Dead Chevy for Sale in Alamo

ONE: I was at Target today, and on the endcap, where they put the closeouts, there was some spaghetti. It was black. Pitch black. Pretty cool, no? After I got it home and started making dinner, I chanced to look at the ingredients (while I was chatting online with hot babes my hot babe, Alex). Let me reproduce for you the ingredients box on this package of spaghetti:

INGREDIENTS: SEMOLINA, SQUID INK, FERROUS LACTATE (IRON), NIACIN, THIAMIN MONONITRATE, RIBOFLAVIN, FOLIC ACID.

Perhaps you didn’t notice the unexpected ingredient in there. Riboflavin?! <tgsvoice>That’s awesome!</tgsvoice>. No, seriously. It’s amazing how one single ingredient can make the whole list very, very weird. But it tasted fine with some sauce and cheese. I had seconds.

TWO: I have been avoiding booking my flight to see Alex, not because I don’t want to see her, but because I hate the expense and hassle of the entire process. Well, I got into the groove, and on a whim I checked the usually-insanely-restrictive continental.com rewards flight availability, and I found a flight! My travel for Christmas will cost me $10 instead of $500! So I celebrated by buying $75 worth of DVDs on amazon.com.

THREE: I have only committed one of the major sins today (not including Lust, cause I figure I get a bit of a free pass now, when it’s directed at my wife… what!? you knew what I was when you started reading this post). I have compensated for the lack of variety with frequency. Today I think I have committed about 3,000 separate instances of Sloth.

That is all.

It’s weird to be back in Hamilton, feeling like it’s home, but knowing that in 5 days I’ll be in my “real” home in Texas. As my sweetie pie has mentioned, our trip was great. Even the family reunion, which I was initially not very excited about, turned out very well. My only gripe about that is the accommodation situation (medieval torture hide-a-bed in an alcove with no privacy in a condo with 8 children and 6 other adults… not a lot of sleep for those 3 nights). My family is great, and every time I’m around them, I’m reminded of that. It was really nice to get to hang out with my nieces and nephews, too. Alex and I spent some serious quality time with Carter, Lindsey and Truman, and we had a total blast playing with them in the water park.

Speaking of water parks, Alex and I ditched the kids and rode roller coasters and vomit-inducing carnival rides for the last few hours at the amusement park. I have to say I did not expect Alex’s manic desire to spin us around and around and around at high speeds on the ferris-wheel-esque-puke-ride-of-death. This animated mockup is from Amazing Earl’s rollercoaster modeling website, and I hope it’s OK that I borrowed it. As a note, the spin on our ride was controlled by the riders. This means Alex.

I enjoyed every second of the ride, by the way.

I’ll blog more about the wedding itself, later. It was great to hang with Scott and the other interns again, and it was very nice to gasp for breath every night at nearly 9,000 feet altitude.

This post may sound like a joke, but it’s not. It’s about a song that has given me very bad feelings and sometimes nightmares for 27 years. But I deal with trauma through sarcasm. I recommend the practice to anyone.

I heard the song dozens of times when I was about 10. You know how it is: you learn the lyrics because the tune is catchy, or because it’s always on the family cassette player, and only later do you reflect on what the lyrics actually mean. Continue reading →

Yesterday was memorable. Mostly for good reasons. Daytime was a blur, but in the evening we had Squidley over for some mac & cheese and coleslaw. He provided the very delicious apple pie. It was yum. Then we played a game of Settlers of Catan, in which my honeylovemuffin opened a rift in our marriage that will last for eons by depriving my two pathetically small settlements of needed resources to compete with the squidley menace on my borders, so she could build up the already-thriving society she had created through sheer luck, and crush me (and squidley) like a bug.

Then xenologue, squidley, urbanepleb and I headed to Toronto to see Flotilla, a completely awesome band created by Xenologue’s brother and his girlfriend. Continue reading →

Christmas was a mighty fine experience. I’ll need to do aerobics for a month to lose the weight, but it was lots of fun. Alex’s family are good people, and pleasant to be with. I got to hear Veronica and Geoff of Flotilla play/sing some of their gorgeous stuff. I got delicious meals and snacks. I got some presents (Alex is a most excellent gift-giver, and the gifts from others were very thoughtful, too), and I got to spend lots of time with Alex.

We went to Midnight Mass with our friend Amanda, and we got to sing “What Child Is This” at church (and at Amanda’s house for her parents). All in all, a most delightful holiday. Oh, and Amanda gave me a gift certificate for a sporting goods store, so I can get some hockey skates. Sweet! That’s on the list for today. She and Alex seem to be under some weird impression that I’ll need to learn how to move forward when I’m on the ice, despite the fact that I’ve reassured them that I used to skate a lot (so I think I’ll only fall five or six times in horribly embarrassing ways before I get the hang of it again). And now it’s time to go back to nappy time.

I am pooey and barfy. It’s a bad sign when you’re in the bathrooom to do #2, but you know it sounds like a very loud #1 outside the door :(.

Continue reading →

You may notice that I now have this nifty blog, instead of the old News page(s). Not that many people visit here. I’ve decided that this is for my own edification, mostly. It’s GoBlog software, by WordPress. I like it, so far, except that there are some issues with server communication (probably with my ISP, which is nice and cheap, but not so long on the helpfulness sometimes). Here are a couple of updates:

1: TRAVEL. Alex and I need to see each other. We have decided that 6 weeks is the ABSOLUTE maximum we want to be separated, and we prefer much less. If we wait until Xms, it’s over 2 months, so we need a visit in between.

Jason and Lynn are blessing their baby the first weekend in November, so that’s an obvious choice. Many of my family members will be in California for the event. Sadly, Alex and I have found that we probably can’t afford it (the biggest problem), and we’d only have a limited amount of time with each other if we went (the next-biggest problem). The trip would cost us about $1100 if we went (2 flights, hotel, rental car, food).

So, we are thinking in terms of one of us visiting the other, instead, which would cost more like $400. And we can do it on a weekend that gives us possibly two extra days together. Always good. This makes me very sad, because I want to see my family (especially Jason, since he’s the one with the new baby). I want them to know that I want to be involved, etc. (not always a given, with the way I’ve jumped around the country since high school). But it looks unfeasible. Sigh.

2: CAT. I have (well, mostly) a cat. He found me a little over a week ago, and started hanging around. He’s obviously domesticated & tame (we have TONS of ferals around here). He’s a sweet boy with 7 claws on each front paw :). I’ve begun to introduce him into the house for brief periods of time. He seems to like it. He seems to think he owns the place. I have bought cat paraphernalia. I will be getting him neutered & vaccinated this Friday. I really, really, really hope he has no behavior problems (especially spraying).

I found out this morning that he is apparently litter-phobic. Sheesh.

That is all, for now. Maybe I’ll put a link to this blog on my front page, so others can see it. Wouldn’t that be nice… a blog AND someone to read it ;).