Velcrometer
Throwing stuff at the internet to see what sticks
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M. Giant's Velcrometer Throwing stuff at the internet to see what sticks |
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Friday, February 27, 2009 This week's rerun is the result of a request. I didn't put out a call for reader requests for old entries, but I was gratified to receive some. Feel free to pass yours along if you have one. You know what's harder than three recaps a week? Four recaps in a week, which I'll be doing next week thanks to Monday's 24 two-hour Season 7.5 premiere. The fuckers couldn't have waited a week until Burn Notice was over? Or Burn Notice couldn't have skipped that lame-ass episode about the car thieves? But enough bitching. On to the rerun. I believe it’s somewhat traditional to mention the second anniversary of one’s website when it rolls around. Last Friday, here’s what I did instead: 1. Got in the car and pointed it toward Lake Geneva. This is not unusual, as I do this every time I drive to the airport, but in this case I kept right on going. In LaCrosse, where we stopped for an early lunch, there is a Burger King right next to a McDonald’s. We vacillated a bit and found ourselves in the BK parking lot before we realized what we really wanted was McDonald’s. Was ready to turn around when I saw a sign on the fence behind the Burger King: “This way to McDonald’s entrance.” Followed the sign. Found ourselves in a dead-end alley behind the strip mall. “Well, that’s kind of diabolically clever,” Trash observed. “And possibly illegal.” We ate McDonald’s. 2. Arrived in Lake Geneva before the rest of the group. In this case, the group is a couple of Trash’s friends from grad school: Chao (no relation to other Chaos you may have read about ) and Corpkitten. You may remember them from last summer’s New York Stories, Parts One through Five. They’re coming from the Quad Cities and from Kalamazoo, so Lake Geneva is a point roughly equidistant from our various points of origin. On this particular occasion, they’re also bringing their significant others, Disqueen and the Latvian, respectively. Which is why I get to come. We’re renting a sprawling, three-bedroom house. We’re the first ones there, and the owner meets us, lets us in and shows us around. They’ve done all this renovation work themselves. Ah, I think, immediately upon stepping inside. Someone’s favorite Trading Spaces designer is Vern. CorpKitten and her husband the Latvian arrived shortly thereafter. Of the home’s many salutary features, his favorite is the hatch in the floor of the back mud room that leads into the creepy basement. We explored it in the late-afternoon daylight, because later would be bad. A) It will be dark, and B) we will have just seen Dawn of the Dead. The basement hatch is Evil Dead 2 enough as it is, thanks. 3. Went to a bar/restaurant for dinner. Trash got up and asked if the bathrooms were scary. “There are ice cubes,” I said. “Always a sign of class.” She looked at me quizzically. “Don’t you ever have ice cubes in the toilet?” I asked, being deliberately stupid. Corpkitten was now even more confused. “Ice cubes? For the dog?” When the rest of us are again able to speak, we clarify that I was talking about ice cubes in the urinal of the men’s room. But we can all see the value of putting ice cubes in the toilet to make drinking that much more pleasant for one’s dog. After all, who wants to go to the trouble of cluttering up one’s floor with a water bowl when one can simply brighten Rex’s day by tipping the ice cube trays into the shitter? That’s the sign of a true dog-lover, right there. There are running gags in every group weekend. “For the dog?” is this one’s. 4. Went to see Dawn of the Dead with Chao and the Latvian. The ladies stayed at the house. I thought Disqueen might be up for it, given that no movie could be scarier than living with Chao, but she passed. We gentlemen enjoyed it thoroughly. A couple of guys were sitting right in front of us. One of them moved away from his buddy one seat for a better sightline. A few minutes later, two other guys came in together, split off halfway down the aisle, and sat down in separate sections. Chao commented, “Wow, those guys are so not gay they aren’t even sitting together.” The guy right in front of us turned around and looked at Chao. “Oh, not you,” Chao said. We thought there was going to be a fight, but they laughed about it and then later we all took a shower together. Early on in the movie, it becomes apparent that it’s set in the greater Milwaukee area. Realized that, loosely speaking, I was in the greater Milwaukee area. Wondered if I should always go see scary movies in the geographical location where they take place. Then went back to the (creepy, isolated cabin) house in the heart of downtown Lake Geneva, hung out for a while, and went to sleep, where I dreamed an entire other version of the movie, this one set in Uptown Minneapolis. Woo hoo! Twice the upper-Midwestern bang for my zombie buck! Particularly the moment where I was dreaming about fleeing a mob of sprinting zombies while Trash, crawling over me to get to the bathroom, lost her balance and ended up with her hands clasped firmly around my ankles. I had what might euphemistically be called a “primal moment.” Fortunately, there was a washer and dryer in the house. Unfortunately, I’d unplugged them and slid them across the mud room floor to hold down the basement hatch after we got back from the movie. Everything’s a tradeoff. Especially where zombies are concerned. posted by M. Giant 7:18 PM 3 comments 3 Comments:I would love to see the one about your cat peeing on you. I think it was strat? I love that entry.
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I love reading your posts :)
By Thank you for re-posting this one, I love laughing til I cry!
By Wednesday, February 25, 2009 Trash Talking As promised previously, here's the first guest entry from Trash, picking up the slack for my temporary lame-itude. Enjoy! M. Giant has mentioned that we were considering kindergarten this upcoming fall for M. Edium, but he didn't explain what led up to our even having a choice. We were quite happy having M. Edium wait another year to start school, and quite bluntly hadn't even discussed the possibility of early enrollment. But we received a note (and then another, and then several more, followed by phone calls and a few owls) informing us that the City of Minneapolis required all children between the ages of three and five to attend a kindergarten pre-screening test, the sooner the better. We took that to mean "sooner than 1 week before kindergarten starts in 2010" and promptly forgot about it. Interestingly, that wasn't what they meant, as they demonstrated in the subsequent mail-phone-owl barrage inviting us to bring him in for a screening. Early November, that's what we did. The district makes this MANDATORY meeting easy to access by requiring enrollment far in advance, and by offering appointment hours Tuesday afternoons, every other Thursday morning, and one Saturday morning a month. Yes, for every child age 3-5 in the district. It's convenient for everyone, really, because there aren't enough spaces for meetings, they triple-book you so you get there and wait with your irritated child, the staff is busy and pissy the day of the testing, and everyone can easily leave work for 3 hours to make the appointment. It's a win-win-win-win. In any case, we made our appointment, picked the boy up from school, and showed up as a family at 1:45 for our appointment. We were handed a packet of papers to fill out, which were duplicates to those in the confirmation packet they sent us. The receptionist seemed taken aback when she realized we had brought and completed all of the paperwork requested in the letter. Apparently most parents ignore the contents of the missive and just show up. I envied those parents as the receptionist insisted that I re-fill out all of the paperwork there in the office. After 2:15, when we had turned everything back into the front desk and no one seemed to want to talk to us yet, we began reading aloud to M. Edium to try and keep him occupied. Most of the books in the center were bilingual, and unless you count M. Giant's attempts to learn Spanish a few years back neither of us are, but we read, M. Edium occasionally correcting us in pronunciation. (Whatever – like he knows any better than we do). After a couple of books we noticed a women hovering around us with a clipboard, listening in and taking notes. I thought perhaps she wanted to correct our reading as well, or ask us to stop hurting the ears of those around us with our mangled articulation, but no. It turns out she is the pre-admission counselor who does the first of three intakes with the 3-5 year old child, the clipboard held M. Edium's *permanent file* and she was starting the *observation* part of her study. She asked M. Edium a few questions about volcanoes and dinosaurs and what's the difference between lava and magma (which elicited from M. Edium his patented answer of "You Silly. Magma is inside the volcano, before the eruption." Which is code for "You are a dumb-ass.") and took some notes. She then sat down at the table and asked "So, you're here for early enrollment in the fall. I approve" and suddenly we were on a roller-coaster we hadn't asked to ride. More on that at another time. Labels: trash talkin' posted by M. Giant 10:57 AM 4 comments4 Comments:
"No, where here because your beuracrcy required that we show up for this meeting. We refuse to allow you to dictate the educational choices made for our child."
By Ha - we did the Minneapolis screening in January & had a similar experience with the scheduling. In our case, the evaluator whisked my son away without me to do a solo evaluation, which I had not prepared my slow-to-warm-up guy for at all. I was another parent who had to fill out the forms twice.
By Careful with that. M. Edium sounds like a brilliant kid, so certainly he'd be capable of starting school now, but it's easier on boys to be at the older end of their middle and high school classes. It helps with sports, too. You never know, he could end up having a passion for basketball, and that little edge could make a huge difference.
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Oh god, we're expecting our first in August.
By Sunday, February 22, 2009 Coworkers I do love the fact that I work at home. But not nearly as much as the cats do. It was Exie who started it. A few months ago, he started spending weekday mornings curled up in my lap. I mean, entire weekday mornings. I would settle down at my desk to work, and ten minutes later he would claw his way up into my lap. That is, until I learned to pick him up to forestall the clawing. Hey, at least one of us can be trained. And there he would stay for hours. He would purr for a while, snuggle, and eventually fall fast asleep. And so would my leg. And so would my other leg. You know how sometimes your foot gets tingly if you don't move around enough? On a regular basis, my foot got tingly all the way up to my shoulder. As long as I was risking deep vein thrombosis for his comfort, I figured I might as well make use of the time. So I moved his grooming comb to a spot on my desk where I can reach it without getting up. This has multiple benefits. One is that I have something productive to do during boring conference calls, but not something that demands all my attention. Another is that his long fur is always sleek and smooth, without any of the stinky dingleburrs that used to plague him (or, rather, us). Thirdly, he hates it, but not enough to leave, so he keeps rolling around and presenting me with new areas to comb, which has the added benefit of forcing me to move my legs around so they don't go numb. And finally, with the amounts of hair I've been collecting from him, I'll soon have enough to make a new cat. Now Phantom's into the lap-snuggling too. Being a shorthair, she doesn't need the comb and likes it even less, so I don't bother getting into it with her. But she also likes to snuggle and purr and nap. Except she doesn't do it all in one sitting. She's up and down for most of the afternoon. And the evening, frequently. Right now, in fact. The only problem is that when she gets too relaxed, she farts. And I've already talked about what a Satan's barbecue that is. I sometimes wonder if it makes me any less productive. I don't think so. Sometimes, when I'd normally get up to turn on my printer or get something out of a file drawer, I put it off until later while I do something else that needs to be done. It just changes how I prioritize things is all. I might find myself doing a round of edits on a document at a time when I might otherwise be peeing. And no, I don't often run into situations where I could complete both tasks at the same time; I prefer "Track Changes" to a judgmental stream of urine. More professional that way. The only thing that worries me is how dependent they're getting on their snuggle time. If I get started late some morning, Exie's way more stressed about it than my boss would ever be. He'll frantically follow me from room to room, mewing, "Work! Work! Worrrrrk!" Phantom's not to that point yet, but when I'm walking and she's walking, she hardly ever runs away from me any more, and that can't be a good sign. If I ever have to go back to a regular, eight-fifteenish to four-forty-fiveish office job, it's going to be bad enough that I'll have to once again spend an unacceptable portion of every day driving, talking to people in person, and cleaning myself. It might be worse if the cats get lonely. Because if the cats get lonely, their litterboxes get lonely, if you know what I mean. They'll just have to go back to work with me. Trash says I'm turning into a crazy cat person, but my coworkers will understand. And so will the people at the office. posted by M. Giant 10:30 PM 5 comments 5 Comments:I use the cat-on-lap syndrome to be lazy, as in "could you go get me a tissue? I can't get up, I've got COL syndrome". Cats rule. I'm glad mine don't try to get me to work though.
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Somehow, I am heartened to hear that I'm not the only adult out there risking vein damage to accommdate a cat.
By In our house, that's called "cat privilege," as in, "I'm exercising cat privilege right now - can you get me a cookie?"
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I had a similar situation when I was working at home. One of my two cats purrs so loudly that my co-workers could hear her if I put a conference call on speaker. Now that I'm working out of the house almost every day, they are very freaked out. As soon as I get home, they follow me around, complaining loudly.
By OMG, every since my daughter left for Navy boot camp (and now to the Defense Language Institute in Monterey), the cat that used to sleep with her every night has been serenading us for much of the night with those horrible "I'm in heat" - even though I'm a boy - yowls. Interspersed with some up close and personal in-your-face meows just to punctuate his total irritation with the entire situation. I getcha buddy, but there ain't nothin' we can do about it - she's gone and she's not comin' back to sleep with you. Pleeeeaassseeee get used to it! I'd like just one night of relative peace every once in a while.
By Wednesday, February 18, 2009 So here's what's going on with me right now: For about the next month or so, I'm "threecapping." That's three recaps a week for TWoP (24, Burn Notice, and The Amazing Race), and I'm happy to do all of them, but that kind of puts a dent in one's writing-for-free schedule. Add to that the fact that I'm just now starting a new paid blogging gig, and Velcrometer gets moved from the back burner to the backsplash for a few weeks. But all is not lost. I'll be linking to my paid stuff from here, so you don't miss a drop of my genius. Trash has agreed to fill in now and then. And of course there's the sign of the true professional: reruns. So I'll be reposting a few of my old greatest hits, just to fill the space and remind everyone how much funnier I used to be. We'll get through this together. Low Rider (8/9/02) My wife’s coworker MC is having a little bit of car trouble. Oh, it still starts and runs fine. Everything’s totally hunky-dory under the hood. The problem is that the back of his front seat has fallen off. And, as Paula Poundstone has rightly said, the back of the front seat is a piece of driving equipment easily taken for granted. Now MC’s daily commute has taken on a new dimension, as his new cockpit configuration forces him to abandon the everyday “casually guiding the wheel” style of steering with a “white-knuckled deathgrip” style of steering. Pretty much the only thing keeping him from sliding into the backseat every time he accelerates or goes uphill is his hold on the car’s directional control interface. Hence a commonplace activity—like, say, eating a banana on the road—becomes fraught with peril should he come to a curve. I met Trash and MC for lunch today, and Trash was still laughing when we got our food. Apparently her favorite part—and I have to agree—is that MC still straps on his seatbelt. That’s kind of unfair of us, because what are you gonna do, not put it on? It’s bad enough that you have to drive perched on the seat like a milkmaid on a rollercoaster without also worrying about flying through the windshield in the event of a head-on collision. This way is much better, because a head-on collision will turn his seatbelt into a slingshot that will launch him through the rear window instead. It’s a lot safer back there, after all. You might imagine that driving in this position would get a little tiring. You would be right. MC told us about how he came to a stop at a red light and just lay back for a minute to give his arms and stomach muscles a rest. From that vantage, he watched the sky and the top of a semi-trailer in front of him. When the top of the semi-trailer pulled out of his field of vision, he knew it was time to sit up and keep driving. You gotta feel bad for the guy when you hear something like that. With the shape I’m in, I would just have to follow semi-trailers everywhere, whether they were going to my destination or not. MC is starting to feel a little self-conscious about it, because other drivers notice. Imagine pulling up to a red light next to a sporty little car that seems to be empty. You curiously look over to confirm your suspicions, and there, staring back at you balefully, is a pair of eyes just above door level. It’s hard to look cool when the only thing people can see is the top of your head. Even Schwarzenegger couldn’t manage it after he ripped the shotgun seat out of Rae Dawn Chong’s car in Commando. MC says he keeps wanting to roll down his window and yell, “Shut up! My seat’s broken!” Too bad his window won’t roll down far enough. I asked him if he plans to keep it that way. He doesn’t, but it’s going to be pretty expensive to fix because the seat has electrical adjustment controls. In the meantime, Trash is tormenting him at the office by playing an mp3 of “Low Rider” by War on her computer over and over again. posted by M. Giant 5:31 PM 7 comments 7 Comments:
I love the idea of reruns! Do you take requests? Some of your old posts still make me laugh today, just by remembering them....
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THREECAP THREECAP THREECAP!
By ill vote for a re-run of my all time favorite velcrometer blog. The "swiper gonna get my hole" blog makes me laugh the entire way through
By Rae Dawn Chong!
By Three recaps a week for TWoP, and none of them "Big Love". I want to go on record as noting that sucks a lot. We're all missing your BL recaps terribly.
By If I have a vote for funniest M.Giant post ever, it's the one that still makes me laugh whenever I think about it: the middle-of-the-night feeding of M.Edium when you forgot to put the lid on. Ridiculously hilarious.
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I love your Burn Notice recaps in ways that aren't completely healthy ;-)
By Saturday, February 14, 2009 Less than Half Baked Remember years ago when automatic bread makers were the big thing and everybody had to have one? Whatever happened to bread makers? Well, I know what happened to ours. We were using ours one day and at some apparently critical point in the cycle, something happened. Either we had a power failure, or someone unplugged it, or someone opened the lid at the wrong time. But whatever the case, it caused a honey-wheat loaf to collapse into a honey-wheat singularity. But not before it went quietly nova in a yeast-splosion that coated every interior surface in some kind of interdimensional polymer whose bonding properties would have been of interest to NASA. Needless to say the bread maker was kind of ruined after that. But recently, Trash found a used bread maker while browsing Craigslist. We remembered how much we used to enjoy our homemade bread, especially the smell You know, that magic smell that realtors use to make you want to buy a house the minute you walk inside. Those things aren't cheap when they're new, but this one was like new and the dude only wanted twenty dollars for it. So I drove up into north Minneapolis, and took it off his hands -- for fifteen. Clearly the term "used" was being used loosely here, since it was still in its original packaging, and although the exterior box was beat to shit, the bread maker itself still had the original label on the front that you're supposed to take off before using it.  The first week we had it, I wanted to make something before Trash got home from work to surprise her with that aroma, but we didn't have any yeast and I don't know how to make it. And unfortunately, all of the recipes that came with the bread maker seemed to call for it. I suppose I could have made banana bread, but I would have had to do it in the oven, which would have defeated the purpose. The next week, when we had some yeast, I tried a small loaf, and it ended up smaller than I expected. And that was on the outside. On the inside, the top half of the loaf was completely absent; it didn't have a crust so much as it had a hollow shell. But I figured I'd been too timid, so for my second loaf this week, I went medium. Ah, that lovely, yeasty smell filled the house for hours. Through two cycles, because the first time didn't work for some reason. Here's what it looked like right before I tipped the perfect loaf out onto the counter:  And here's what it looked like on the counter:  Tempting, isn't it? Let me break off a hunk for you:  But let's not eat it all right now. Let's put it away so as to reduce the temptation.  I'm ready to make another loaf right now, how about you?  Seriously, though, I really don't know what happened. You program the thing with all of two buttons, so I don't see how I could have screwed it up. For a while I thought I'd forgotten to put the kneading and stirring blade in there, but I hadn't; it just never turned. But at least the heat came on and we got the smell I love so much. Twice, in fact. So I'm not sure what to do now. Maybe I'll call that 800 number on the label for some "expert advise." Or maybe I'll offer some expert advise of my own. 
posted by M. Giant
7:33 PM
6 comments
6 Comments:
I sort of feel like a Movementarian on this --- but you need to commune with the no-knead. It's kind of a cult. An awesome cult that results in you being able to make tasty, bakery-quality bread.
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You forgot one crucial step there Mr. M. You didn't watch the free video! No, joke, the bread maker knows if you watched.
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Amen on the no-knead. It tastes more superlatively awesome if it has 18 hours or so to rise, but it's still tasty and well-textured if you up the amount of yeast and just let it rise for, say, 4 hours. If you do some googling, you can find an update to the original NY Times post, where they explore the speeded-up version.
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re: no-knead bread
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I just unearthed my breadmaker this weekend and was planning on giving it to Goodwill - instead, you can have it for your future breadmaking since I don't think this bargain machine is going to cut the mustard.
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Oh Lordy. Your breadmaker is actually an adobe brick maker! Wring label, that's all.
By Tuesday, February 10, 2009 Funeral for a Friend Last Monday, Groundhog Day, started out normally. As on most other weekends, Gerd was going to be picking Trash up at 7:30 to carpool downtown. Pretty much the only thing that can get M. Edium out of bed before 7:30 any more is the chance to kiss mom goodbye at the door and wave to her and Gerd as they drive off in Gerd's car. Sorry. We're still at the stage where one has to remember to use the past tense. At 3:08 that afternoon, Chao called my cell phone from the hospital to say that he'd tried to get a hold of Trash, because Gerd had been rushed to the hospital with a pulmonary embolism. It was pretty serious, and her parents were on their way up from Illinois, and there were any number of doctors in there with her. And he was calling because he didn't want Trash to be stranded downtown without a ride home. I told him to keep us posted, and called Trash as soon as I hung up. She had just gotten out of a meeting, so I was able to reach her. I told her what little I knew about what was going on, and she called Chao right away. About twenty minutes later, she called to tell me Gerd had died. The first thing I thought -- after my shock at such an obviously impossible occurrence -- was what we were going to tell M. Edium. It was hard enough to explain to him about Turtle and Strat, and they'd been sick for a long time. In fact, he still kind of believes that they'll get better and come back one day. But how to explain to him about Gerd, who had been playing with him at our house just that Friday? Who drove his mom to work that very morning and, as far as he knew, was dropping her off that night? How to tell him that really, as much as we try to predict these things and how death isn't always a surprise, sometimes it is? Sometimes it completely fucking blindsides you and there's not a goddamn thing anyone can do about it? And how to tell him this before his mom got home, because she was with Chao at the hospital all evening until well after he went to sleep? What might he think of her chances of getting home safely after being let in on that dark little factoid? So call me a coward, but I decided we'd tell him together, the next morning, before he went to school. And that's what we did. I think he gets it a little more this time, now that it's a person who's died. A friend of his. After we drove six hours to go to Gerd's funeral, he was half-expecting to see her on some level, but only ever got to see her casket being loaded into the hearse. Trash rode on to the cemetery with everyone else, while I hung out around the church with M. Edium and waited for everyone to come back to the parish hall for lunch. And answered his questions as best I could. Most of those questions were simply, "why?" As in, why does her body go in that box? Why is it being driven away? Why will it be buried? I was able to answer most of those questions. I'm glad he didn't ask why she was gone in the first place. I don't think I'll ever have an answer for that one. posted by M. Giant 8:54 PM 5 comments 5 Comments:
I'm so sorry for your loss. A good friend of mine died Monday at age 26 completely unexpectedly. Her heart just stopped. I still cannot believe it's true--like maybe Ashton Kutcher is doing some sick non-celebrity version of Punk'd and I'm just waiting for the cameras to appear and tell me Sarah is really alive.
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Explaining death to a child, especialy the death of a loved one, is never easy. It sounds like you handled really well though.
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I'm so sorry for your loss, and I'm so sorry for M.Edium's loss. I think you handled his questions really well.
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I am praying for you tonight. Sadly, we relate all too well. We lost a friend to suicide in December, and two our our munchkins are buds with two of his kids. Explaining to them that their friends' dad had died, and then trying to explain suicide to them, was the most gut wrenching thing we've ever had to do as parents.
By So sorry for the loss of a dear friend. What a tragedy for you and for the world to lose someone so young and good. Our child had cancer a number of years ago (thankfully, now in remission) and people speaking platitudes to us was hard to handle. The only thing I really remember that resonated with me is when someone talked to me about how grief is the price we pay to love. I'm sorry you and your family are suffering that payment now. Peace to you all.
By Sunday, February 08, 2009 Elementary Not ready to write about Gerd yet, but here's something I came up with last week, before…you know. The other day, I wrote about stuff that's shrinking. But there was one big thing that I left out. Even though it's not as big as I thought. Last week, Trash and I toured a neighborhood elementary school. Not for any creepy reason; it's just that M. Edium is going to be five in the fall (I KNOW!) and we were thinking about getting him into the Minneapolis system via the schools closest to our house. The weird thing is that it's an elementary school with two campuses, an Upper and a Lower. I don't know how they decided which is which, because the "Lower" campus is further north than the "Upper," and it can't be a geographical thing, because Minneapolis is as flat as this half-season of Burn Notice. But there we were, and the main thing I noticed about of these campuses, Upper and Lower, is that they both seemed pretty lower. It was a little startling to find myself in a place with such small scale. It was totally different from my elementary school, which had wide hallways and high ceilings. In comparison, these schools were almost like rabbit-warrens, with corridors like a submarine, except with crappy art hung at stomach-level (the art in our hallways was always eye-level or higher, but just as crappy). I can't figure it out. Is it just because I went to grade school in the suburbs, where everything is more spread-out? I remember spending seven years in a sprawling barracks two blocks long. And don't tell me I only remember it that way because I'm bigger, because in the recurring dreams where I'm back there, it's as big as I remember. But then it was only one campus, so maybe that's the difference. Also, there weren't any computers there until I was in sixth grade, and then they were Apple IIs instead of the Macs they've evolved into now. Also, there were four of them in the whole building. For about a month. But what did I expect? Virtual reality headsets in every classroom? Kids going from class to class by jetpack? Flatscreen video monitors in the hallway displaying the day's announcements? Okay, I didn't expect that last one, but they were there. On the other hand, because M. Edium's birthday is in October, he has the option of starting kindergarten this year or next. Trash and I have been debating which way to go, and even M. Edium has been going back and forth on the issue himself. But now, after seeing the buildings, I think it's going to be this year. Otherwise by the time he graduates he'll be too big to fit in them. posted by M. Giant 8:02 PM 3 comments 3 Comments:
Did upper and lower mean upper grades in one building and lower grades in the other? That's usually what this means.
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The first time I went back to elementary school as an adult, I was shocked at how small the place was. I remember it being huge with the gymnasium as the hugest (ha!). Turns out the rooms are tiny, the desks are minuscule, and I could walk around the gym in about eight large steps.
By October birthdays are hard. We went early and the academics have never been a problem. However the playground has been very hard. There is a lot less support or even feedback about what is going on socially. So how is he doing with his peers, making real friends and easing in and out of groups? Good luck.
By Thursday, February 05, 2009 I'll probably be offline for a few more days, what with the funeral for Gerd coming up this weekend. But I thought I'd leave you with a picture of her dressed as my wife last Halloween -- one of three. 
posted by M. Giant
4:52 PM
1 comments
1 Comments:
On the left, correct?
By Tuesday, February 03, 2009 It feels like I've been offline forever, but it's just that the last couple of days have gone by really slowly. Yesterday afternoon, our dear friend Gerd died suddenly of a pulmonary embolism. Trash had just ridden downtown with her for work that morning. She was 28. Obviously I'll be writing more about this in the days to come. Rest in peace, Gerd. You are already desperately missed. posted by M. Giant 9:50 PM 9 comments 9 Comments:How absolutely tragic. May she rest in peace and hope you find some comfort in that in the coming days.
By I'm so sorry! My thoughts and prayers will be with the Giants and Gerd's family.
By What a shocking loss. My condolences to you & yours.
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I am so incredibly sorry for your loss.
By Oh my goodness, I am so sorry to read this sad news. Thoughts and prayers are with you and all of Gerd's family and friends.
By I'm so sorry. My thoughts and prayers are with you guys and Gerd's family.
By I'm so very sorry. You and all of Gerd's friends and family are in my prayers.
By I am so, so sorry for your loss. Gerd's family and friends are in my thoughts and prayers as you all face this awful time.
By Oh no. I can't even imagine losing someone I loved so suddenly. Thinking of her friends and her family.
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