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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Monday, June 29, 2009 The Quarter in Movies (Part 1) I love the end of the quarter this year, because suddenly I have two free entries I don't have to think up topics for. Here's the first batch of movies I saw the last few months, starting in April. Monsters Vs. Aliens If there's a way to recap 24 for almost five years and not be distracted by Kiefer Sutherland's voice as General Monger in this, I haven't discovered it. As for another cast member of this movie whom I regularly recap, M. Edium was deeply affected by Rainn Wilson's Gallaxar. "That alien is so dumb," he kept saying. Which was the worst word he knew, until he learned "flegnod." Even so, I didn't realize how deeply it had affected M. Edium until weeks later, when he asked me, "Someday, can we go to where the Golden Gate Bridge used to be?" I had to explain to him that despite what happened in the movie, the Golden Gate Bridge is still very much there. Now he wants to see it even more. So then I explained to him about a thing called "traffic." Observe and Report There's a point in this movie where a guy walks out of a room, saying, "I thought this was going to be funny, but it's actually kind of sad." It's not often that a movie reviews itself so effectively. Seth Rogen tests the limits of his appeal as a deluded, violent, racist mall security guard and – oh, uh, Seth? Your limits are back there. Somewhere. Yeah, that's going to be kind of a hike back. No, you can't have a ride. Take your stupid golf cart, maybe. State of Play Russell Crowe didn't really need to be tubby for this role; I just think he enjoys putting on weight. There, I said it. I saw this with Linda while she was in town, and while we both found the story absorbing and appreciated how it treated us like grown-ups, both of us had to spend a inordinate amount of energy trying not to be offended at the denigration of bloggers. By the same token, was the climactic confrontation scene really the best place for that impassioned defense of print media? And then at the end, we learn that the nicest and most generous thing you can possibly do for a blogger is call her a reporter. News flash: not everyone considers that a promotion, movie. But as always, Bateman stole it. Fucking klepto. Star Trek Loved the main cast, although I kept finding myself wishing it were bigger. Probably because Scotty doesn't show up until halfway through, but still. The peripheral cast, not so much. Ben Cross as Sarek was in desperate need of a laxative, and Winona Ryder did nothing to dispel the effectiveness of the international charades sign for "Winona Ryder" (press the backs of your hands together in front of your chest and adopt a wide-eyed, mournful expression). Yet I still want to see who they eventually cast as Christine Chapel, Chief Kyle, and Yeoman Rand (as long as the last one is Jenna Fischer). Fantastic action sequences, even if some of them were a little unlikely. Like, Redshirt Olsen's space suit is sufficiently shielded to protect him (and Kirk and Sulu) during reentry, but the drill beam instantly incinerates him? Come now. I didn't really have issues with the continuity problems people have complained about; obviously the timeline is screwed right at the beginning, so we just have to get used to the fact that this new Kirk gets handed command of the Enterprise after saving it, not after his heroics as a young lieutenant during a crisis on the Farragut, as everyone knows. Plus it's a shame that his brother Sam is never born. And the Enterprise is built on the ground, rather than in dry dock? That seems a waste of energy getting it off the ground. What? Also, the timeline crisis doesn't really explain how there are suddenly cliffs in Iowa. It's a good thing I didn't bring M. Edium to this. In addition to many other scary, noisy parts, there would have been the added trauma of seeing the Golden Gate Bridge in jeopardy again. Remind me to never let him watch that episode of Eli Stone that AB wrote. More movies in a few days, because who knows if I'll see another one before the quarter ends? Okay, I do, and I won't, but there's still more coming. posted by M. Giant 7:52 PM 1 comments 1 Comments:
The drill beam is a) from the 25th century and b) designed to DRILL TO THE CORE OF PLANETS, so I bought that it was hotter than re-entry. Also JJ Abrams making the redshirt go -poof!- was funny.
By Saturday, June 27, 2009 Worn Out Strangers who see M. Edium tearing around at the park, the playground, the library, fine dining establishments, or what have you always say the same thing: "He should sleep well tonight." You think? Why don't you come over and put him to bed, then? Be sure and block off three hours. I know, they're just making conversation, and commenting on his irrepressible energy. But they don't realize how irrepressible it literally is. Seriously, try repressing it when he comes into his mom and dad's bedroom at 10:30 p.m. for the eighth time, two and a half hours after we started the long-term project of putting him down for the night. For a while, we actually thought there was no amount of activity that would tire him out for the evening. But I think we're actually finding it this week. It's a activity level we should probably call "summer." Take Monday, for instance. He woke up, had breakfast, played at home, went over to our friend Bitter's house to help her pack up for her move this week (Trash went too, because otherwise he packs all the boxes wrong), came back home, went swimming in his inflatable backyard pool, hosted a play date, had a snack, went to his swimming lessons, came home, had dinner, went to bed. Bedtime is typically around eight o'clock. He was asleep by 8:20. I swear to God we didn't drug him. I don't want to jinx anything, but it's been this way pretty much all week. We get him into his bed, read him one or two stories (the typical amount is four, a measured compromise between our preference of one and his preference of eighty-three), leave the room, and five minutes later he's out. So apparently there is a level at which he can get tired out. It's just a question of reaching it, and keeping him there. The question is, will that wear us out? What good is having him pass out from exhaustion at 8:30 if we were ready to do the same at 5:00? I'm sort of entertaining an alternate theory that it's just the solstice. You know, now that the days are getting shorter again, he's not so opposed to going to bed while it's still full daylight outside. The advantage of that theory is that it's easier on us. The disadvantage of it is that this kind of dependence on the celestial calendar may one day drive us to o something like erect a Stonehenge in our front yard or something. I'm researching permits just in case. posted by M. Giant 9:15 PM 4 comments 4 Comments:I feel for you and Trash. Kids are great, and if we could harness their energy, we could totally get off of fossil fuels.
By It's probably the swimming--that tires my girls out faster than anything. So now you just need to build yourself an indoor pool and let him swim every night before dinner! Problem solved.
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I get that "He'll crash like a meteor" remark all the time.
By My 3 yr old will sleep well after tiring day but it doesn't stop him from getting up at the crack of dawn.
By Wednesday, June 24, 2009 Scream Queen Trash's almost total deafness in her left ear can sometimes be a challenge to live with, and sometimes it can be fun. I'm completely used to being on her right side when we take a walk, for instance. She can't talk to me in the car with her window open if I'm driving. Whether or not she hears M. Edium if he wakes up in the middle of the night is largely dependent upon which ear she's sleeping on. She can't always tell where noises are coming from. And best of all, sometimes it's really hard not to sneak up on her and scare the crap out of her. And it's funny, because she's a screamer. It happens surprisingly often. The other night, I was coming home from a late movie. She was upstairs on our bed. I assumed that she would have heard me park in the driveway, let myself in the back door, come up the stairs, use the bathroom next door, kick my wooden clogs off all the way down the length of the hallway, something. And yet when I presented myself in the bedroom doorway, she screamed as though I were a marauding yeti. Which, okay, I only shave once or twice a month these days, but still. At least she remembered that M. Edium was asleep down the hall, and was able to suppress the scream -- by burying her face in her pillow while it ran its course. "Why didn't you just stop screaming?" I asked. She said she couldn't. She'd already started. I guess it's like peeing. Just three days before that, she let out another howl when she was about to go into our house through the back door and encountered Chao coming out. That one's a little more understandable, because he hadn't previously been there (although we were expecting him) and he's a good deal more yeti-like than I am at first glance. But the best one was a few days before that, when she had just finished checking on a sleeping M. Edium. She thought I was downstairs, but I wanted to check in too. And when she turned from his bed and saw my hulking silhouette in the doorway to his room, she couldn't help letting out a scream. Except she didn't want to wake up the kid, so instead of releasing one of her ululating yells, like, "AAAAAAHHH!!" she just said, "aaaaaahhaaha." I shit you not. Funny, with the bonus that she succeeded in not waking up the kid. She couldn't repoduce that sound now if she tried, and she has. When we were telling Chao this story (after she'd calmed down, of course), M. Edium loved it so much that he wanted mommy to put him to bed that night. And for daddy to scare her again. But all this stress can't be good for her. I'm thinking maybe I should get myself a collar with a bell or something. At least the right side of one. posted by M. Giant 7:37 PM 2 comments 2 Comments:Hee!! I have the same problem Trash does. In fact, your entire first paragraph sounds like our house. When Thunder walks into the house and can hear me in the kitchen, he begins yelling, "Tempest, I'm home now. Tempest, it's me..." Over and over as he approaches. I often don't hear him before I see him. And if I already have a knife in my hand, my screaming and lunging take on an extra element of adventure. On the plus side, he is beginning to learn some American Sign Language to communicate with me in crowds or large venues.
By I am completely deaf in my right ear, and don't wear my hearing aid around the house much of the time. Shortly after we moved in together, my boyfriend decided to try to scare me by sneaking up on my right side; unfortunately for him, I'm not a screamer--I'm a smacker. I (out of panic-induced instinct) walloped him right in the stomach and he hasn't scared me since!
By Monday, June 22, 2009 Jurassic Playground We all have different defense mechanisms for dealing with stressful social situations. Some of us get loud and obnoxious. Some of us gobble Paxil. Some of us (and the "us" in this case is not merely rhetorical) nurse a beer. And then another beer. And then there's my four-year-old, who when surrounded by new people in an unfamiliar setting becomes someone else entirely. One minute he's our adorable little M. Edium, effortlessly charming all who look upon him, with his blond hair, blue eyes, and pink dimples. And then he becomes a total saurischian. More specifically, a theropod. More specifically still, a Tyrannosaurus Rex. It's not that he isn't out going, because he is. Almost uncomfortably so, from the point of view of an introverted cave-dweller like myself. It just takes him a minute or two to get warmed up. In the case of grown-ups coming over to the house, that takes the form of hiding excitedly in the bathroom for a few moments. But in the case of playing with new kids at the playground, it takes quite a different form. A form that consists of stomping around with the first two fingers on each hand hooked into impotent little claws, roaring and snarling. There have been a few occasions when we wished we could have brought our bathroom from home for him to hide in, because that would have been preferable. The good news is that I think we caught this behavior pattern early enough to nip it in the egg. When we were camping in Wisconsin last moth and he joined some other kids on the playground, we were alarmed to realize that the other kids were running away from him in fear. Including the older kids. At about the same time, we started hearing about him scaring some of the other kids at school with this behavior. Obviously this couldn't continue, so we had to find some way to make our tiny king of the predators extinct, despite our not having access to a giant asteroid. And one of the other ways in which we're lucky to have him is that he's the kind of kid where if you sit down and explain shit to him, he listens and he gets it, especially if trash and I do it together. You just have to use terms he understands. "When you act like a T. Rex, it scares the other kids." "..." "They don't want to play with someone who scares them." "..." "Would you like it if someone came at you acting like a T. Rex?" "…" "So you shouldn't do it to other kids, then." "..." "And if you don't stop, we're going home and you can go to bed." "Okay, I understand, I won't do it again." And he does understand, is the thing. You don't have to explain it to him again. But that's not to say he doesn't need some quick reminding once in a while. A few times over the past few weeks, I've actually caught myself calling out from the edge of the sandbox, "M.? No being a T. Rex, remember?" Add that to the growing list of things I never thought I'd say to my kid (which, to be fair, includes about 95% of the things I've ever said to him). And generally, he remembers right away. It's almost too bad, really. Now I don't have an excuse to stash beer in his snack bag when we go to the park. posted by M. Giant 6:33 AM 3 comments 3 Comments:
As the mother of a six year old to whom I've had to call out "Sweetie, remember you can't be a cheetah/lion/tiger/ankylosaurus/jaguar on the playground, you have to be *just a kid* remember?" more times than I ever dreamed I would (and then again, I never actually dreamed I'd be shouting those words, ever to my daughter...), I totally hear you. Kiddo doesn't do it so much from an initial shyness standpoint as a "I think I'm going to be XYZ creature this week, no matter where I am or what I'm doing" sort of standpoint. We've had to train her to *ask* the other kid(s) on the playground, friends or strangers, if they would like to play XYZ animal o' the week with Kiddo instead of just running up to them roaring and snarling.
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Jaguar or Transformer? Heck, why decide when you can be both!
By Virtual Hi-V for Febrifuge (that's a roman numeral high-five, Mr. Doctor-guy...)
By Friday, June 19, 2009 Museum Quality Time With Trash having been sick this weekend -- actually, for the last two weeks on and off, culminating in a visit to urgent care and prescriptions for antibiotics to treat her pneumonia and double sinus infections -- having her spend a lot of time taking care of our four-year-old was not on. Even me spending a lot of time taking care of our four-year-old was not on, because of the caretaking his mom needed. My parents to the rescue once again, as they picked up M. Edium last Friday afternoon and dropped him back off nearly 48 hours later. By that time, even though Trash's sinus infection had cleared up to the point where only half of her teeth felt like they were falling out, we both thought it best to get M. Edium out of the house for the afternoon. Times like this are when we're glad we have a membership to the Science Museum of Minnesota. Show the person at the entrance your membership card, and you get in free. Primarily because of how much you paid to get the membership card. We got to see a lot more of the museum this time, simply because we stayed longer. Trash has the philosophy that you only bring him for a couple of hours each time, because otherwise he'll get bored with it. I think I proved that wrong last weekend. Because, see, what happens is that every time, he goes right down to the floor with the dinosaurs and the little experiments for kids, and he stays there until it's time to go. If Trash's theory were correct, he'd be bored of the dinosaurs and the little experiments for kids by now, and he'd start going to different areas. So guess what he did this time? He went right to the dinosaurs and the little experiments for kids, and was so confident in his knowledge of them that he wanted me to go off in the opposite direction so he could be alone to explore the areas that he's been to enough times to consider his "turf." And he started to get kind of pissy when I didn't. I 'splained that that wasn't happening, and he could change his attitude or we could go home. It wasn't a problem after that. So he did his usual routine circuit, but we finally expanded his horizons. After a couple hours, when I'd normally be prying him away from the dinosaurs and the little experiments for kids, what we did instead was go and visit some other areas of the museum. Like, there's this whole floor devoted to biology. He spent some quality time removing and replacing rubber organs from a puzzle mannequin. It took a while, so I tried to distract myself with nearby displays about germs and snot. As if I hadn't had enough of that at home. Then there were whole other areas he'd never been to. He got his first look at the museum's mummy, for instance, which freaked him out a bit. I remember over a year ago, when Trash took him to the Institute of Arts and he asked her what that sarcophagus was. Trash floundered so spectacularly that another mom stopped to watch. As opposed to this time, when he was older and understood a little more about death. I was lucky that now I could calm his mild freak-out by explaining, "That's just a really old thing that used to be a guy," and he seemed cool with that. After a time camping at an area on the fourth floor filled with books and puzzles and stuffed animals (he normally likes to spend some time camping at an area on the third floor filled with books and puzzles and stuffed animals) and a lengthy visit to the bathroom, we decided to visit the Big Back Yard, whose most salient feature is a miniature golf course, each of whose holes double as a demonstration of some aspect of a river (appropriate, since you can pretty much spit into the Mississippi from there. If you have a really long straw). That may have been my one mistake, because the next time we go to the Science Museum he wants to bring his swim trunks. After this five-hour visit, I thought Trash might take me to task for making him blasé about the Science Museum. But I knew she wouldn't say that if she knew how hard it was getting him out of there. And in fact, she didn't suggest that at all. And when she brings him back for his next visit and he goes right to the dinosaurs and the little experiments for kids, I think I'll be fully vindicated. posted by M. Giant 11:20 AM 0 comments 0 Comments:Tuesday, June 16, 2009 Ham I Am For reasons that are too dull and embarrassing to go into here, we used to have two full hams in our freezer downstairs. Now we only have one. The other ham is inside me. What happened is that when Chao and I were on our way back from Green Bay, Trash got tired of not having any room to put stuff in that freezer (yes, poor us, we have too much food, boo-hoo), and she called me on my cell phone to tell me to inform Chao that no matter how tired he might be of me after that weekend, he was coming over the next night for diner, and we were having ham. It was already defrosting, in fact. Chao and I were both all over this plan. We love ham! Plus the challenge of tackling an entire ham was something we couldn't pass up. A few months ago, he, I, and a guest killed an entire three-liter bottle of store-brand grape soda just to prove it could be done, so we feared no ham that walked the earth. Well, funny thing. Between one thing and another, Chao never did end up coming over. We rescheduled Monday for Tuesday, and then Tuesday for Thursday, and then by the time he and EyeHeartPizza and Bitter came over for dinner this past Monday, it seemed a little improper to serve everyone week-old ham leftovers. Even if there had been enough left to go around. And at this point, I could hardly ask our guests to eat something I could barely face myself any more. It's certainly not Trash's fault; she labored heroically. That first Monday, she had me carve up part of the thawed ham into slices, which she then put into the slow cooker, where it spent the day slowly roasting in a savory barbecue sauce that she made from scratch herself. The results were outstanding, if voluminous. My only complaint was that she hadn't had the ham carved by someone who knew what he was doing. The next day, she deployed the crock pot again, this time with smaller cubes of the ham, sliced potatoes, cheese, and a delicious cream sauce that she invented. I must confess that this was my favorite incarnation, possibly because it was the least ham-intensive. I'd had quite a bit of ham the night before, you understand. And also for lunch that day. And possibly breakfast. Even so, we still hadn't used up all the ham. In the sandwich-fixins drawer of our refrigerator, there was a one-gallon Ziploc bag of ineptly sliced ham that in theory could be used for sandwiches, but in practice I would have preferred to run through a deli slicer first. Or, even better, run the ham through a deli slicer first. See, here's the thing: I love ham. M. Edium doesn't. And Trash is a vegetarian. Which means I essentially ended up eating an entire ham on my own, in a matter of a week. If you are what you eat, then I'm a big old chunk of dead pig. But we learned a lot from this experience. We still have that second ham in the freezer, just waiting until I have a free week on my menu. But next time, we'll make sure our plans with Chao are ironclad. We'll come up with even more excellent recipes to go with the ones Trash used this time. And whatever's left, I think I'm going to have you all come over and eat. Is August good for you? posted by M. Giant 8:45 PM 4 comments 4 Comments:Yes. Yes, it is.
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As someone who generally doesn't like ham, here are my two exceptions, which may help:
By You do know that at least one edition of the Joy of Cooking defined eternity as two people and one ham? One person and one ham... damn.
By I love ham, I'm a devoted fan of the blog, and I'm a frequent vistitor to the St. Paul/Minneapolis vicinity (I live in Eau Claire, Wisconsin). Do I qualify for ham leftovers?!
By Sunday, June 14, 2009 Parked There's a park with a playground about a block and a half from M. Edium's school. Once or twice a week, when the weather is sunny and warm, Mr. N. and the other teachers hand out matching green t-shirts to all the kids and lead them in a double-file, handholding flock up the street to play for a while. Trash and I actually saw it happen once; one morning we'd forgotten to drop his lunch off with him, and when we went to take it to the school, we could see them coming back. It would have been adorable even if we hadn't seen M. Edium among them, in the middle of the pack, his eyes directed down on the feet of the kid in front of him (although he later claimed to have seen us drive by). But seeing our little one as part of something bigger than our family, independently of our family, was surprisingly moving. If he ever joins the army we're fucked. Anyway, it seems like he's been waiting forever to go back to that park with his school, what with the long, cold winter and the late, rainy spring we've been having. But last week, as I was taking him to school, he asked if we could drive past the park. I said sure. Guess what? The park was gone. Okay, I should clarify. The park had not been completely razed, transformed into the foundation of a multi-story parking garage, or otherwise nuked. It was just that the playground equipment had all been dismantled and removed. And stacked next to the big sandbox area were several dozen large boxes, as though to signal that a new park was moving in and just hadn't unpacked yet. Kind of a drag. Don't misunderstand; the old playground equipment was outdated and deteriorating. The swingset squalled like a llama in a hurricane, the Plexiglas bubble window had permanently fogged over long ago, the "slide" was more like a "sit," and I don't think the tire swing over the bed of broken glass was even legal any more. But it was better than nothing, which is what's there now. Actually, after the pickup the other day, we stopped by to check it out again. Most of the boxes are still there, sodden and misshapen from all the rain we've been getting recently. However, a small stand of bright-green vertical support poles has been sunk into the ground at what would seem like random intervals to a non-parent, but to my experienced eye indicates that this playground is going to end up looking like every other playground in the area. Unless they forget to take down the yellow caution tape that's up now, which would actually be kind of cool. What makes it a little more interesting is that years ago, before we decided to stay put and expand the house, we actually considered moving into that neighborhood. This would have been our local park, and we would have found it charmingly retro, right up until the past couple of weeks when we couldn't have gone there at all. And adding to our bitterness would be the fact that this would be taking professional crews upwards of two weeks, as compared to the quite impressive work we did in our own back yard in one weekend, just last month. In the meantime, I suppose we can take solace in the fact that the area we live in has about nine hundred parks per square mile. We'll just have to make do. posted by M. Giant 8:49 PM 1 comments 1 Comments:
For a moment there, I thought Leslie Knope got her hands on it and un-parked it. I hope it comes out nicely.
By Thursday, June 11, 2009 Daddy, Blogger M. Edium is starting to be able to read. It's painfully slow and he's not always in the mood, but he's learning how to recognize certain words, sound out others, and even write a few on his own. It's a remarkable thing, watching your child take the first steps towards literacy. It means that it's only a matter of time before he can read his own damn bedtime stories at night and we can get on with our lives. Kidding! Kidding, of course. I can't imagine what our nightly routine will be like when we're not reading him three or four picture books (or more) every night. Of course, there was a time when I couldn't imagine not having a small army of baby bottles permanently occupying half of our center island, and those have been gone since I gave up formula six months ago. So I thought that what I would do is write an entry just for him, that he could read all on his own, should the mood strike him. And then he'll see what daddy's doing on the computer all the time. And hopefully he'll find what he reads so boring -- because this is all stuff he knows, and would tell you himself -- that he'll never come back to this site again and read about some of the stuff I've written about him when he's old enough to kick my ass. M. is a big boy. M. likes water, cats, and dinosaurs. Also Legos and space. His mom and dad cook. They cook good food. M. eats it, maybe. M. has a cat Phantom and a cat Exie. They are silly. They poop a lot. M. and his mom and his dad all like books. They read to him. He reads to them. His mom takes him to the library to get books. M. likes all the books. He likes WALL-E. He used to like WALL-E more than he does now. Now he likes Transformers. What will his mom and dad do with all his WALL-E stuff? M.'s dad farts. He clogged the toilet. Ha ha! The end. I like to wrap up the regular entries with a punchline too, and I think he'll like that one. posted by M. Giant 5:25 PM 1 comments 1 Comments:
This is literally the funniest thing I have read online all week. I had to read it out loud to my fiancee - which makes it even better!
By Tuesday, June 09, 2009 Hot Item I talked a couple of weeks ago about how we got rid of our old water heater. Or, more specifically, how we got a new one. I really didn't discuss how we got rid of the old one, which didn't really happen until Chao came over this past weekend. The thing is, I didn't want to make my dad haul it upstairs with me, after he'd already saved our bacon and all. So I asked Chao for his help in that area. He was nice enough to show up over the weekend and help me schlep it up the stairs from the basement. I think next time I get a new water heater, I'll set it up on the main floor. Maybe my study or something. Because trying to get a water heater up the stairs -- drained or not, and it was drained -- proved to be rather difficult indeed. Funny thing about a water heater, it weighs about nine hundred and eleventy tons. You'd be surprised how hard it is to get something like that up a staircase. And I wouldn't have been able to accomplish that at all, without Chao. But fortunately, the two of us were able to manhandle the thing up the basement stairs and out the side door, where we managed to roll it across the yard. At which point I was really glad that the previous owners had opted for a cylindrical water heater instead of one of those square ones. With some supervision from M. Edium, we got it to the curb, where the garbage people would pick it up. At least in theory. The "in theory" is where it kind of falls down, because yesterday afternoon, after the city garbage crew had been through, it was still there. But fortunately, the "in theory" doesn't cover what our friend Chao calls the "Jawas." Do you have Jawas in your neighborhood? The people who drive around on garbage day with a pickup truck, gathering stuff people put out for the trash? Obviously they serve a useful purpose, reducing the amount of net waste in our society, but I've been a little freaked out ever since I saw a whole swarm of them once. It was eerie. Anyway, at some point yesterday afternoon, I became aware of a pickup truck that had stopped outside our house. I looked outside in time to watch a woman with a ponytail light a cigarette, then climb out with a wrench that she started to use to remove the gas valve from the heater. Well, okay, if she can get it off, she can have it. But she couldn't get it off, so she decided to take the whole thing. The truck bed was already full, was the tricky thing. Oh, and a water heater weighs about nine hundred and eleventy tons, so that was the other tricky thing. So I went to the back of the house get my shoes. But by the time I was back at the front door and ready to go out and give her a hand with the heavy lifting, she'd already heaved it up onto the truck's tailgate. I was frankly amazed. I watched her for a few seconds longer, trying to situate the thing so it wouldn't roll off the back the minute she pulled away from the curb. I suppose I still could have offered my help, but packing and arranging aren't really my strong suit. And I heard her drive away ten minutes later with no crash anyway, so clearly she was fine on her own. Next time I have to get rid of a water heater, I'm not gong to bother hauling it out of the basement. I'll just put up a sign on the curb that says "FREE BROKEN WATER HEATER INSIDE, DOWNSTAIRS" and wait for her to come back. posted by M. Giant 11:59 AM 7 comments 7 Comments:
When I moved out of my apartment in Brooklyn, I left all kinds of stuff behind -- little stuff I didn't care about enough to move. Little junk, crappy knock-together furniture, stuff like that. And in New York, on the right days at the right times, you can just leave everything on the curb. So I left all this stuff on the curb, including trash bags and stuff.
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Forgive me as I am sleep deprived, but why does Chao call them Jawas? I'm not getting that and I bet I should...
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Our street is the main drag for Jawas, and we've been disposing of our junk that way for 15 years. We once had someone stop to pick up our old storm door before we had it completely off the doorframe. And despite the fact that it had our house number bolted to it.
By Heather, Jawas is, I think, a Star Wars reference. The Jawas were those funny hooded-robe wearing creatures that bought and sold robots and other scrap.....
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WHAT?!?!?! By HERSELF?!?!?!? I'm so emasculated right now. I have moved cast iron steam heat radiators up and down stairs and I don't remember them being as heavy as your water heater. Kudos to her (and her penis).
By When my husband moved in with me in Chicago, we were putting things that he wasn't bringing to my apartment by the dumpster in the alley. We put an old desk there, then went back to his apartment for another load. By the time we returned, less than 10 minutes later, the desk was gone and no one was in sight. The Jawas will take anything here -- including the dumpsters themselves. Two weeks ago, we had to call the city to replace our large garbage cans that we put out on garbage day because someone had taken them (from our townhouse and 4 others).
By For future large-trash reference, in Mpls the garbage guys take notes (on your recycling day), and the large-trash guys come by the *next* day to pick stuff up. I suspect they do it in purpose to keep the amount of junk the city has to deal with low, because pretty much anything metal or useful will be scavenged long before then (as you have documented).
By Friday, June 05, 2009 For the Birds One unexpected disadvantage of living here in the northern latitudes is the short June nights. Actually, it's not usually a disadvantage at all. It's nice to be able to stay outside until after nine o'clock and still be able to see each other. But there's a downside. Like how I went to bed at two in the morning last week and woke up to pee four hours later and it was full daylight. One can't help feeling a bit dissolute when that happens. Another thing most people wouldn't expect is the early morning soundtrack. Now, our neighbors have a fountain. As I've said on Twitter, the only thing better than owning a fountain is having neighbors who own a fountain. You get to fall asleep to the sound of the flowing water drifting into your window, without having that sleep disturbed by thoughts of maintenance and operation costs. But then, at four in the morning, when the eastern sky is starting to shift from black to blue, the birds wake up, and you just wish one of them would take flight and have a fatal head-on crash with the thing, and then you could sleep even better. I think it's gotten worse since the addition, and our bedroom has an expansive pair of windows that open out into the backyard, giving us a commanding view of every tree within two blocks. And since we can see those trees, apparently every bird in those trees can see us, and they'd like us to wake up now, please. I actually woke up a few mornings ago, two hours before the alarm, to a sound that reminded me of a moment from an episode of Lou Grant I saw some twenty-five years ago (which is to say, I saw a moment, not the whole episode). Lou shows up for work grumpier than usual, complaining about a noisy bird outside his window that morning. One of his employees asks what kind of bird it was. "Inconsiderate," Lou grumps. Well, apparently the flocks of inconsiderates are passing through Minnesota this time of year. Of the avian throngs crowding our neighborhood that morning, two stood out. One sounded like it was a) directly outside our southern window, and b) a seven-year-old Star Wars fan. How else to explain the way it kept going, "pt-CHOO! pt-CHOO! pt-CHOO!" until I was wishing for a Wampa to stalk up and swipe it out of the air. And the other one was something camped out in our back yard outside our eastern window, with a much more elaborate call. Imagine an air mattress being inflated and then deflated, all in about a second and a half, and the piercing whistling noise that would result: "whsHHT! PSsseew." Followed by, "WhooOP? Whoop? Whoop?whoop?whoop?whoop?whoop?whoop?whoop?whoop?whoop?whoop?" And yes, I know exactly how many whoops were in each call, because I counted them. In between each repetition, there'd be a long pause, as though it was done, and then it would start all over again. One time there were only seven "whoop?"s, and I dared to hope that he was satisfied at having gotten his message across. Or, better yet, that one of the neighbors' cats had gotten it. This would have been one time when I wouldn't have minded looking at a half-eaten corpse. I also remembered hearing a story on NPR one morning, all about how you could identify birds by their calls. Lying there I bed, wishing I could go back to sleep, I found myself wishing I had that expertise. Then I would have known what kind of bird was making that noise, what it looked like, what its mating habits were, and the best way to kill it. Because so far, the neighbors' fountain doesn't seem to be doing the trick. posted by M. Giant 8:13 PM 3 comments 3 Comments:Australian reader here. In the birds' competition to be the most annoying, I bet none of your birds come close to our cockatoos. I can't describe the noise they make because it's so ghastly you can't imagine it unless you've heard it. The best I can do is liken it to a flock of power tools flying overhead at 5am. The sort of power tools that require you to wear hearing protection.
By Get a few of those large wooden owls and attach them to the roof of the house where the birds can see them. Sort of like a scarecrow.
By I suspect they were both cardinals. The first one was for sure. My rule of thumb is if it sounds like a car alarm, it's a cardinal.
By Tuesday, June 02, 2009 The Dead Pool I could tell you about my weekend in Wisconsin, but Chao already has. Check it out. There might even be a bonus photo of me, pretending to look like somebody who's fallen asleep in the car. * * * M. Edium has owned kind of a ridiculous number of pools for someone his age. And I'm only counting the inflatable backyard variety, and I'm also only counting the ones we used as pools (the one that served as his sandbox doesn't count). I guess the number is three. His first was round, with a fountain in the middle that we never got to work, because you had to insert a rubber hose through this long, narrow channel after the pool was inflated. Which was a lot like trying to shoot pool with a rope, to quote George Burns when he was talking about something else that this was like. At least we still have the hose. By last spring, that pool was in terrible shape, all leaky and moldy in addition to not having a working fountain. So we threw it out and got him a new one, a three-ring circular model about six feet in diameter. Which he loved, even when that giant branch fell on the power line in the back yard and we had to drag the pool up to the front to avoid the risk of flash-frying him. For some reason, between that and my futile attempts to save the grass by moving the pool around all the time, it around it didn't hold up, and before we adopted our current philosophy of trying to stretch out the utility of items further, we pitched it out. So a couple of weeks ago I went and picked up a new one. This is his biggest one yet, simply because it was cheap and available at Walgreens. Like the last one, it has three inflatable rings that make up the sides, but unlike the last one, it's oblong and about ten feet by four. Which means I'll be able to kill the grass in even larger sections than last year. It wasn't until I had it inflated and the garden hose running into it that I noticed it had another difference between it and he previous pool: no plug in the bottom. Which means any time I wanted to empty this pool, I would have to do it over the side. So let's do some quick math here. Ten feet by four feet is forty square feet. The pool can be filled to a depth of two feet. That means a total water volume of eighty square feet. Convert that to weight, and that means that if I want to dump out that pool, it means lifting eleventy-several million pounds of liquid. And not dumping it out isn't an option, I'm afraid. Our arboreal backyard is shady enough, but it's also the time of year when all those trees are dropping all manner of shit into the yard, like sticks, leaves, seed pods, sap, bird shit, and squirrels. Plus you need to factor in a four-year-old jumping in and out of it, after running around our grass-challenged (read: muddy) back yard, without ever wiping his feet. So the pool water gets kind of gross. Yesterday, less than a week after the first filling, Trash called me from errands and asked if the pool had water in it. "Yes," I said. Dirty, slushy water. "Can you dump it out and put in new water?" she asked as though this was a perfectly reasonable request that would not require either several hours or a sky crane. "Uh, sure," I said. Fortunately, I had spent an embarrassingly large segment of the morning already working on emptying the pool. One bucket at a time. Our front yard is getting distressingly yellow for this early in the season, so I thought I might as well kill two birds with one stone and use the water from the pool in the back to irrigate the dying vegetation in the front. It's a perfect solution, of only someone can tell me how I can do it without looking to passersby as though I'm slowly putting out an invisible fire in an imaginary structure. Fortunately, Trash came up with an idea to stretch out the life of the water n the pool: drape a tarp over it. This actually works pretty well, except that one tarp isn't quite big enough to entirely cover it. It keeps partially blowing off, or sagging in the middle and getting wet, so the extra weight pulls it off the sides from inside. In the next couple of days, I'm going to rig something up with ropes and tent pegs. Yes, it's dorky, but it's no dorkier than watering the front grass one or two buckets at a time, for six hours. 
posted by M. Giant
8:39 PM
4 comments
4 Comments:You need to use an old length of hose to create a siphon - it's how our dad used to empty our above-ground pool every summer. Just make sure you do it before you get to the green water/tadpoles/mosquito larvae stage, or you'll end up swallowing a bunch of the local wildlife (or was it only my family who neglected cleaning the pool that much...).
By
First of all, M.Edium is awesome -- of COURSE he needs a plastic axe in the pool! And letters...and a space shuttle...
By If you don't care where the water flows to in the yard, do what I do - push down on the sides to let some of the water out until it's light enough to dump out. They're inflatable - they should give.
By
We used a tarp and tent pegs last year for this very same idea! But I agree with the other commenter... just squish down the sides! or... a lot of the big pools come with a drain in them so that you can pull the plug and let the water out the bottom.
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