Smells Like Working Code

Erik and Jestine sent me a holidays present. It was a little startling because it came in this Styrofoam package with huge orange fragile stickers on it and heavily wrapped in tape to hold the two pieces together in what seemed like almost an airtight fashion.  If I wanted to picture what receiving an organ in the mail would look like, it pretty much fit the bill.

What was inside was almost as terrifying as a human organ..  They sent me a Smells Like Working Code candle to go with my Will Code for Coffee mug with Erik's...mug...on the front.  I've got to give it to this candle.  I use my office/game room as a bicycling room as well and I'll do an hour on the trainer with the door closed.  The temperature will skyrocket almost 15 degrees sometimes I put so much heat/energy into the air.  You probably can't imagine the sweat.  It's like I'm walking out of a sauna.  However....two minutes of the Smells Like Working Code candle and the room no longer smells like sweat.  It smells like an incredibly powerful and floral candle...mixed with sweat.

 

Lit up to provide that bit of ambience every blog post needs. That photo is scratch and sniff.  Try it.

Holidazzle

Pooteewheet, Eryn and I took Ming's advice and went downtown over the weekend to see the Holidazzle parade on Nicollet Avenue.  We'd never been before and, I can honestly say after having been once, I will never go again.  I don't mind standing outside in the cold.  I used to do it at Bockfest each year.  That was fine (although having a beer, like at Bockfest, would have been a boon).  The corner near Macy's was a perfect place to hear the tunes coming off the floats, and the temperature wasn't bad at all - sneaker temps, not snowboot temps.  And I didn't have to listen to Pooteewheet or Eryn complain, because they could stay in the skyway, warm and snuggly, and still me standing on the street below.

What I didn't enjoy was that the parade was less than a dozen floats long, and they didn't make an effort to shut down traffic, so each float was separated by several minutes of NOTHING before the next float, delayed by red lights, finally went past.  Standing in the cold watching a parade is great.  Standing in the cold watching an empty street is annoying.

But here are some pictures, taken many minutes apart.  Pinocchio!  He's friends with the Target dog.


The little kids dressed as giraffes were cute.


Eryn and Pooteewheet in the skyway.  Note the huge space around this particular member of the parade.


With music...

Mother's Day

I asked Eryn today if we should get Mom a massage for Mother's Day. She very seriously told me that wasn't necessary because she had made Pooteewheet a coupon book at school, and it included a free backrub. Looks like she'll be going to Ironman instead.

12 Days of Holiday Vacation

Eryn had to write up what she did for her 12 days of holiday vacation, which were really 11 days because the 12th day was today when she went back to school. I was home the entire time, so I got to help her think about what she did (although I'm not going to illustrate it like she had to). Here's what we came up with:

1. Christmas Eve at Lissy Jo's (my sister) with my side of the family. Lots of loud music and a bit of crying about a Lego helicopter because it came apart (go figure). Fondue. Eryn came home with my sister's saxophone. She did not write about the bottle of scotch and wifi detecting t-shirt I got from my Secret Santa.
2. Christmas with my inlaws up in the northern burbs. Santa showed up. Great Grandma Millie made an off colored comment about sitting on Santa's lap. Eryn likes to sing she saw Millie kissing Santa Claus. I won the hold 'em game and donated the money to the Eagan Food Shelf fund we started.
3. Sledding at the local (Rahn) hill. A bit icy, but lots of fun on the little twister sled. My nephews came over later to walk Luna (the dog).
4. Princess and the Frog. Good music, ok movie.
5. Uncle Frankie's for chili fries and Surdyk's to spend my birthday gift certificate (another bottle of scotch I can't drink until I bike more). Avatar. Less music, more movie. We saw it at Riverplace with my inlaws. It was all pretty good for Eryn until the last 20 minutes where there was a little too much up close violence. The real problem was that it was about an hour too long and she was hamming up the little kid aspect for the grandparents. At the end I asked, "Too scary?" Eryn replied, "Yes." I said, "Then we shouldn't do PG-13 movies." Eryn, "Oh no. It wasn't that scary. Just a little bit. I wasn't scared."
6. Daddy-daughter day at The Blast (Eagan indoor playground) and doing experiments with water (previously covered).
7. Tubing at Buck Hill. I can't believe Eryn is scared of roller coasters, because that's much scarier. She didn't go down alone, however. We went down lashed together in the "family lanes" on the far end. The first few times we went on the second to last lane, which was pretty wide and fast, but uneventful. Then we switched to the last lane which was narrower and pushed us around a bit. I don't think I've ever seen such a look of terror on Eryn's face as when she spun into the lead of our two-tube raft. But she was game to go again. And again. And again. Juliet and Simone, we apologize for running you both over. I'm big - my tube is just naturally going to go a bit further. You should stay out of my way (I'm glad no one got hurt). When we were done with our two hours, we hit Ring Mountain for dessert.
8. New Year's preparations. Pooteewheet did a lot of cleaning. Eryn did a lot of dusting and spent a few hours at Morgan's house. I did some heavy moving but otherwise tried to stay out of the way. After 6:00 p.m. New Year's commenced. We lost Matthew and Cynthia and family, but gained Tjandra for the evening. In addition to Ming's family, Dan'l's family, and Kyle, that was a pretty good turnout. I lost right away in hold 'em, but took over Eryn's hand when she got bored. That money was also donated to the Eagan food shelf jar.
9. Eryn stayed in her red pajamas that Grandma Ellen made all day and watched an abnormal amount of So You Think You're Smarter Than a 5th Grader. I laid around as well, although primarily with an upset stomach from New Year's drinking (doh...idiot).
10. Walker Art Center Family Day. We listened to some music by Clementown, whose songs are based on the poetry/books of Calef Brown (who was also there) and toured the exhibits while Eryn drew a few pictures in her sketch pad of those she thought were most interesting. She particularly liked the upside-down-city by Claes Oldenburg and was interested in the glass chunk chandeliers the artist who has the studio next to Grandpa Larry created. Pooteewheet finally got to open her birthday present, a GPS for her car. For our anniversary she'd opened a carrying case for a GPS. And for Christmas she'd opened a stand for a GPS. She had an inkling. We did Christo's for lunch and La Fonda's for dinner, which is an extravagant amount of eating out, but the evening event was to celebrate Pooteewheet's birthday.
11. Breakfast with Ming, his family, his friend, and Kyle at the Capital View Cafe. Lots of delicious tex-mexy breakfast. I went with the chorizo omelet. Eryn devoured a few pancakes and made some drawing of Logan that looked like a millipede. Logan continued to insist that the car park I alluded to owning on New Year's Eve was a myth, despite the multiple trucks I had produced. The rest of the day was catch up. Bills. Homework. Email. And a bit of Dexter season three to round out the weekend.

Lot busier than it seemed. But given how fast the time flew, it makes sense that we were doing something almost every day.

Easter

I post these not because LissyJo asked for them - that just encourages me not to - but because they were on my list of things to do, already open in individual tabs, I just hadn't gotten that far. But now she's ruined it. Very un-situational-leadership like of her.

Ame' and Eryn looking for eggs. Princesses get extra eggs.


Ame' has found one. She will hug it and cuddle it and love it and kiss it and call it her squishy.


F ya! This is my egg. You want to take it? You'll have to take me. Try it biatch! Colin isn't sure what he's got, but you can't have it because it matches his hoodie.


Ooooo....ooooo...nobody take them. Ahhh! Ahh!!!! Stay away! Conner looks very protective.


Dellie finds the egg her Dad couldn't find.


Eryn wearing her Christmas dress to find eggs. I don't think the discontinuity has affected her mood one bit.

Bunny or the Egg

Which came first, the Easter Bunny or the egg? Eryn's pretty sure it's the egg. Because she has to dye them and leave them in the fridge before the Easter Bunny will hide them. This year, Eryn mixed vegetable oil with the egg dye to get a marbled look. It turned out pretty well. That shirt is from Ming, Kyle and my's trip through Wisconsin on the bicycle trails. She loves it, which makes me very happy.


The eggs. 11, if you're counting. Number 12 got dropped. I like the bluish-gray vegetable oiled egg.

Easter!

I swear Easter is basically about cleaning up the house before company arrives. It does help me gain a perspective on how much junk is floating around the house. So for a few hours, until the five children dispersed all the toys and marshmallow guns and candy, it looked pretty good. We had the Cookie Queen family and my sister's family over for some egg hunting and grilling. That's right - we grilled for Easter. Ingenious. If I ever do a ham, I think I'm just going to throw it on the grill for expediency.

For a while I was in charge of tossing a spongy softball in a game of Heads Up! The best part about that was that I managed to unload an extraneous softball glove. My day is happiest when something leaves the house. I was particularly pleased that after the marshmallow guns came out, Eryn drew an engineering-esque comparison between the guns and the rocket launcher she got for selling magazines. She carefully put a marshmallow in the end of the rocket launcher and shot it at Dan'l.

I should have some pictures to post by tomorrow when Pooteewheet's camera finishes a lengthy download.

Bunny Residue

The Easter Bunny left behind a half chewed carrot bit. Can it be eaten worry free, or do you have to worry about an ETD?

In line with that question, a retro look at one of the most popular posts on my blog (per statcounter), specifically because of the picture that gave the post its name.

Family Photo Blogging

I need to catch up on a few pictures of the kids for friends and family that read the blog. So today's post will be pictures from before the holidays and tomorrow's post will be pictures from the holidays. I'd have posted these some time ago, but the whole surgery debacle interrupted my normal picture commentary.

I could blog about the Vikings game instead, as I was there last night with Ming, Mike and Adam, but the less said about that whole mess the better. I should append that my favorite exchange of the evening was in the men's bathroom where an Eagles fan bellowed during a very crowded halftime, "The Eagles' fans are in the bathroom!" Followed closely by "That's where assholes belong." Followed shortly thereafter by the first voice exclaiming, "Hey, don't push me, I'm peeing!"

Ming and Eryn fighting after the pizza event. This is why there are video games. So no one loses an eye. Unless it's from a flying Wii remote.


Eryn, me and Colin at the Minnesota Children's Museum sorting food tiles. I was biking 30 miles a day the day before this picture, so I look pretty healthy. I need to get back in a groove, because I don't feel that healthy now.


Eryn got to take home the class mascot, Sparky. Sparky has a journal and Eryn filled several pages with pictures of Sparky's adventures. There was a previous picture of Sparky in a coffin at a geocache, but that was only part of his weekend. He also attended a birthday party and ate a donut.


And wrestled under the Christmas tree.


And listened to a book about sharks. Eryn has since had those bangs reduced.


And he rode a giant ant. If I was a giant ant, I'd eat Sparky. But maybe this isn't a bear eating ant. It's not a siafu as it has eyes.


Sparky gets a massage after a stressful weekend.


Sparky and Eryn listen to Pooteewheet read Harry Potter. They're now on The Halfblood Prince.


The wrestling over, it's time to pose for a Christmas picture. To everyone that was expecting a Christmas letter from me, this will have to do. I'm just not very good at Christmas letters, and there are almost 500 posts out here every year. If you haven't found opportunity to read yourself nauseous about my family, you're just not trying.


Conner blowing out the candles on his cake at the Children's Museum. I like this picture because just before it there was some concern that there were no candles for the cake. Conner's mom noted that this would result in a "pretend blow". I hate those.


Eryn playing Castle Wars on the computer. A very simple card game that works great for kids. Make your castle bigger than 100 levels. Or make the other person's castle smaller than 1 level. She goes back to it frequently, so it must maintain some of it's fun factor.

Happy National Nurse Practitioner Week

It's National Nurse Practitioner Week. So happy NNPW to any nurse practitioners related to me! You know who you are. But in case you don't know what you do, here are some facts about the 125,000 Nurse Practitioners in the United States and a press release from the American Association of Nurse Practitioners.

"Do you know where to turn when your child is sick? When you’re planning a family? For
health education? When your parents need care? Turn to a nurse practitioner. An NP
diagnoses, treats, prescribes and manages medications and treatments and provides a
wide range of preventive and acute healthcare services to individuals of all ages."

My sister should have mixed feelings about the event. She should be excited (and proud) it's National Nurse Practitioner Week and that they put an Asian-American on the NNPW poster.


And yet she should be sad that the best promotional item nurse practitioners can come up with for the celebration is an "I'm an NP Fan" fan. Soooo tacky. I'm going to assume NPs are way too busy taking care of people of all ages to spend any real time thinking about swag.

Free Food Day

It's my birthday this Friday, and I was pondering what I should be up to for the day. In the past, I might have gone out drinking, or wrestled a faux Perkin's waitress in a pool of oil (Or a police woman. You never know if your friends have druthers that impact your wrestling partner). This year, I think I'm going to eat. Because it's my birthday, I have coupons for free food to:

• Breakfast at Louisiana Grill (or any of the Uptown-related cafes/grills/diners)
• Coffee at Caribou
• Lunch at GenghisMongolian Grill
• Coffee at Dunn Brothers
• Dinner at Cold Stone Creamery (well, dessert, but after Louisiana and Genghis, I'll probably be full)

Coupled with a matinee of the new James Bond movie, I'm going to be a very content 40 year old.

Old People

Poor Cookie Queen. She's 40 now. I'm not 40. I'm young, spry and full of vim and vigor. We didn't have a lot of time to make her a tombstone for Halloween, and it was some effort with my dull jigsaw, but we managed. Eryn thought it was great. Next year we'll paint it gray and put some cracks in it so it looks official.

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.
\

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.

Do Not View This Post if You're Doing the Halloween Caching Series!

You've officially been warned. I'm going to show some pictures of the Halloween caching series down here in the Eagan, Apple Valley, Burnsville, Rosemount area, and if you intend to do the series, these are just as much spoilers in my opinion as being told the end of an anticipated movie. The joy of the series is finding the crazy Halloween containers - 13 of them. 11 regular. 1 multi. 1 puzzle, where the puzzle solution is found by obtaining the secret code values at the other 12. If you want to experience them in all their glory, then I suggest going in the dark as Eryn, Pooteewheet and I did. Tonight's full moon helped, but it was still pretty dark, and Pooteewheet kept trying to poke out her eye on every branch that came along because her night vision is horrible. Eryn only worried that the fox monsters would come out.

Here's Eryn getting ready to go cache. This is your last chance to bail before the fun stuff. It's not 2:30, like the clock says, it's closer to 6:00.


Cache number one, "Bubba Sawyer's Hideaway". That's not a toy chainsaw. It's the real deal. Except the blood. The front is held on with two nuts and the cache velcroed to the inside. It took us a while to zero in on it as the GPS kept bouncing around down in the little swamp. But there are no wood ticks or mosquitoes in Minnesota this time of year, so it was great. We put it back and got a few hundred feet away before we realized we'd forgotten the secret code and had to go back to retrieve it.


Cache #2 - "Polycephaly, Not a Muse". We're triplets! This one was a bit harder to find and I missed it on the first pass of the location. Eryn was fascinated and would only touch hims when hes was facing away from her. She wanted no part of a picture in which she was giving hims a big kiss.


This is how you get the log to sign, out of the monster baby's back. Hes's like a golem, you write down words and put them inside hims.


Back in the natural caching habitat, a bit further above the ground than the top of my head. Hes looks so peaceful, like hes's in a loving cradle. Awww....goochy goochy little guys.

Yank My Doodle

According to the news, watermelon is nature's Viagra. I think this is a great time for my annual bike ride with TCBC to retool and go with the saying, "Come to the Watermelon Ride, You'll See Fireworks Later".

My favorite overheard phrase from the ride, fully appropriate for someone in tight-fighting, spandex bike shorts, "In commemoration of this momentous holiday I'd just like to say, yank my doodle, its a dandy."

My second favorite overheard conversation between a guy and girl who were obviously on a beach date as they were walking back to their car, "So...you'll probably think this is really gross, but I have to ask this question. [Very long pause]. So you work with dogs, right?" That's not what I would have guessed the question to be, but if it's the first half of it, it's potentially more disgusting than anything I was imagining.

Here we are before the ride. We did the 15 mile this year. It's Eryn's first year on the tagalong, and given her history of falling off this year, and my history of not exercising quite enough the last two weeks, we went with the shorter ride rather than the 25. I think we'll give that a try next year. It's just not that farther, particularly as there are two rest stops. Eryn has new bike shorts. She wsa very excited about her butt not hurting after all that time in the saddle.


Grandpa and Grandma, ready to roll. Grandpa looks suspiciously like a bike cop.


Eryn points to where we should go. Or maybe it's a Babe Ruth sort of thing, and she's pointing to where we'll end up after we ride. Fairly easy, as it's a big circle.


The game is afoot! Eryn and I are wearing our matching Ironman tshirts. Almost. Her's does some Ironwoman on one side, my doesn't. We have matching shirts from the last several MN Ironman events, although she's just starting to fit into them instead of having to use them as nightgowns. Look at that view. Wouldn't you want to tagalong behind me for 15 miles?


Scott, registering for the event, and not realizing until after the ride that I'd been standing there clicking photos of him. I'm stealth paparazzi. He asked me at work how you knew if you'd been successfully registered. I pointed out that you didn't, except for him, because I'd sent him an email stating, "Hey, I see you're going on the ride!" That's the benefit of knowing the guy who types in the preregistration forms. He took his whole family on the trip - they looked like they had a great time.


Eryn being cute at the rest stop. It was crowded this year - lots of people, lots of Burleys. The Gatorade was from concentrate instead of powder for some reason, a vast improvement.


Tandem! Hide! HIDE!


Grandpa, Eryn and me eating after the ride. I think he wrote all the turns on his hand, which is why he's checking it like that. He's making sure he's really at the end.


Eryn rubbed the hot dog around her lips like lipstick to be funny. It was disgusting. A good picture of the teeth that fell out, and how they're coming in. There are five others in close proximity that are loose, so if the front one's aren't in, she'll be drinking through a straw soon.


After the ride, we hit the beach, just down the hill from the pavilion. We went to the beach two days in a row. Yesterday we did Schultz Lake in Eagan. I think this is a funny picture because here's Eryn, all dressed up to swim, and in the back it looks like a scene out of Breaking Away.


Fish devouring Pooteewheet's foot. These were very annoying (the fish, not Pooteewheet's toes). If you were standing in the lake, they'd dart up and nip at a toe or ankle, and if you kicked one while you were walking, the bony little bastards hurt. Not as much as the football I got hit in the neck with while minding my own business, but a distant second.


We didn't go out for fireworks in the evening, but stayed in and had a fire in the back yard and lit off the fountains and sparklers we had. I think next year we may try a bigger display - Eryn seems very hesitant about all the noise. She and Pooteewheet camped in the yard overnight which, given it was the 4th of July, wasn't the optimal camping-out night, with the fireworks going off until 2:00 a.m. I slept very comfortably in the bed all by myself.


Proof that Eryn doesn't like loud. Even the crackling cactus gets her to cover her ears.


A crackling cactus gone horribly wrong. I watched a show on PBS later in the evening where they were showing the safety measures the company that does the DC show takes to ensure employee safety. They normally hang out in a shipping container for safety during displays, so they took a container and pointed fireworks at it in 2" increments. 2, 4, 6, 8 and 10 put dents in the side, which was what they expected. Then they fired the 12" at the container, and it punched a hole in it the size of a Ford Focus. They all looked shocked. There was a lot of discussion about sloping sides to ensure all the blast didn't go directly into the container.


Very pretty, although it is scorching the lawn in all those places it looks like sparks are dancing onto water.