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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Sunday, May 31, 2009 Hot, Wet, and Inconvenient A few months ago, Trash and I considered getting one of those tankless water heaters installed. We hoped that the energy saved would pay for itself. When the guy came out to do the estimate, we learned two things. One was that a tankless water heater costs eleventy-several hundred dollars, so by the time it pays for itself the planet's resources will be exhausted and we'll all be heating our water over dung fires again anyway. And the other was that our current water heater had gone so long past its intended usefulness that we'd better get it replaced soon, unless we wanted to get ready to start heating our water over dung fires considerably before everyone else. But it became one of those things that you know you should do, but keep putting off because there are more immediate priorities. Yes, a catastrophic water heater failure could leave us without hot water and flood our entire basement someday, but I want a root beer float now. I should have known that when the water heater finally gave out, it was during the first time in more than six months that the house stood empty for more than a day or two. When we got home from camping, I brought the duffel bag of clothes down to do the laundry, and quickly saw what had happened. Unfortunately for the purposes of my story, it wasn't as catastrophic as it might have been. For one thing, the water heater is less than six feet from the floor drain, so there wasn't so much a flood as a neat wet trail across the floor. But I totally had to step over it, or I would have soaked my socks. I was also grateful that this had happened during my first recapping break of the year. Normally this kind of thing futzes with my writing schedule in ways that make my OCD side all bunchy, but since I didn't have much of a writing schedule this week, the timing was actually pretty decent. Best of all, when I called my dad to ask for advice he immediately dropped what he was doing and arranged to meet me at Menards to pick out a new one, which he would then help me install. On Memorial Day, no less. So that's what happened. We still had Chao's truck that we'd borrowed to schlep all our camping stuff in, and it turned out to be handy for hauling a new water heater as well. I had also called the gas company, with whom we have this service plan whereby they have to come out and help with any gas-powered appliance issues that arise. By the time my dad and I had gotten home with the new heater, that gas guy had shown up, inspected the old heater, confirmed, "Yep, it's broken," and been on his way. So that part really couldn't have gone any smoother. And I learned that it's a lot easier to replace a water heater than you think. All you need is some extra fittings, a pipe-cutter, some Teflon tape, a few other basic tools, and a dad who knows what he's doing. From the time I discovered the problem to when my dad jumped back on Silver with a tip of his hat and a wink through his mask, less than four hours elapsed. This was all way much less the nightmare I had feared. Plus I'd gotten to put off doing laundry, and M. Edium is now the proud owner of a water heater box the size of a phone booth. In fact, I'd recommend the experience to anyone. That's why I only got the water heater with the six-year warranty. Remind me to keep Memorial Day 2015 free. posted by M. Giant 8:11 PM 4 comments 4 Comments:
The joys of homeownership! I made many important discoveries during my first HWH failure. The floor of the room with my HWH actually slopes *away* from the drain, guaranteeing a flood. This was disturbing until I discovered the the floor drain was apparenlty installed by an out of work set designer. It's just a slight depression someone drilled into the concrete floor with a nice shiny drain cap glued over it. Doesn't connect to any sort of drain line.
By It could have been a lot worse. We were visiting family for Thanksgiving, and yep, you guessed it, water heater broke Thanksgiving morning. Ten people, three generations, and no hot water. Not for showers, not for dish washing, not for laundry. Add to that the fact that my grandmother insisted on boiling Brussels sprouts all day, and it was one of the crankier family holidays I've experienced.
By I agree.. One of the most common household plumbing projects is replacing a water heater. In my experienced, replacing a water heater can be tricky. There are a lot of different types and sizes and it is confusing.
By A lot of families use instant water heaters in their homes because it does not have a storage tank and is capable of completely eliminating steady heat wastes from the tank and reduces energy consumption usually ranging from twenty to thirty percent. Anyway, thanks for sharing and I definitely visit here more often.
By Thursday, May 28, 2009 Tick Tock If Trash ever finishes telling you about her Mother's Day, she might mention the part where she and M. Edium explored a nature preserve, and then two days later she found a wood tick latched onto her calf. She pried it off and I imprisoned it alive in a Ziploc bag (which is still around here…somewhere…?), and we monitored the wound for signs of Lyme Disease, which never materialized, which was good because she never had time to go to the doctor and have it looked at anyway. Cut to this past weekend. As I said on Twitter while we were camping (via cell phone!), we left early on Friday morning so we could get to our favorite spot at one of our favorite campgrounds outside Black River Falls, Wisconsin. When we arrived around noon, a time when the most ambitious of our competition were just setting up their out-of-office e-mail messages, our spot was still open. It's the one just inside the outer loop, with the long, curved driveway and big, flat area for our three-room tent-mansion, bookended with woods on both sides and close (but not too close) to the bathrooms. The very first site M. Edium camped at, when he was eleven months old and still in diapers. Ours again. Ours! Except someone else had gotten there first. I don't know how he managed it, but somehow that little brown wood tick stowed away in our camping gear. I found him in our tent while I was setting up the beds. Trash hadn't started the campfire yet and I didn't want to use the table, so I carried it over to the wooden post where you stick your registration ticket and smacked it with the tent-peg mallet, thinking that was the end of it. It wasn't, though. At about two the next morning, I semi-consciously felt a flat but distinctly foreign lump on Trash's leg, one that didn't seem to want to come off. Trash woke up and removed it herself. After I popped it with my thumbnail and stuffed the bisected corpse under the air mattress, Trash kept asking why I woke her up. I was like, uh, what was I supposed to do? I don't want some tick stuck right where I'm groping you in my sleep. But then the next morning he was again whole and stuck right below my belly button, as I discovered while waiting for M. Edium outside the bathroom. I would have dropped him into the open tank, but I didn't want that nastiness on him the next time he came back for one of us. The next victim turned out to be M. Edium, who was playing on the beach with some other boys while we watched at a distance, and then when we went to go collect him for dinner the back of his neck looked like Braille. Our old friend couldn't settle on a spot, it seemed, at least until he latched on right behind my son's ear, on a spot where I couldn't pull him out without taking a few strands of hair as well. The kid was a trooper, though. By this point, we were checking ourselves and each other every time we changed clothes, and often when we weren't. M. Edium became expert at rotating his head around while submitting to inspections. I guess we should be glad it wasn't a deer tick, the kind that carry Lyme Disease. But the campground employee/guide/whatever had assured us that a deer tick had never been seen in that campground. On the second night, before bed, I found a deer tick attached to the front of my right hip, surrounded by a bruise that made it look as though I'd been shot with it. At least, it looked like a deer tick, and not the wood one that had been stalking us all weekend. Trash dug out the little reference card that the ranger had given her, but it was hard to make a match by flashlight. Just to be safe, after I removed it I went out to the picnic table and stowed it in a plastic Ziploc bag, to take to the doctor when we got back. I probably shouldn't have left that bag on the table, because the next morning, Trash used them to store the leftover strawberries. Now we had neither the specimen nor the strawberries. I've been keeping an eye on the bite though, at least to the extent one can keep an eye on something that's normally covered by one's underwear (good thing I work at home). So at least now it looks less like the logo for the French Air Force and more like a normal bug bite. I'll keep an eye out for symptoms, though. For instance, if I get slapped by Stephen from The Real World: Seattle, you'll be the first to know. posted by M. Giant 7:16 PM 5 comments 5 Comments:Crazy - I had a very recent tick encounter as well... but I'm a newb at living in a tick-prone region, so I didn't know to save the bug after removal. Fingers crossed against Lyme disease!
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What is it about that spot behind little boys ears that ticks love? I have pulled more ticks off of that spot on my son than I care to remember.
By Next time you go camping take some cotton balls and anti-bacterial soap with you. When you have one on you, apply the soap liberally to the cotton ball and place it directly on the tick. Within 15 minutes the tick is out and DEAD. The school nurse at the building I teach in swears it works every time (and she sees kids with ticks this time of year daily).
By I'm shockingly stuck on "three-room tent-mansion" .
By ha! my mind automatically jumped to trw's irene at the first mention of ticks in this entry. i'm glad to see i'm not the only one with this particular association.
By Tuesday, May 26, 2009 Almost World Famous 50's diners seem to be dying off. Back in the 80s, when I was in high school (the late 80s, mind you), the popular one in our area was T.R. McCoy's. It was one of those sprawling, gleaming places with neon and chrome everywhere and a big oldies-stocked Wurlitzer by the front door and something on the menu called phosphates, which I haven't seen before or since. In other words, the kind of place that almost certainly didn't exist in the '50s. I wish I could go back there sometime. Can you believe this? I'm getting nostalgic about fake nostalgia here. And there's just no way for them to not be kitschy, which I guess is sort of the point. I mean, who would want to go to the real thing these days, the kind of places Jack Kerouac would get thrown out of, with cigarette smoke reducing visibility to the distance between the racially segregated lunch counters? Nobody needs that much nostalgia. Besides, if the timeline holds up, we should be about due for 80s diners, right? There'll be Nagel prints on the walls and Duran Duran on the jukebox and New York Seltzer on tap and the table surfaces will all be mirrors with a light coating of cocaine dust. Anyway, 50s diners aren't really our thing, but we ended up at one on the way home from our camping trip on Monday. After a few days of eating nothing but what we can dig out of the cooler and/or cook over an open flame, we're generally in the mood for a sit-down meal, but we're dirty enough that it has to be someplace casual, so a kitschy diner is just about perfect. This sign told us it would be exactly perfect. We weren't really expecting a 50s diner, despite the large plaster chicken out front in the parking lot, but check this out:  That's not the whole place, unfortunately. Yes, the main room is about the size of a dining car, but then there are bathrooms and another, smaller dining room off the back, both of which would be loudly scraped off every time the train went through a tunnel. And I think the menu was lifted wholesale from Jackrabbit Slim's. It was an embarrassment of riches, with the added bonus that everything was named after 50s celebrities or artifacts. M. Edium had the Love Me Chicken Tenders, I had the Little Bopper (lest you mock, it's a hamburger with onion rings on it), and Trash swallowed her disapproval of the kind of mild racism that results in a taco wrap being named the Richie Valens. And the best part? No 50s music. Between T.R. McCoy's and the American Graffiti soundtrack on every family road trip from 1978 to 1988, 50s music is a little played out for me. The 60s music did me just fine. We'll have to come back in ten years to see if it's been updated to 70s music, in which case we're not staying. Still, it's the signage that drew us in, not even counting the giant plaster livestock. We loved how it's billed as "Open 24 hours," except it opens at 6:00 a.m. and closes at 10:00 a.m., so don't expect those 24 hours to be consecutive. It's almost as great as the Midwestern modesty that causes it to describe itself as "almost world famous." I hope I'm not ruining that with my readers in Australia. Maybe you should just skip this entry, mates. posted by M. Giant 7:48 PM 3 comments 3 Comments:I ALMOST stopped there for dinner on my way home from Illinois last weekend! Hilarious. Now I know. And knowing is half the battle.
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Swensen's Ice Cream (a chain of ice cream stores I think mostly located in CA) used to have phosphates on their menu. My dad got all nostalgic about them. I remember them as being sort of like Sweet Tarts dissolved in seltzer water.
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Now I'm regretting not going anywhere near there on our upcoming road trip. I would totally stop for that sign too.
By Thursday, May 21, 2009 Mr. N. Oh, I do love it when Trash takes over for the day, don't you? M. Giant has mentioned that we are trying to decrease our negative footprint on the planet, and green things up a bit around here. We are indeed trying to hang our clothes out to dry, instead of apparently wasting tons of energy on the drier. We are attempting our hand at gardening, sadly killing the vast majority of plants in the process. We are trying to reduce and renew and recycle wherever whenever possible, which means we are actually using the public library instead of purchasing dozens of books a month, we recycle the majority of our garbage, and checking out Craig's List when we don't care if the item is used. The later strategy has netted us a couple of cool deals, including our deck furniture and a pile of camping equipment. While it's true that we are making these changes because we believe we need to do our part to fix the planet, we are also responding to the "requests" of the smallest human in the household. Yes, M. Edium is a budding environmentalist. Now, I don't know if his interest in saving the world stems from his obsession with all things included in the solar system, or if he worries that we will some day follow in the steps of his beloved dinosaurs. What I do know is that his education is playing an important role in shaping his views, as he routinely arrives home from class with another bit of knowledge he is anxious to share. "Mr N says that pirates are terrible, and should be put in jail. So don't be one." "Mr. N told us that littering is wrong, and you should always pick up your trash and recycle what you can." "Mom! Mr. N. told us that it isn't healthy to be lazy, and we should get exercise every day." "Mr. N. says that all dinosaurs are dead, but we should be aware of cloning." These pronouncements always seem to come out of left field, yet are stated with such fervent emphasis, sounding like the mantra of the newly converted. M. Edium is willing to fight for his conviction that it's best to drink water several times a day, and avoid soda, if that's what it takes to better his planet. And who would argue with him? No one, that's who, and thus when he comes home and suggests that we start a vegetable garden so we can see the beauty of growing plants (yup a direct quote) we spend hours on a doomed garden project. Of course, I always thought it was a unique aspect of M. Edium's personality causing his near hero-worship. I mean, he is obsessed with all things science, likes to hang with teachers and other adults, and prefers watching the NASA channel to regular cartoons. Obviously a science nerd in the making. So imagine my surprise when speaking to a few other moms at M. Edium's class graduation today, I discovered that the other boys in class had the same conversations with their moms. One mom told me their family had been discussing the naughty pirates for the past week, wondering when the authorities would listen to Mr. N. and apprehend them. Another informed us that her son had started following everyone around the house, turning off the lights as soon as someone leaves the room - even if there are still people IN the room. A third parent told of her shock in discovering her child trying to read the newspaper. "Mr. N. says we should pay attention to current events" was the explanation given. What I would give to have that sort of influence over the boy - hell, over anybody. I guess I should be grateful that the messages are the same as we would give at home, if we ever thought to have a long discussion on pirates. In any case, the lectures that appeal most to M. Edium are those around the environment (don't waste electricity), the solar system (the Hubble telescope), and all areas of science (no food tastes better than the food from your garden), and those are the ones that we hear at home. Thus a vegetable garden, line-dried clothes, and fewer lights left on around the house. It's a good thing I'm working less this summer. Otherwise I'd never get anything done. posted by M. Giant 9:35 PM 3 comments 3 Comments:I have friends whose first garden was a bit of a disaster. But they learned. And now, just a few years later they have an allotment in the village common (yeah, those English folk are so quaint) that yields a majority of their veggies, even last year when the weather was NOT ideal (too much rain, not enough sun). So don't give up! You'll discover how to grow what will grow well and feel quite cool when you give your friends a dinner including the roasted beets from the garden.
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M. Edium rocks! And since you and M. Giant rock pretty hardcore, too, I'm betting these pronouncements from the oracle of Mr. N. generate some pretty interesting discussions. (And please tell me I'm not the only one who hears "Mr. N." sung to the tune of "Mr. F." from Arrested Development).
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@Bo They have an allotment? Lucky. The waiting list at the local one is about ten years.
By Monday, May 18, 2009 Hung Out To Dry Like everyone else right now, we've been trying out ways to both save and go green. Hence the vegetable garden that we've been toting in and out of the house every morning and night. It may seem like a lot of work and expense now to keep those little plants alive, but it'll all pay off in the fall when we get to sit down at the table and share the half-forkful of peas that will have survived our backyard's hostile growing conditions, shortage of direct sunlight, uneven watering, hail, thunderstorms, and our own overriding incompetence. Seriously, the story of our garden is like the slowest-paced horror movie with the largest cast ever. We're just getting to the end of the first act, where the pumpkins are long-gone and the next crisis is going to be about what kind of horrible Saw-like torment the carrots will have to undergo as a result of being planted too close together. But one of the biggest methods is something we've been putting off for a while: drying your clothes outside. Better for the environment, saves both gas and electricity, releases moisture back into the water cycle, and leaves our clothes smelling like the great outdoors, even if in our case the great outdoors is the largest city in Minnesota. Plus, I's not like it's hard. It's not that we don't have clothesline poles, because we do. They came with the house, in fact. They've just been standing out there since before we moved in, doing nothing but holding up bird feeders and occasionally clouting me upside the head when I'm too careless walking past them. It's just that you can't really do it in this climate for large swathes of the year. When we first were reminded that it would be a good idea to try, we were having the kind of weather where you couldn't put a two-liter bottle of soda outside for an hour without it exploding, let alone hang your clothes out on the line. Even if we had survived long enough to get a load on the line, all we would have ended up with is an entire wardrobe frozen solid. But last week, Trash decided it was time to implement the new system. I found some old clothesline in the basement and ran up to the local hardware store to pick up a few dozen of those spring-loaded wooden clothespins. On Friday, we hauled our first sodden basketful up from the basement and out to the back yard. We didn't realize there were skills involved, though. As a general rule, we try to avoid anything that was ever undertaken by an Ingalls, but we thought this would be one exception. Turns out this is harder than we thought. For one thing, we didn't have quite enough clothesline length for every item, so some of the overflow had to go back down into the dryer (which operates less efficiently when it has less than a full load, but what else could we do?). Also it rained on and off that whole afternoon, so by the time the next load was ready to hang, the first load was still hanging damp, and also needed to be run through the dryer. And then we left that second load up to dry while we went to meet my parents for dinner, fairly confident that it wouldn't start raining before we got home. We were mostly right; it didn't start raining until ten minutes before we got home. So there we were, with our hoodies up, hurrying to take the clothes off the line and dump them into the hamper so they could get down to the dryer, which was at least finished with the previous load by now. "We'll get better at this," I promised Trash. We would have to. Today, I'm glad to say, Trash completed our first successful load of line-dried laundry. It was a warm, bright, sunny day, with just enough of a fresh breeze to keep the clothes moving on the line so they wouldn't dry all crusty. It was a glorious sight, watching them wave in the breeze…casting their shadows…on the new garden plot. Being an Ingalls is a pain in the ass. posted by M. Giant 4:29 PM 7 comments 7 Comments:
I live in an apartment building where they charge you for each load in a washer and a dryer. Barbarians. I bought some of those wooden contraptions that allow you to hang clothes up inside. Because I too live in Minnesota. And I refuse to pay $1.50 IN QUARTERS each time I want to dry a load of laundry.
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I too have started a garden at a friends house (I live in a 2nd story appartment). We planted tomatos, beans, squash, corn, watermelon and peppers. We also found that weeding is a big pain in the ass, so we just hoed between the plants, put down weed killer and have our fingers crossed.
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Living in a tropical country, people would looked at you weird if you have a dryer. (Unless you live in an apartment)
By I wish I could have a clothesline but it's actually illegal in my town (along with keeping chickens - another thing I would like to do). It's tough to live in the 'burbs after growing up in the country.
By I have recently become a composting person and have discovered that it's hard not to become obsessed with trying to fill my bin. I seriously considered bringing home my teabag from work last night in a little plastic baggie just so I could add it to the pile. Then I realized I was crossing the line into crazy so I (agonizingly) tossed it into the trash. I live in the West Coast rain forest so drying clothes outside seems a bit out of my league but good luck with that.
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'It's tough to live in the 'burbs after growing up in the country.'
By For what it's worth, a few stretches of line in the basement (or laundry room) and some nice plastic hangers work exceptionally well in the Midwest winter, and has the added benefit of adding humidity back to the house. It works even better if you have an electric fan running to circulate the air in the basement or laundry room. Yeah, I know, I know.
By Friday, May 15, 2009 Developmental Blocks When M. Edium's birth mom was pregnant with him, there were long periods of time when she was stuck at home doing nothing. So she did something that most of us, in that situation, would probably only hope we had the presence of mind to do: she bought herself a shitload of Legos. After M. Edium was born and she went back to work and school, the Legos got packed away in the big plastic tub where they live. And that's where they stayed, until this week. M. Edium's birth parents moved to a new apartment recently, and guess where the Legos ended up? Let me just first say that there are very few things M. Edium loves more than Legos. Usually, when I pick him up from school in the evening, that's what he's doing: building spaceships and rockets with a group of boys (and occasionally a girl) on the floor of the main room. And then he sees me and says, "Oh, darn!" because he has to stop. So clearly the Legos were a big winner when they showed up on Tuesday night. Now, these are not his first Legos, to be sure. He's had the Duplo and the Quattro and the Octuplo and the Hexadecuplo sets almost since birth, and a while ago he inherited some old "expert" pieces of mine form the seventies, of which there wasn't much left but some gears and hinges you can't really build anything out of, but this was his first significant trove of standard-sized Legos. And it was significant, in both the quantity and quality in which they appeared. There are about two gallons of them. Also, some of the few things M. Edium likes more than Legos are Space Shuttles and dinosaurs. So what are the chances he'd suddenly, one evening, out of nowhere, find himself in possession of a Lego tub that had mixed in it pieces for a Lego Space Shuttle and Lego dinosaurs? Well, obviously when he saw the instruction book for the Space Shuttle, we had to get that put together. Except what ended up happening is that the Space Shuttle calls for so many small and oddly-shaped pieces that Trash and Bmom ended up digging through the giant pail for them, while I tried to fit them together in the order they came out and M. Edium happily built himself one of the more traditional, squarish, multicolored rockets that are the usual stock in trade of his Montessori shipyard. Suddenly we looked up and realized it was time to get going to his swimming lessons. Except he didn't want to stop playing with the Legos. Perhaps we would have pushed it, if he hadn't been so heartbroken at the thought of leaving the house with his Shuttle unfinished, where simply anything might have happened to it. And also, to be totally honest if we weren't having just as much fun with the Legos as he was. Because let's be real: if you haven't gotten down on the floor and played Legos with your offspring, it can only mean you don't have one or more of the following: 1. Offspring 2. Legos 3. A soul. If you only have #1 but not #2 or #3, just get #2 and #3 will take care of itself. Some of the pieces for the Lego Space Shuttle never did turn up, so we ended up fudging with some substitutes. It's a little clunky, but it's close enough, especially for M. Edium. He's barely let it out of his sight since then. He's been encouraging me to help him build the hauling trucks that go with it, and I've been working on it a little, if only in the hopes that having more bricks tied up in completed pieces will make it easier to find the ones we need. We've had several Lego play sessions on the living room floor since Tuesday, and I have to admit, I love them almost as much as he does, if not more. One of these days I'll get so absorbed in building stuff with him that he'll look up at me and say, "Daddy? I'm kind of sleepy." And I'll look at the clock and it'll be 2:30 in the morning. I don't even feel that bad about letting him skip swimming for a week. Lots of kids his age don't know how to swim, but not knowing how to play Legos would be a deal-breaker. posted by M. Giant 8:46 PM 4 comments 4 Comments:I heard you on NPR the other day talking about "previously ons". How exciting! NPR turns to the author of the potato book for expertise. Well done!
By Being in possession of two and three, I spent many fun and satisfying hours with borrowed nieces and nephews, back when they were medium-sized. Now that they're all in the 16 to 25 age range, they love to reminisce about it. So I consider it to be time well-spent.
By Losing Lego pieces can really put a cap on the users imagination. That is why a lego computer game or digital alternative can be less of a hassle and messy.
By I totally agree about your offspring/Legos/soul pronouncement. As the mother of a 4-year-old and a 20-month-old, I have spent countless hours on the floor with piles of Legos around me. In fact, our living room is now officially referred to as "The Lego Room". Seriously. The other day when we had guests over and one of them asked my daughter if she would show her something in the "living room", my daughter looked at her blankly until I translated. I didn't know whether to be appalled or proud!
By Wednesday, May 13, 2009 Mother's Day Trash is taking over again to start the story of Mother's Day with M. Edium. If you want to hear how I spent the day, that entry is upcoming, or you can read my recap of what I did that night. M. Giant is always making these elaborate plans for Mother's Day, and then we end up at home, he and M. Edium make me breakfast and buy me coffee (neither of them can use a coffee maker. Yet. It's still in my education plans for M. Edium) and then we travel to visit all of the mothers in our lives. So this year, we decided to break that pattern completely. We made plans to go camping from Friday to Sunday someplace near Lacrosse, WI. Sure it's early, but it's been warm and I LOVE camping, so it's a perfect Mother's Day gift. Then M. Giant was asked to travel to NYC to attend (and write about) TARcon, and instead of camping and being treated like a log-cabin queen, I was staying home and taking care of M. Edium alone for a couple of days. The best laid plans, and all. So I asked M. Edium what he wanted to do instead, and after I shot down idea A: we go camping anyway, without daddy (umm, no) and B: we spend the day watching all of his Land Before Time videos (oh, HELL no) we hit on option C: a road trip with Mommy and M. Edium. Since I don't work Mondays, we could spend the night, maybe in a hotel with a pool. We battered around a few ideas for places to visit, then hit on Red Wing, a historic town about 2 ½ hours southeast of the cities. I happen to like Red Wing a lot, and a couple of hours isn't too long alone in the car, so a plan was made. We meant to prepare on Saturday, packing snacks and clothes and movies and such, but then M. Edium chose Saturday to have one of his rare but excruciating days of pushing every button we have and overall acting like a snot. I know I should be grateful that these days are few and far between, but when they hit… after all, there is a reason his teachers all make a point at conferences of saying, “My, he is stubborn, isn't he?” Every teacher, every meeting. They also make a point of saying he is a model student, who always obeys the teachers and rarely gets in trouble (snort) but they are still oh-so-correct. Anyway, with no prep for a trip out of town, and with no certainty that the trip would happen as planned, I woke M. Edium up before 7 a.m. so we could drop Dad off at the airport. The boy was an angel. No complaints, total listening, no pushing. Interesting. We drop Dad off, and go out to a celebratory mom breakfast at McDonald's (sigh). Still, angel behavior, lots of kisses and hugs and I love yous and You are the BEST MOM EVERs. Side note – McDonald's is packed with dads with their kids. Not a single mom in sight, other than me. In pity, several dads came over to talk to me as we watched our kids climb on the indoor climbing thing. Studiously avoided asking why I am there with the boy, but made a point to say Happy Mothers Day and to tell me to take some time for myself, too. Strangest McDonalds trip ever. Only other woman in the closed-off indoor play area was a woman with no children, on the phone, who was IRATE that the kids were making so much noise. In the play area. CLosed off from the rest of the place. In fact, the only crowded area in an otherwise empty restaurant. She kept yelling into her phone "You will have to speak up. I can't hear a THING over all these KIDS." and then sighing. Pissed me off so much that I started yelling greetings to M. Edium up in the play structure, just to irate her. Considering that M. Edium was so well-behaved, and since we didn't have any plans scheduled for the day, we decided that we would try for the road trip to Red Wing. We went home to pack up some food and beverages (and M. Edium packed a few stuffed animals and some books) and we were on the road by 8:30. This is already turning into a long day. I'll try to get more than two hours into it in the next part. Labels: trash talkin' posted by M. Giant 8:09 PM 2 comments2 Comments:We had one of those terrible days, but it was on mothers day itself. Ah well.
By M Giant, I'm so sorry I didn't know you were going to be at TARcon. I would have loved to have said hello. Maybe next time.
By Sunday, May 10, 2009 Self-Guided Guilt Trip M. Edium spent the night over at my parents' house one night last week. From what I heard when we met up for the handoff on Friday, everything went well and they all had a lovely time. Expect M. Edium had a confession to make. "I bit Grandpa," he said. I wasn't sure I heard him right. "But I said I'm sorry," he added quickly. It's not unusual, if he misbehaves in some way while over there, that I'll hear about it from him instead of my parents. They don't like to tattle on him (unless it's a funny story, obviously), and they're good at handling any disciplinary problems during his visits internally, without involving Trash or me. They're empowered to enforce time-outs, revocation of privileges, and U.N. sanctions during his visits. I meant to ask my parents about it, but forgot until later. Then, when M. Edium and I were just a few blocks from home, he asked me not to tell his mom about biting Grandpa. "First of all," I said, "we don't keep secrets from Mom. And second of all, I know you and you'll tell her yourself." This was not a punishment I was imposing. This is a reflection of how well I know my son. I don't ever have to tell on him to Trash, because he'll always do it himself. "But she'll get very angry," he protested. "I don't think she will," I said. When we got home, Trash and M. Edium stayed outside for a few minutes while I went in. And a scant couple of minutes later, they came in. You guessed it, M. Edium had already rolled over on himself. Trash told me later that all she said in response was, "I'm very disappointed in you. We don't bite. Why did you do that?" I have to take her word for that, because she said it quietly and calmly enough to him that I couldn't hear her from not very far away. But M. Edium was soon overcome with guilt, literally weeping about how bad he felt for biting Grandpa. He insisted on calling Grandpa and apologizing to him again over the phone, which was when I got the whole story from my dad. The night before, during some pre-bedtime roughhousing, M. Edium just got a little too rowdy and "nipped" my dad on the cheek (Dad's words). It startled more than hurt him, and he and my mom both handled it well, giving him the appropriate amount of scolding and getting a sincere apology from him. They had all but forgotten the incident. Yet M. Edium was absolutely tormented by the thought that he might have hurt Grandpa. He calmed down after being assured over the phone that it was fine, but up until then, his little conscience was really bothering him. All of this is a very roundabout way of saying, Happy Mother's Day, Trash. You're clearly doing it right. posted by M. Giant 2:09 PM 2 comments 2 Comments:You guys appear to have such a great relationship. I think you actually like one another. How long have you been married?
By Awww. I remember being a tiny lad, and having my five-year-old brain's remorse circuits come online. It really is a developmental landmark when a kid realizes he can have an effect on the world and the people in it. It's a testament to good parenting on everyone's part that he's at this spot so early... just so long as it doesn't scare him too much, and make him go all Goth about his emotions.
By Thursday, May 07, 2009 Cutting the Cord Those of you who have been following this saga on Twitter can either move on to your next Google Reader item or enjoy the version not limited to a 140-character format. I'm all about the scope and sweep. I guess we can trace it back to last summer, when I started working from home. I'd carry my company laptop all over the house (and outside it) to do work, running on battery power half the time. As a person who's been chained to desktops my whole life (save a brief period in the 90s when I used a Kaypro II), I didn't realize that laptop batteries can only be recharged so many times before the maximum battery life goes from three hours to ninety minutes. When that happened at the beginning of November, I ordered a new battery through work. But by the time the labyrinthine process was completed and the new battery arrived in mid-December, the maximum battery life was down to the length of time it took me to catch up on Twitter. In the meantime, I'd gotten into the habit of unplugging the cord from the wall whenever I brought my laptop to another room, and plugging it back in whenever I set up anew. I continued doing that. Even when I saw that the new battery's capacity was more like five hours, I wanted to keep it that way. One never knows when a 4½ hour blackout will hit in the middle of a workday, does one? But a couple of weeks ago, when I was under my desk getting ready to transfer my home office up to the bedroom for the evening, I noticed something else. The place where the wire goes into the little transformer box had started to come loose, and little silvery wires were visible inside. The same was happening on the end that plugs into the computer. I realized that the cord was either going to fail or electrocute me soon, and I put in an order through work for a new one. The next day, when I went downstairs to start work, the laptop I had left on and plugged in all night was off and out of juice. This was not good, and not just because I'd forgotten to save some stuff. It's not that the cord doesn't work at all. It's just that you have to sort of wiggle and twist things around in order to get a good connection. When the screen is bright, I know I'm fine. When the screen is dim and there's a little draining-battery icon in the lower right corner, the wiggling must commence. Once I get it in place, I try not to move it so it keeps working, but that's not always an option. Especially not when I have to carry the whole setup downstairs three times a week to do recapping in front of the only TV in the house with a DVR. And then I have to wiggle there. The longer this goes on, the harder I have to wiggle, until inevitably the whole thing's going to snap clean in two. And then I'll electrocute myself. Which will put me way behind schedule if it happens at the beginning of a workday. And now I'm going out of town in a couple of days, with my laptop. You think it's hard finding a laptop outlet in O'Hare? Try it when you have to wiggle the cord around as well, and then wedge it between the case and your knee once you get it in just the right position. Not that I've done that either, but I don't really want to. So clearly, this re-order process has been a little more urgent than the one for the battery, and not just for the reasons listed above. I quickly realized that while you can run a laptop indefinitely with a bad cord and a good battery, the reverse is not the case. I spent a week getting on the nerves of the person who was responsible for the new order, making her update me every time it went through one of the four approval phases. Then a couple of days ago I got word that it was "in process with the vendor." That was all I needed to know. Ever since, I've been expecting it any moment, even though I knew it wasn't shipped until Tuesday. Yesterday I basically made the UPS tracking site my homepage. Did you know that if you keep refreshing it, it actually slows down the delivery? I discovered that this week. I spent this afternoon pricking up my ears every time I heard something that sounded like a UPS truck going by outside, which can get tiring when you live across the street from a school. A school where they have buses, at that. When I had to leave to pick up M. Edium, it still hadn't shown up, and neither of the neighbors were home. All I could do was leave a note on the front door telling the delivery guy to leave it on the back deck and hope for the best. When I got home, I just knew he'd been and gone, with a package that he couldn't leave without a signature. But there it was, on the deck like I'd asked. I don't think I've been this happy to see a package since…well, since my laptop battery arrived. And perhaps not even then. And just like with the battery, I intend to take better care of this one. I'll be more careful plugging it and unplugging it, as well as not carrying it around with the transformer box dangling behind me and banging on the stairs. Maybe I'll even duct-tape it all up like a Roger Daltrey microphone. Now if you'll excuse me, I have to stop Phantom from eating it. posted by M. Giant 8:51 PM 3 comments 3 Comments:
Ooooh, do you have a toshiba?
By If this ever happens to you again and you are in a bind, I bought a universal laptop power cord somewhere that has, like, fifteen connectors to go into different brand laptops, and I use it as a backup in case I forget my cord somewhere, or I want to pick up and move where I'm working and don't want to move the whole setup, etc. Might be a handy thing to have around if you really urgently do need your computer for work.
By Electrician's tape, ftw! I used to repair my old headphones this way when they started to fray all the time. I'm about to have to do it for my Mac's power cord as well. I'm pretty sure I could put the $130 for a new one to better use.
By Tuesday, May 05, 2009 Heavy Construction Every once in a while, something happens that shows me that in the pioneer days, I would have died. That's what the experience of building M. Edium's new play center has taught me. Between Trash and myself, it's taken weeks just to figure out which one we would get. It had to be one that would a) fit in his fenced-in play area next to the garage, b) have more than one thing for him to do, c) be reasonably safe, and d) cost less than three thousand dollars. To say the least, without my parents' help, we'd be screwed. I met them at the lumberyard the other day to pick up the kit and the wood for the plan we'd chosen and load it into their pickup truck. Even with my station wagon, I don't think I'd have been able to get all the lumber into my car, unless M. Edium and I rode home on the roof. And then, because we didn't get a pre-cut kit, we were going to have to cut all the wood to size. Fortunately mom and dad took care of that, too, hauling it all home and spending the afternoon on that project, and doing a much better job of it than I would have. So when they showed up at our house Saturday morning with all the pieces in the back of the truck, it was effectively like I'd gotten a pre-cut kit. Which worked out quite nicely for us. And then there's my dad's superior carpentry skills. I have no problem nailing and screwing boards together, as long as they don't have to be straight and square and true. Once I built an occasional table whose legs were so rickety that whenever we moved it you never knew if it was going to come down on three feet or four. But Dad and Mom helped Trash and me erect the primary frame part of the set, which is like a miniature two-story house. After they put in several hours of hard labor, Trash and I continued on, shoring up the structure and installing the flooring and three railings. And by the time we were done, we were totally exhausted. Next it's my father-in-law's turn, to make some final alterations. Otherwise I don't think this thing would be done by winter, which if it were our only shelter + in this climate = death. But maybe I wouldn't have died in the pioneer days, as long as I had my parents and Trash with me and lots of power tools and pre-cut lumber to build my log cabin out of. Of course, I also wouldn't have a pre-existing fence it had to fit inside, so maybe it would all even out.   
posted by M. Giant
6:37 AM
1 comments
1 Comments:digger derricksI love your mission statment, thowing stuff at the internet to see what sticks. Very original, kudos on the blog!
By Friday, May 01, 2009 Thinking about our friend BuenaOnda, living in Mexico City amid flu pandemics and earthquakes and that giant meteor that's headed straight for that central plaza thingy. So I thought I'd share an old story about her. And what a shit I am to her sometimes. Our friend BuenaOnda is coming for a visit this weekend, a month and a half after moving to Chicago. She’s been attending grad school and working as a Spanish translator down there. Which reminds me of a story. A couple of years ago, BuenaOnda was getting ready to go to Chile for a semester. As you can imagine, this involves a great deal of preparation—administrative, financial, and linguistic. I couldn't really help her with the first two, so I thought I'd give her a little opportunity to practice her Spanish. So one day, I wrote her an e-mail from work. Pretty standard, really. How's it going, what are you doing this weekend, do you want to see a movie with us, that kind of thing. Except I sent it in Spanish. Of course, all the Spanish I know is what I learned from watching telenovela stars suck in their cheeks and glare at each other while surfing past Univision. So in order to communicate with my friend en Español, I had to run my e-mail through Babel Fish. I was all over it. Plus I'm a sucker for anything that has a name from Douglas Adams. Anyway, a couple of hours later, I get a call from Trash. “Why did you do that to BuenaOnda?” she demands. “What?” I say, all innocent-like. “She just called me up, totally freaking out, going ‘when the hell did M. Giant learn Spanish? Why is he better at it than I am?’” “Huh,” I say. “Sounds like she's lost it.” Finally, Trash gets me to confess what I've done. Actually, “confess” is probably the wrong word to use, considering how pleased I am with myself. I was just trying to do something unexpected. Getting my friend to nearly lose her shit over it is a huge windfall. Keep in mind that this was before so many of us discovered the joy of mistranslation by software. For those of you who still haven’t, it turns out that while Babel Fish is a remarkable resource, it is subject to the limitations of machine translation. These limitations, I soon learned, are severe. Getting a computer-translated e-mail is a lot like getting a letter from a Chinese pen pal. It's like that episode of NewsRadio where Jimmy James holds a reading of his book, translated from English to Japanese and back. You end up with phrases like “Jimmy has fancy plans” and “American yum-yum clown” and “Donkey donkey donkey donkey.” Futhermore, for some reason it translates Trash’s name as “Dark-brown.” So when BuenaOnda got this e-mail from me, saying the Spanish equivalent of: “Hello! How is to the thing leave? Because they are the end of the week is good being. So now blibbety over toothpaste blah blee bling pants movie with forever liking. For Dark-brown is a eight needed. You you something when special is time. Purple monkey dishwasher. There what?” Her growing confidence in her Spanish collapsed like a house of Kleenex. See, she thought she couldn't understand it because my Spanish skillz were so much madder than hers. When in fact even Pablo Neruda would have been unable to decipher that guirigay. (That's Spanish for “gibberish.” Or at least it is according to Babel Fish. It could mean “buttplug” for all I know.) By the time I had a chance to talk to BuenaOnda about it, she had already printed it out and shown it to her Spanish professor, who quickly exposed my perverse composition as the buttplug it was. I like to think that it was a character-building experience for her. BuenaOnda, who now speaks Spanish fluently enough to work at the U.N., still gets all righteously indignant and calls me horrible names when she tells this story. Which just makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside. It's almost as much fun as when she sends me e-mails in Spanish. posted by M. Giant 7:54 AM 3 comments 3 Comments:I once wrote an email to an exchange student named Alejandro, who was going to be staying in our household. Although he speaks and reads English, I decided to get fancy by running my email through the translation software into Spanish. He prefers the nickname Ale, so that's how I referred to him in the email. He later asked me about it, explaining the Spanish translation version read "Dear British or American malt beverage..."
By I just invoked "purple monkey dishwasher" today. That one never gets old.
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Hey! I've learned almost all my Spanish from Univision telenovelas, and I can now understand almost everything they say! It works!
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