Postcard Puzzle

 J and E have been sending me a postcard puzzle.  I don't think they cut it correctly.

Out of Town Visitor

Not a euphemism.  My old coworker, Joe.  As in we used to work together, not that either of us is old. We're not!  My old coworker, Joe, was in town for a new job over at phData, doing his video training.  Last night he trained (as in on a train, not watching corporate videos) down to the MoA and Eryn, Lara, and I picked him up and took him to the D Spot for wings in Oakdale.  We met Erik, Jestine, Pat, and Jessica there, so we had a full on mini reunion of sorts.  It was a pretty nice evening getting to see everyone after three months.

Tonight I stayed in town late and met up with him at his hotel and walked to Town Hall Brewery for beer and dinner.  He seems pretty sure he made the right move.  Does not surprise me.  We had some of the some complaints.  About the same things and the same people.  It's a bummer he lives in another state, but I'll probably get to see him in January again when he's back for 2020 planning.

Skype-i-ness

My sister discovered Skype.  So I thought it was time I posted a few photos from recent Skype sessions:

Ming, trying to break the rumors/stereotypes about Malaysians.  This is his idea of "really really big".


My Dad.  Obviously unfamiliar with how Skype works.


e and daughter, e-jr.


Babies love the camera.  It's delicious and fun to smudge.


My niece, happy about her new shirt.


Her new shirt, a unicorn pooping marshmallows.


My niece, channeling Eric Conveys an Emotion.  I believe in this photo she's being a haughty, evil queen.


This is her crazy look.  She also had a big-pimpin look where she was showing me a roll of benjamins, but I lost the photo.


My sister and her girls, a totem pole of sorts.  Although it's more Mount Rushmore-ish.  But I can't think of a Mount Rush-blank joke that's funny at all and, even if I could, it'd probably end up being inadvertently racist.


LissyJo, NO DUCKFACE!!!  (alt. no duckface link at The Chive).

Double Play

We had an interesting weekend. On Friday night, we went to see Iqbal at the Children's Theatre Company. It was about Pakistani children sold into what amounts to slavery, working as weavers for a man who lets them believe that someday, if they work off all their tallies on their chalk board, they might escape. Iqbal, the title character, is a better than average weaver who rebels, eventually escaping (despite being in dungeon) and hooking up with an aid agency committed to getting rid of the sweatshops. In the end, Iqbal is gunned down by rug merchants (they don't show that part) who want revenge. I'm not so sure it was appropriate for a five year old with the hitting, off screen death, super hot dungeon, child slavery, and whatnot, but Eryn seemed to enjoy it. At least more so than Kyle, whose only appreciation of the play was an off-colored remark on Facebook that he spent quite some time backpedalling on after my father and coworker Qaiser weighed in on the significance of Iqbal.

Friday night after the play, I was Skyping with Klund, and he suggested we come down to watch his son in the St. Peter children's theater production of The Boxcar Children. We had a family discussion about the necessity of finishing taxes and homework, before deciding f*** it and heading down on Saturday. Klund's family was overly hospitable once again and fed us, put us up for the night in a guest room, geocached with us, and introduced us to the joys of Mario Kart with the grandparents. I try to supply beer, although bringing Schell's beer to St. Peter is the literal interpretation of "carrying coals to Newcastle".

The play was great and the kids did an excellent job. I wasn't familiar with the Boxcar series, but it vaguely reminded me of the Lemony Snickett series in some ways, and not just because there was a girl named Violet.

We did try something new during our visit to St. Peter. We've often driven past the Treaty Signing Center on the edge of town, so this time we stopped. While I appreciate that they're documenting history, the museum is not that exciting. The whole time we were there, we were the only visitors. It needs a little more pizazz. Here are the highlights as I saw them.

Eryn eating a fake loaf of bread at the virtual picnic display. It would have been more exciting if you could have purchased a real pie to eat on the picnic blanket. I like the look on Eryn's face. Look at how stupid I feel eating fake bread for Dad!


Pooteewheet and Eryn enjoying a fake pie with some St. Peter settlers.


Some important information about muskrats. Winter and early spring. Good eatin. Warm months, not so much. You can use this poem next time you're muskrat hunting. "Muskrat winter, muskrat spring, tasty little thing. Muskrat fall, muskrat summer, muskrat pie's a real bummer."

GPS Skullduggery

I apologize for a dry spell lately. I have a new Blackberry and I recorded a bunch of fun photos on it and then realized I deleted them before it was actually done emailing them, which means they're completely gone. I'm wiser, yet sad. Gone is my picture of Kyle eating breakfast with Ming and I over the weekend. Gone are the pictures I took at my father in law's 60th birthday. A loss because they were fun pictures of kids. But at least I don't have to explain why I don't have any pictures of the bevy of women with their T&A falling out who were at the boxing match next door. Gone is my picture of a guy who looks like She Says' husband in silhouette, pointing at a hair stylist sign just as she was complaining he needed a haircut. Gone is a picture of a second sign from the same location where a guy seems to be doing something unmentionable to himself. However, I still have pictures of a Snuglie and one of Pimento's eggs, so I'll post those later.

I did learn how to record Eryn saying "I love you Dad" onto the Blackberry. At least I have that going for me. I can annoy other managers with cutesy kid crap until they're done with me.

She Says sent me a warning today about the evils of owning a GPS. This isn't a huge deal as I don't own one and, just like everyone else, I'm cutting back on spending so I'm unlikely to buy one. But it was interesting because a local blogger, Bill Roehl of Lazy Lightning, blogged about exactly the reverse on the same day, and even in my county. So now I don't know what to do...it's a real poser. Buy a GPS so a thief can capture it. Or buy a GPS to capture a thief.

From She Says:

GPS
A couple of weeks ago a friend told me that someone she knew had their car broken into while they were at a football match. Their car was parked on the green which was adjacent to the football stadium and specially allotted to football fans. Things stolen from the car included a garage door remote control, some money and a GPS which had been prominently mounted on the dashboard..

When the victims got home, they found that their house had been ransacked and just about everything worth anything had been stolen.

The thieves had used the GPS to guide them to the house. They then used the garage remote control to open the garage door and gain entry to the house. The thieves knew the owners were at the football game, they knew what time the game was scheduled to finish and so they knew how much time they had to clean up the house. It would appear that they had brought a truck to empty the house of its contents.


From Lazy Lightning:

The first is a complaint out of Burnsville about someone receiving stolen property...

“The Officer plugged the GPS unit into his vehicle and determined where the “home†location was for the unit. The Officer contacted an individual listed to that location and determined that an individual who resides there has the same make and model GPS unit. The passenger got picked up by his ride and the suspect vehicle was inventoried and towed."

Pain

Someone - two someones actually, my aunt-in-law among them - asked me today about all my issues from the past few months. Restless leg (less of an issue now that I drink less caffeine, and even less so when I'm not drinking within a few hours of bedtime). Hemorrhoid surgery. Kidney Stone. And I noted that I was happy about these things because they were finite. They had a start, and they had an end. Per the brackets above, the restless legs seem at least somewhat under control. I'm not going sleepless for weeks at a time. The surgery happened and was over. There's recovery. But I'm capable of riding my bike trainer despite the healing process. And the kidney stone. Well, passing that was the most painful thing I've ever done, but the whole event was done in two days and only involved four forty-minute episodes, only the last one being a heaving pain fest, and some concern about peeing on the floor because the filter sprays urine in 256 directions. Yes, I could have one of the other stones they CT-ed drop loose. But it's still an event with an end.

So I look at my friends. Tall Brad who threw his back. Again. Presumably having problems lifting his daughter or pulling her in the sled I gave him. And definitely laying out some big bucks for a bed in order to address the issue. Mean Mr. Mustard who also has back problems that x-rays can't identify. At least not yet. I can feel the disruption in his life over morning coffee and how it exacerbates all the other issues he faces. My admin, who is back at the doctor for a second round of combating breast cancer. My wife, who has spent over two years with nerve pain and is combating it with four rounds of painful shots interspersed with hopping on and off narcotics. A process which takes her away from our family for a day or two each time she has to DT.

My issues, despite that they seem to be related to turning 40 in some weird way, are contained and manageable and the end is right there where I can grasp it and deal with it and know I'm coming out the other side. I am thankful for how fortunate I am and that how limited my pain has been leaves me time to listen to my friends and family, have breakfast with them, and do what I can to help them through their pain, and hopefully provide them some ability to laugh at my travails and extrapolate that if there's an end in sight in the short term, maybe there's an end in sight in the long term.

Sledding at Elm Creek Park Reserve

Last weekend we went sledding with Kyle, Matthew, Cynthia, Jonny and Zoe at the Elm Creek Park Reserve. We did the same thing last year (sans Matthew, Cynthia, Jonny and Zoe), so it's been an annual event for two years (Flickr Photostream), although Kyle's chicken stew with dumplings made a much stronger showing than his uncooked roasts from 2008. On a positive note, I seem to be far enough past surgery (despite going in for a checkup yesterday) that sledding was a possibility. That's a positive development.

Cynthia and Zoe. Cynthia likes to put on the break a lot.


The whole group, except Pooteewheet, who's taking the pictures. Last year you could slide down from further up the hill. This year they left some of the weeds in place. Weeds do not make for a good sledding surface.


Matthew, who doesn't care if he goes barreling down the hill with his children at a high rate of speed. He doesn't believe in foot brakes.


Kyle, likewise inclined. Enclined? But then it's not his kid. Just some nephew.


Zoe likes sledding just that much.


For a while Eryn was practicing stunt falls. She was having fun, but to a 40 year old they looked dangerous as hell. Later Matthew smacked me with a sled as I was coming down the hill and pushed me (you know you pushed me. It was your fault as soon as that sled touched me) into a frozen orange cone that covered a chunk of cement, so I got mine. Eryn announced at the end of the day that she wanted to do "one more" and promptly ran into the same cone, smacking her arm. We thought she was going to hit her leg instead, which she was holding out stiffly in front of her, but she managed to miss it, avoiding a potential broken bone. It'll ruin our whole "grandpa broke your arm" schtick if she breaks something on our watch.


Making sure she's on the sled.


Movies! Everyone sledding!


The Scooter perspective

Holiday Photos

The holidays were busy. I was recovering from surgery, my folks were in town, and we had family pictures, Macy's, my niece's first birthday, Colin's birthday, other birthdays, Christmas Eve, Christmas morning, Christmas afternoon, New Year's... Nonstop festivities. So here are a few photos for the family.

I wasn't at this event. I was laying at home on the couch in a percoset fugue. Adele is checking out the sword I made for her Korean toll (?) where she picks an item and it determines her future. The sword wasn't the first item picked, despite my effort to make it very shiny and attractive to babies. Apparently I should have coated it with chocolate as well, because it doesn't look like it tastes all that good. I did send along some Hostess Cupcakes in case there was a repeat of the carrot birthday cake fiasco.



I can't believe my sword tasted worse than a used toilet stopper. Nasty.


We had the family photos at the Walker Sculpture Garden. Not in front of the big cherry, but in the arboretum area with the big glass fish. The photographer wanted me to help move some planters and I had to explain that moving concrete blocks was off my list after surgery. After the pictures, we went to Macy's to see the elves living in Santa's workshop display. Eryn and Ame' wore their matching dresses. However, Eryn later took a tumble on the escalator which ensured that her holey, bloody tights in no way matched Ame's.


Ame' doesn't get a lot of candy at her house. Grandma indulged her at Macy's. She's the Charlton Heston of candy fiends. You'd have to pry those bones out of her cold dead hands if you wanted to take them away.


Eryn at the company Christmas party meeting with the Clauses.


And one reindeer.


And getting her picture taken in front of the poinsettia tree.


Christmas before Christmas Eve. We opened our presents so we didn't have to haul them north of the cities and haul them back again. A good idea as the car was full on the way home. In this photo, Eryn is confused because she's just gotten a big bag full of rocks. Several of them.


Ah...a rock polisher. A real one that's designed to run forever and ever, not a Discovery Channel piece of crap which broke after three days and which my wife has hidden somewhere in the house so I don't have to look at it so there's no possibility of a divorce over my irritation with junk in the house and her irritation that I'm obsessed with getting rid of junk in the house, even that junk which she feels might not be junk.

All of which reminds me, it's (the new one) been running downstairs for a week and it's probably time to check the rocks.


Christmas Eve. My mother learning how to play Raving Rabbits on the Wii.


Ame's most hated game on the Wii. Raving Rabbits' pull the worms out of the rabbits teeth game. Only slightly less scary than Artie's new remote controlled brontosaurus.


A tap dancing fairy princess ballerina vetinarian. At least if you asked Lemony Snickett. Adele is somewhere under that pile of Jurassic Park.


Grandpa gets a hug for electronic battleship. And yes, my brother's tree does have some sort of problem that might best be solved by dropping some viagara in the water resevoir.


Artie wants to know where my face went. I'm wearing that hoody right now. It's creepy and super comfortable. If it were managerial, it would be perfect.


Christmas morning. Eryn is excited about the second part of the Lion, The Witch and Wardrobe series she got from Santa. She'd been wanting it since long before it came out. I don't believe, 12 days later, that she's watched it end to end yet.


Christmas afternoon. Cousin Max sporting his Obama shirt and talking to Santa.

St. Peter

After Thanksgiving and the day of finding the toad geocache, the family rolled down to St. Peter to visit Klund and his family. Mean Mr. Mustard was supposed to show up, but didn't (his blog says his wife was too busy reading Twilight). And Tall Brad's family was supposed to show up, and did. At least 66.7% did, which is probably a valid number if you're referring to the number of members, or the total height.

We had a busy weekend, visiting Brad's baby (Anika), playing rock band (I didn't sing until Brad was busy changing Anika. For the record, my first Rock Band singing experience was "Mississippi Queen"), listening to stories about where Brad shops for pants, mass shoveling snow, watching the Lego Mindstorms competition, geocaching, eating Ms. Klund's wonderful food (and Brad's spicy queso, which I put on tacos the next day), playing Link's Crossbow with the whole family (grandparents included), doing acrobatics on the Ikea ladder and grips (that was Eryn, not me or Pooteewheet), and I'm sure there are many things I'm missing. I pulled out a few pictures below and others can be found in the Flickr set.

The kids asking for food.


Klund demonstrating that if the river were to flood, he could bob with his head above water, but all the children would be goners.


No trip to St. Peter is complete without a picture of the Pearly Gates. There's a chart somewhere that tracks Flickr pictures of the gates and the resulting number is divided by the cost to build to justify the taxpayer expense.


Lego Mindstorms competition. Lego heads.


This is what happens when Mindstorms robots go horribly astray from their programmed path, seeding destruction throughout St. Peter.

Halloween 2008

The past few years Eryn has dressed up like a cute animal: a pig, an octopus, a green kitty. We've really approved of these as they're uber-cute. But this year, she decided she wanted to go with something less little kid and more in line with her obsessions, so she was Hermione Granger from the Harry Potter series. Here she is at the school festivities. Pooteewheet and I were there as well. She was in charge of caramel apples. I was in charge of orange sherbet topped with 7-up.


Eryn and one of her school friends.


The annual school Halloween parade.
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The whole class dressed up for the day.


Not one Hermione, but two! Someone is in their cups with the polyjuice potion. And look at that Snape...he hates Gryffindor. 10 points off each Hermione for duplication!


Eryn and Conner trick or treating in our neighborhood. Colin went as Tigger.


Running away after a particularly cunning trick.


The "Halloween House" in the cul-de-sac near our place. That's a lot of Halloween bling.


Eryn enjoying a dismembered body.


Skull in the mail box.


Skull-spider. One of my favorites of the evening.