Sunday, October 29, 2006

Weekend at Large

My weekend was all over the place. I already posted about working on the rental property on Friday, and we followed up with more of the same today - painting, cleaning, scrubbing, picking up old cigarettes. Eryn was a big help with that last part. It was interesting to note that in a house that didn't allow smoking, all the paint near the entryway, which was painted the same interior color as the rest of the house six months ago, was now a yellowish color (I repainted) that brightened back to the orginal white the further you got from the door. Pretty sure that wasn't the sun. I hadn't posted a picture of the Pod completely full of junk, so here it is, just to provide some closure.


Did you know that while you're away, the Furnace Fairy can show up and leave you information about the PPM CO and % of O2 your furnace is producing? Intriguing. I guess it might have been Furnace Claus, but Furnace Fairy is much more amusing. Regardless, the Furnace Fairy left a nice note under my pillow that indicated no need to fix my furnace - better than a quarter!
Does anyone know why in Stargate SG-1, they always build their towns so close to the stargate if they're worried the parasite aliens are going to show up unannounced and enslave random villagers? Wouldn't they be better off building far away and setting up some sort of relay system? After all, it's not like the parasitic aliens come rolling in riding Humvees or something, they're just casually walking. You'd think with a few miles between you and the stargate you'd almost never get caught. I mean, even the ones who do hide don't run for cover until they see the lights flashing in their backyard. Just saying.

Yesterday was Conner's third birthday, so we traveled out to Maple Lake (I hate Maple Lake - I got a ticket from a crooked cop there) to enjoy a very tasty breakfast courtesy of his grandpa and grandma and deliver a big set of Home Depot tools. We generally try to stay away from things with lots of pieces that make lots of noise and use lots of batteries, but we'd been good for three years, so it was time for a trifecta. Here the kids are exploring the difference between flat head and phillips. Pooteewheet is realizing she sat on one of those plastic screws and likes it.


Dan and Eryn wondering when the cake is going to be served or whether there will eventually be beer because someone drank all the champagne for the mimosa, but none of the orange juice. I'll leave it to you to decide which one likes cake and which one likes beer.


The birthday monster. No, he wasn't really a monster, he was just pretending. That orange frosting is serious stuff. The adults made due with less sugary fare (and ice cream).


Eryn at Cookie Queen's parents' house just hanging at their Halloween display. Do you know why warlocks can't have babies? They have hollow weenies! My mother told me that one. Apparently it's on a big sign in Tucson, AZ. Cookie Queen told me that there was a guy dressed up as Michele Bachmann at the costume party they went to the evening of Conner's birthday. She said it involved him explaining to everyone that he was Michele Bachmann. You'd think God would have told them before she got there.


Eryn took a self portrait during some downtime. Here's her eyeball.


In my down time I did some drinking with Kyle. We swung by Blue Max Liquors and found a variety of tasty looking concoctions. Short review, The Poet was actually pretty good for a porter - no funny aftertaste, really drinkable. My favorite out of the four below. Flying Dog Octoberfest - a good Octoberfest, but I think they all taste very similar (Octoberfests that is, not Flying Dogs). Snow Storm - varies from year to year. Good this year, but certainly not up to the year they did that berry thing. Killer Penguin barleywine - good. A bit light on the alcohol for a barleywine. However, the $5.50 price tag pretty much guarantees I won't buy it again, because for that price it better be quite a bit more than "good", it better be exceptional.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

"Does anyone know why in Stargate SG-1, they always build their towns so close to the stargate if they're worried the parasite aliens are going to show up unannounced and enslave random villagers?"

Ok, putting aside that "it's a show" let's enter the realm for a second. And we find in the real world that often real cities form and are built where there are ports. New York, Amsterdam, etc. Usually people congregate at the location of a point of embarkation. Ships entering for trade, delivering goods, etc. And non-coastal centers of population grow around the confluence of rivers, for example Pittsburgh, Washington, etc. You are right, sometimes this is not the wisest place to build (New Orleans for example), but it doesn't seem that unreasonable that whatever villagers might tend to have sites located near a gate.


"Wouldn't they be better off building far away and setting up some sort of relay system? After all, it's not like the parasitic aliens come rolling in riding Humvees or something, they're just casually walking. You'd think with a few miles between you and the stargate you'd almost never get caught. I mean, even the ones who do hide don't run for cover until they see the lights flashing in their backyard. "

Remember, the Goa'uld do have ships. Both Motherships and death gliders. And a death glider can fit through a gate too, so they can do more than casually walk. In atlantis they have another enemy the Wraith, and they do strafing runs with theirs.

In any case, if you enjoy Stargate, SG1 needs your help. They've saved the earth for us many times, now it's time for us to help SG1. You know, that 2 people at NBC Universal/SciFi channel (Mark Stern & Bonnie Hammer) cancelled the show on them right during the celebration of their 200th episode party. Not the best thing to do to cancel one of your best shows, even less couthful to dump the news right during the cast party. And all the cast are happy and had already signed up for doing the next season. And not only that, this Mark Stern character vowed that even though they have cut it, they have slipped a clause into the contract that stops any other American channel from picking it up. If it was so worthless, then why keep your throwaways from being fostered by people who do care about it, hm. Oh, and what did these 2 put on the SCIFI channel to replace it? Fake Professional Wrestling. Yes, on the science fiction channel. These 2 execs there are definitely clueless, and have irked viewers and caused a huge backlash against NBC Universal/Scifi from people who had actually called their cable companies in order to get the channel BECAUSE of Stargate. SciFi forgets that.

In any case, if you care about the show, there is a site where thousands of people are taking action to help STARGATE. http://www.TheSuperGate.com

There's a forum, chat, podcasts, avatars, graphics, posts about what to do, and who to contact, they've got all the addresses of all the NBC execs, and parent company GE. How to call them for free. Email campaigns, petitions, and tons of people are all there doing all kinds of missions to champion the show that has given us so much enjoyment.

www.TheSuperGate.com

Try that. You need to reg to see the hidden member only areas that have tons of good stuff. And there are people from the gate crew on there.

Help if you can.

pete said...

I was going to say something about Stargate and the locations but anonymous got a little too nerdy for me. :)

Sorry to hear about the eviction, holy crap that really sucks. When we grab that next beer you will have to tell me all about it. :\