soup, I started with butter, olive oil, 3 types of onion, and 3 types of bell peppers, I sweated these in the pot for a while until the entire house smelled like butter, onions, and peppers. I added plenty of spice, most of which I have forgotten at this point. (I was just tossing things in, not worrying about duplicating the recipe. Then I added water, beef bullion, potatoes, carrots, and spaghetti squash the pot and let these cook for a little while. Eventually, I browned up some cubed London Broil steak, and tossed those in. Then I let the soup simmer for a while.

It was very good soup. I was full well before we ever got to the church. Then I won the best soup prize. No golden soup pot, just candy. (There was no where near enough time between the decision to have prizes and the activity to think up with a 'golden pot' prize, much less find one...) I poured the candy out on the table for the girls to mow through. They seemed to appreciate it.

Not sure how to top this and last year at next years dinner...

Election day

On Tuesday I ran the polling place down at the elementary school. We show up at 6am to get things started and get ready for the polls to open at 7am. Normally what I do is get one machine going, then work on three at a time, then get all the rest going. They are nearly always all ready by 7am, but this election they gave me 21 machines to work on. There was no way all those machines were going to be up and running by 7am.

By 6:30am the line started queuing up outside the door. I had something like 8 or 10 machines going at 7am, and we had hundreds of people come in the door all at once. It was insanity. It took me until nearly 8am to get all the machines going because of all the people trying to vote.

By about 9:30am, order had been restored, we got rid of our lines, things stayed busy, just no waiting. (All our machines were in use at once more plenty of times during the day.) I fully expected to have insanity rear its ugly head again by 6pm, but at about 6:30pm, things went completely and totally dead. We did over 1500 voters Tuesday, only about 100 of them in the last 2 hours. We have early voting out here, a couple of the poll workers got bored and counted up the number of early voters for our polling place, 800 people early voted. I guess it works to get the lines down on election day. (Although it would have been nice to start out with our normal 6 voters right at 7am...)

By late afternoon my back, calves, and feet just out and out hurt. Normally I get time to sit, but not this election. It took me about 3 full days to feel like I could walk normally again. My biggest consolation of the day was at the end, when I was reconciling voters to votes, and they balanced. It saves a lot of time when the numbers balance...

7 Years old

Mary is now seven. (Her birthday was Friday.) We let her open some presents today, tomorrow we are having cake and ice cream. (For those I haven't invited, and you see this tomorrow, come on over...)

Some pictures from the opening of the presents:

Less excitement than the Webkins she got from Grandma Payne a couple of days ago, but excitement none the less...

Lily makes plans for later.At least she seems to enjoy what she is getting...The vultures descend.

Semi Annual "Daylight Saving" rant

OK, it's that time of year again, where I normally go off about fiddling with clocks. (OK, so it is not normally this time of year, but a few weeks back. It's all really silly.)

I am going to spare everyone the normal rant this time. I have something else to talk about.

I have been using my cell phone for a couple of months as an alarm clock. It can sometimes make a pretty convincing argument about my needing to get up out of bed sometimes. Last night I didn't worry about setting any clocks back. I had the alarm on my phone, and figured it would ring at the appropriate time just like any other morning. Unfortunately for me, my phone is more like a computer, and less like an alarm clock. The alarm went off at 6:30am, not 7:30am as I expected it to. It set the time back, but also set the ringer back. I didn't know cell phones worked on GMT, but they must. Or there is a bug in the software on my particular model...

I still think we shouldn't be switching to Daylight "Saving" at all...

The truck is running

This morning, Tom came over, and someone from my ward who works on cars came over, we diagnosed the problem with the truck. The distributor had lots of evidence of water, it looks like the ignition module had gotten water in it. The guy from my ward went home after he helped us figure out what the problem was. He thought the part would cost potentially a couple of hundred dollars.

Tom and I took it down to AutoZone, they tested the thing, and it had a failure. We got a new one which only cost $40, and a new distributor cap, and put everything back together. The truck started right up. Looks like I didn't mix up any spark plug wires.

Tom's car has a expired registration as of today. He needs to replace his windshield. He borrowed the truck to have something to drive around until he gets his car back on the road.

Thing 1 and Thing 2

At one point while we were in Florida, we talked about just getting shirts and making everyone "Things" (From The Cat in the Hat) We thought about having Thing 1, Thing 2, Thing 3, Thing 4, etc. The girls were not all that excited about the idea. Tara and I still did it, Tara made the shirts.

Wizard Kate

Kate had a "Harry Potter" themed costume that Tara made. They ended up curling her hair the night before. She was impressed by the costume Tara made for her.

Rock Star Mary

Mary wanted to be Hannah Montana for Halloween. This is the hair that would not stay on. You can't see the shoes that broke or the skirt that Tara made to go with it.

Snow White

We also had a Snow White in the house. I guess there was a little confusion at the school until Emma's teachers realized it was her. Is was a good disguise.

Princess Ruth

Ruth wanted to be a princess this year for Halloween. Tara used a costume she made a year or two ago, it was just a little bit big. (It had to be pinned up in the back.)

Ruth made a little Halloween house at her preschool. All the girls enjoyed eating it.

Lily's 2 costumes

Lily started the day as a bumblebee. With a stinger. When we were getting ready to go last night, she refused to put on the costume. Tara found her an old ballerina outfit, slightly used. Lily seemed ok with this.

At one point while we were out there, Lily decided that she no longer wanted to put her candy in her sack. Her hands kept getting more and more full. It was sort of funny, but also sort of not funny...

Super Adam

Trick or Treat - mostly treats

Last night we went trick or treating with the girls. Tara will post the costumes she made on her blog soon, we took some pictures of the girls that I will post.

For the last couple of years we have been taking the girls down to the Downtown Business alliance Trick or Treat thing. We went last night, but it was a total zoo down there. Lots and lots of kids all over the place, many more than past years. We went about 2 blocks, and even the girls were ready to go since they kept getting pushed and shoved and separated from each other.

I ended up taking the girls around the neighborhood to people we knew. Mary kept losing her wig, then had her shoe break. I ended up calling Tara, she brought Mary new shoes and took Lily home. The girls have a lot of candy now. We gave a bunch to Tom this morning, but there is still a lot to go.

Making copies...

At lunchtime yesterday, I found myself copying a copyrighted book. (I won't mention the book, I don't want people in dark suits knocking on my door.) I copied the book because I needed to mark it up for a think at work. It was my director's book, and costs $200, we didn't think he would appreciate my returning it all marked up, so I made a copy of it.

I couldn't find any of the office staff, so I had to do it myself. (Yesterday was the day it was ok to dress like a pirate, so I figured it would be ok to act like one...) While sitting there copying page after page, I was reminded of the time when I was 13(?). I had somehow gotten roped into working as the AV guy for night school at the high school. I don't remember how this happened. They paid me $2 an hour. This lead to very small checks.

The director guy of the night school would often give me some book he was reading, and have me copy a whole bunch of pages out of these books. (Like over 100 at a time.) I don't remember what in the world these books were about, or where they came from. All I remember is that I would sit there for a long time making copies of page after page, would wonder if the high school office staff knew their paper was being used for copying of the books. Then I would wonder why he needed a copy of the book. Then I would wonder if all of it was worth $2 an hour...