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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Wednesday, June 30, 2010 $100 Question Just a quick heads-up -- I'm participating in something for BlogHer called The $100 Question. They have a bunch of bloggers submit questions and then people can post their answers in the comments, and potentially win a hundred bucks in the process. I personally am not eligible to win the hundred dollars for my own question, which is why I'm telling you about it. I figure if I can't win it, it might as well be one of y'all. Check it out here. And good luck! Me, I'm going to try to win a hundred dollars on other people's questions. All of them, preferably. posted by M. Giant 1:30 PM 0 comments 0 Comments:Tuesday, June 29, 2010 Road Tripped Up After we nixed the idea of an RV road trip, here were some alternatives we considered and rejected for hitting our whole itinerary anyway: 1): Take My Car. Now this is old-school. As long-time readers may or may not recall, I drive a 1999 Saturn SW-2 station wagon. One of the last station wagons to be built in this country (which is part of the reason I still drive it), it has over a hundred thousand miles on it. Why not load up the Family Truckster and see the country Griswold-style? Well, as I already mentioned, it's got over a hundred thousand miles on it. A hundred and thirteen, actually. From what I understand, the alternator's living on borrowed time as it is, and I'd much rather it crap out during the two-mile drive to M. Edium's school than on some forsaken pair of wagon-ruts in Wazoo, Alabama. 2): Take Trash's Car. True, the Ion isn't exactly blessed with TARDIS-like volumes of cargo space, but we've taken it on long weekend camping trips before. All it takes is judicious packing and the use of a rooftop luggage carrier. It's actually that second bit that's the deal-breaker. Because neither of our cars has a luggage rack, it has to be attached using these straps that go over the top of it and then clip on the edge of the roof. Which feels pretty precarious in our neighborhood, let alone interstate speeds for extended periods. Plus you have to pack it when it's already on the roof, which is better than packing it on the ground and then heaving 200 pounds of camping crap up on the roof without breaking the windshield, but not by much. Because after it's full -- in an almost completely different shape than it was the last time you packed it because it's really just a big canvas bladder -- you have to tighten and loosen and balance eight different heavy-duty straps in a tedious process that recalls nothing so much as tuning a giant eight-string guitar that lacks tuning pegs and instead has those maddening clips you find on backpacks. I wasn't about to do that at every stop. And I was pretty sure Trash would put her foot down every time we got to a new city and I said, "No, I'm not digging that crap out of the luggage carrier. We can sleep on a bare mattress just fine again tonight, princess." Or, "You need your Epi-pen now? Come on, I bet we're within ninety minutes of a CVS." 3: Take both cars. I hate to admit it, but we've done this too. Only once or twice, before M. Edium's second birthday. But we also had Trash's mom with us, so it made a little more sense. They all rode ahead in Trash's passenger car while I followed in the pack horse, which meant I got to listen to The Who a lot. There was plenty of space for everything, to the point where I could even use my rearview mirror, and it was only a two-hour drive. The problem on this trip is not so much the amount of gas we'd consume (which I suspect would still be less than in a rented RV) is the fact that the only way to reliably communicate on the road is by walkie-talkie, which went like this: Trash: bleep "GRRSHHSHKKRR KRKRKGBRDTF LRRGR RGHTRMNLT? Me: [turns down The Who, picks up walkie-talkie from center console] "What?" Trash bleep "[something funny about a sign we just passed that I hadn't even noticed]" Me: "What are you talking about?" Trash: bleep"[Explains sign, then joke, which takes all the funny out of it.]" Me: [lying] "That's funny." Trash: bleep "Oh, never mind." Me: [turns up The Who] Trash: [thirty seconds later] bleep "GRRSHHSHKKRR KRKRKGBRDTF LRRGR RGHTRMNLT? Plus M. Edium would want to switch off between cars, which is a sure recipe for both of us thinking the other has him and thus driving off and leaving him at some feed station next to a pair of wagon-ruts in Wazoo, Alabama. 4): Flying. Again, given the number of destinations we plan to visit, this seems untenable in terms of both cost and carbon footprint. But then compared to what we almost put up with on both of those metrics with an RV, it might not have been much worse. The trouble, of course, is that flying necessitates traveling light. We don't bring anything on a flight that we can't carry on. I haven't checked a bag in this millennium, aside from when I flew with the radio show and the rules required us to carry on the laptops that belonged to the production because if anyone lost any luggage on these trips, it damn well better be our own personal stuff. But limiting ourselves to carry-on luggage isn't practical either, given the primitive lodgings we're expecting to make use of. Flying is for when you have a hotel at the end of your route, not the equivalent of an unfurnished tent made of wood. Of course, we could always just fall back on the old rooftop carrier. Sure, even I probably couldn't jam a four-foot, two-hundred-pound canvas cube into the overhead luggage compartment, and when I called the airline to ask, they said I couldn't even check it. And when I suggested strapping it to the outside of the plane, just like I've done on my car, they started asking me a lot of questions and then hung up. Anyway, we're still figuring it out. But I have to go now, because it looks like someone at 24. has decided to throw me a belated farewell party. There's like a whole SWAT team at my front door! How thoughtful! posted by M. Giant 8:21 PM 5 comments 5 Comments:You could always rent a minivan. They have schloads of space and are more fuel efficient than the RV would've been.
By I second the minivan suggestion. You can sometimes get really good deals in the summer on rentals, too. I've had good luck sometimes with http://www.rentalcarmomma.com/.
By I third the minivan. And if you have a discover card, you can use your cash back bonus for car rental gift cards.
By
I fourth or fifth or whatever it is now on renting a minivan. Still cheaper than your other options.
By Could you rent or buy a new car carrier? My friend has one that comes off the back of their car and is fairly easy to load/unload.
By Saturday, June 26, 2010 Night and Day M. Edium generally wants to stay where he is, which is a little surprising for someone who was in such a hurry to be born. When he's at home, he doesn't want to leave, and when he's out -- including at school -- he doesn't want to go home. When it's bath time he doesn't want to get in, but when bath time is over he doesn't want to get out. But worst of all is that when he's asleep, he doesn't want to wake up, and when he's awake, he really doesn't want to go to sleep. Officially his bedtime is 7:30 PM on school nights, but chronologically it's more like somewhere between 9:00 and 10:00. In fact, as I write this, it's after nine and he's still awake. In the top bunk. Above me. I guess I could blame it on the summer solstice. After all, who could fall asleep before the sun goes down? But then it was also an issue in the depths of winter, when it was dark by the time I picked him up from school. And putting a hood over his head doesn't seem to help either, unless we soak it in chloroform first. Instead, I blame it on his stubbornness. 7:30 is when the battle typically begins. What do you want for your bedtime snack? Nothing? Okay, don't ask for a bedtime snack later. Let's get you in your jams. Yes, you can go commando. Let's brush your teeth. No, you can't brush them after stories. Go potty. I don't care if you don't feel like it, I'm tired of doing this at 4:20 AM. What do you want to read first? No, that's too long. Two chapters and that's it. Okay, the end. No, you can't have another story. Yes, you will ask for another one and we both know it. Okay, one more and that's it. No, you can't have another one. See, I knew you'd ask. Get back in bed. No more books. If I have to come back in there I'm going to start turning off night lights. What do you mean, you're hungry? It wouldn't be so bad if the following morning wasn't the same struggle in reverse. Time to go downstairs. Yes, you can take your blanket. Yes, you can snooze on the couch, but five minutes and that's it. Okay, time to get dressed. Okay, you can have breakfast first. Okay, while you're deciding what you want for breakfast we'll get you dressed. No, you can't go commando. Here's your cereal. Is that enough milk? Good. Hurry up and eat it before it gets soggy. What do you mean, you have to pee again? It used to be funny when other parents would see him haring around at the park or the Johnson Space Center or the funeral home or whatever and comment to us, "Boy, he'll sleep well tonight, huh?" I used to chuckle knowingly. Now I just kick them in the stomach. Obviously some part of the ritual is broken on both ends. He just now fell asleep, and getting him out of bed tomorrow is going to be like pulling a badger out of its burrow. I think I have the solution, though, since laying down the law isn't working (although it works a little better for Trash than it does for me). I'll let you know how it works after I put it into effect. Then again, since it involves brute force in the morning and drugs at night, maybe I won't. posted by M. Giant 6:59 PM 3 comments 3 Comments:
So far, in my experience (with a 3 year old) it helps to try the bedtime routine starting at 7 when we want her in bed at 7:30. That way we get all the fighting out of the way before bedtime, she thinks she's won, and we're still in bed when we want her to be. Of course, she cant tell time yet.
By I find it comforting to know that my child is not the only one like that. It's so exhausting!
By We have gotten screaming bloody murder as we drop of H_ for preschool. And the teachers tell us it vanishes in minutes. Then he doesn't want to leave at pickup time. Those crazy children.
By Wednesday, June 23, 2010 Plumbing: The Depths We had a slow drip in our bathroom faucet, and I didn't want water leaking uselessly down the drain the whole time we're going to be out of town. That's like five dollars' worth of water! So I took the faucet apart. It's got one handle, which means you change a cartridge instead of a washer. I wanted to take the cartridge out and bring it to the hardware store so they could help me find a new one, but it was stuck. Wouldn't come out no matter what I did. Pulling on it with the pliers only brought the entire vanity up off the floor. So I put it back together. What's a little drip, after all? A little drip is what I wished it would have gone back to, instead of turning into a steady stream. I'd reached the Point Of No Return. So I took the pieces I could get off and brought those in to the hardware store, where I planned to throw myself on their mercy. The bad news was that they have a very limited selection of replacement faucet cartridges, but that was also good news, because it reduced my chances of getting the wrong one to 50/50. I got home with it, and for once in my life the toast had landed butter-side-up; it fit! Well, after I pried off one little piece of it, that is. It even came with a little tool that helped me pry the old one out. I don't know how much of the item's $25.00 purchase price was represented by that little hunk of molded plastic, but in the practical sense it might as well have been all of it., because without that the old cartridge would still be in there, letting water flow down the drain at the rate of five dollars per hour. On the downside, I had also discovered that something under the sink was leaking, and had been doing so for an indefinite period of time. Now, I think pedestal sinks are almost stupid enough to make me break my rule against using the word retarded, because why give up a whole cubic yard of bathroom storage for nothing? Well, for a minute there, I thought that maybe having nothing under the sink at all was better than having a bunch of stuff that had gotten damp and gross. But then Trash threw all the damp and gross stuff away, so when it came time to put back what was left, I had room to make it neat and organized. Suck it, pedestal sinks! But I'm getting ahead of myself. First I had to find the under-sink leak. And, ideally, stop it. At first I thought it was the drainpipe, but then I realized the drips were coming from above it. The shut-off valve? No, the only problem with that is that I couldn't turn the handle without scratching my hand on the sharp part of the drain mechanism, which resulted in leakage, but not of water. Looked like it was coming from where the water lines disappear into the underside of the sink in a mass of old tan goo. So back to the hardware store to get some new tan goo, and I flatter myself that they were glad to hear that the cartridge I'd bought had worked. So did the tan goo, as it turned out, because even the combination of my poor plumbing skills and the fact that to apply it I had to contort myself into a shape resembling the Greek letter sigma, the leaks quit leaking. And I know this, because I turned the water on and off repeatedly to make sure nothing was dripping. Sure enough, the bottom of the vanity remained bone-dry even after a full five seconds. So with just $27.50 in parts and materials, a couple bucks' worth of water to test-run through the pipes, the cost of the flashlight I damaged and all the under-sink crap we had to throw away, some minor blood loss, and three hours of my life, I easily saved what will work out in the long term to be mid-single figures. Being a DIYer is awesome. posted by M. Giant 5:30 AM 2 comments 2 Comments:DIY accomplishment! I've also always considered pedestal sinks a charming retro waste of perfectly good storage space. Now that I have one I'm enjoying the spartan whiteness...
By Job well done. Even though it seems hard you did it by yourself.
By Sunday, June 20, 2010 M. Ovie Reviews: Toy Story 3 M. Edium and I went to see Toy Story 3 together, and after we got home and Trash wanted me to tell her about it, I began, "Well, there’s this cowboy doll named Woody and a space ranger doll named Buzz…" And see, there's the problem with reviewing Toy Story 3. You either already know you're going to see it and love it, or else there's a cold, dead, blighted place where your heart used to be. What am I supposed to tell you about it that's going to make any difference? I guess I could tell you that on the scale between "Brilliant" and "Perfect?" I'd say right in the middle. It's better than brilliant, but there's one scene near the end that goes a little too long to be strictly believable, but then you almost immediately realize that it all needs to be there. There's a deus ex machina, but it calls back to the first movie so brilliantly that the script almost seems to have the hand of deus in it itself. And by this point we're all so used to most of the voice actors that it isn't even distracting any more to be listening to the voices of Tom Hanks and Tim Allen coming out of toys (although I was glad to have known in advance that Slinky Dog had been recast since the death of Jim Varney, because that shit was eerie). And man, the theme hits you so hard. You already know that it's about what happens to the toys now that Andy is grown up and heading to college. It boils down to: life changes. Nothing lasts forever. When it ends, you're going to have to make some choices. You'll probably choose wrong. But if you're brave, and loyal, and unselfish, it'll turn out okay. Even though the world is full of total dicks. It's easier to keep track of all of Andy's toys now, too, because the years have waged a war of attrition on them. It's just the core group now, which is realistic. although the Potato Heads still have an unlikely number of their parts, and Slinky Dog has the most durable Slinky I've ever seen. Plus there are some great new characters. There's a rich vein of potential any time you bring in Ken, and they mine every G-rated speck of it. And we also learn that there's nothing creepier than a creepy baby doll, nothing sadder than a sad clown, and nothing meaner than a teddy bear that's gone rogue. I hope that doesn't spoil too much. I'd tell you what M. Edium thought of it, but that dude's a spoiler machine. If you see him coming before you get to Toy Story 3, run. Our neighbor didn't, and probably wishes she had. Oh, and also, it's hilarious. So there's that. posted by M. Giant 8:28 PM 1 comments 1 Comments:I wish someone had told me to bring a tissue along to that movie because I cried and cried and cried. It was pretty good though. What impressed me the most about the movie was how happy they managed to make the toys look at the end of the movie even when they were in non-moving, non-speaking toy mode.
By Wednesday, June 16, 2010 RV Ready? VR Not, After All I know just last week I was all up on how we were going to "Go RVing," as the words emblazoned on the sides of the rental campers phrase it. If you're like us, you've spotted those vehicles on your own road trips and wondered, "Why haven't we ever done that?" And then, if you continue to be like us, you realize, "Because it's really exorbitantly expensive, that's why." Part of the problem is that we're going for twelve days. Lots of RV places rent at weekly rates, which are expensive but a bit cheaper than the equivalent of seven times the daily rate. We got to pay both! Awesome! And then over the weekend, we took a closer look at our contract, like we should have done before. The figure I'd been initially quoted over the phone was there, but it wasn't the bottom line. There were any number of taxes and fees and deposits added on, which we expected, but not that much. And then there was the matter of mileage. Different RV rentals have different rates, but almost all of them limit you to a certain number of miles a day. In this case, it was a hundred. I ask you, if you're only driving a hundred miles in a day, what's the point of an RV in the first place? If you can live, eat, and pee in your vehicle on a road trip, you should be able to take advantage of the reduced need for stops to cover more distance. Instead you're not allowed to travel any further in a day than a few ambitious bike rides without paying through the nose. It didn't help that I'd vastly underestimated the number of miles we'd be traveling on our itinerary. Even driving the shortest, most direct route from city to city and then walking everywhere once we got there was going to result in extra mileage fees that were tantamount to being skull-fucked with your glasses on. And that's on top of the fact that this beast is almost certainly going to get roughly the same gas mileage as my snowblower, or about 35 yards per gallon. Now, we knew we'd be paying a premium for the chance to travel this nation's freeways in relative luxury, but when we crunched the numbers, the premium wasn't worth it. We realized we were better off renting an SUV or a pick-up truck, bringing along the camping equipment we'd been planning to bring anyway, and stay in camping cabins. It would certainly be cheaper. But then, so would the cost of all of us flying to Australia. We're only doing one of those things, but we could almost afford to do both. And yes, a mobile bathroom would be nice, but rest areas are free. Whereas dumping your RV's poo tank, in most circumstances, is not. This is not to say we'll never rent an RV. I'm sure we will someday. We'll just plan ahead a little better. And we'll rent it for dates that make sense. And we'll stay in our neighborhood. In the winter. What better way to see the country? posted by M. Giant 8:45 PM 1 comments 1 Comments:
Nice blog.
By Monday, June 14, 2010 Speaking in Code As far as Trash and I being able to discuss things discreetly in front of M. Edium we always knew that spelling things was only going to be a temporary solution, as it is for so many parents. This was actually brought home to us earlier than we thought, when he was less than half the age he is now. We were almost home, driving past the park near our house, when he suddenly asked us, "Are we going to be okay?" This seemed rather existential for a two-year-old, not to mention more than a little out of the blue. But we assured him, "Yes, we're going to be okay. We'll be home very very soon." That seemed to satisfy him, but as we continued on, he protested, "You said we were going to be okay!" Trash and I looked at each other and at him, and none of us seemed to be on fire or anything. "Be okay! Be okay!" M. Edium repeated with increasing agitation. It was then that we realized he was trying to use our occasional name for the park, which at that time was "P-A-R-K." I should emphasize here that both Trash and I have standard Midwestern-American accents. In more recent weeks, now that he's cracked the code on such parental utterances as D-U-M-B, M-A-C & C-H-E-E-S-E, S-T-A-R W-A-R-S, and I-M-P-E-N-E-T-R-A-B-L-E, we've had to come up with another way around it. Fortunately we have one mode of communication that my parents didn't. I was in the kitchen scrounging for dinner, and I thought I could throw a couple of things together that, while random, might be something you could get at one of our favorite restaurants. And then I thought, hey, why not just go to that restaurant, since kids eat free on Mondays? But I didn't want to be That Dad, who suggests a fun treat in front of the kid and then the mom has to be the asshole and say no in front of the kid. So I picked up my laptop and dashed off an IM to Trash, who happened working on hers. She IMed back that she was calling our friend Bitter, and while they were on the phone and Trash was learning that Bitter wouldn't be able to meet us until a bit later, Trash realized M. Edium might need a snack to tide him over. But she didn't want to give it away either, in case it fell through, so she said, "Someone…may need…interim sustenance…to eschew…famine." It's only a matter of time before we're blinking at each other in Morse code. And we ended up not going to the restaurant anyway. posted by M. Giant 7:22 PM 5 comments 5 Comments:But on the bright side, M. Edium's going to end up with quite the impressive vocabulary.
By My husband and I text each other stuff like that. I think I like your method better.
By Our code for the pool here is the aquatic entertainment complex. But she's 3 1/2 now, and we may have to come up with a new one.
By Do you guys know any foreign languages? That may do the trick. Although in our case, it sometimes takes me so much time to a) make my wife realise that I'm saying something in French or English and b) make her understand what I'm trying to say, that in the mean time our little boy already left the room. Or went to bed.
By "Interim sustenance to eschew famine"! This makes me very happy.
By Friday, June 11, 2010 RV Ready? Yes VR! Believe it or not, we have another trip planned for this summer, and it's going to be unlike anything we've ever done before. We'll be hitting some Southern states we've never been to, but where we're going isn't as much of a departure as how we're going. We're renting an RV. Ever since we first started going on road trips in the early years of our marriage, we have talked about buying a giant RV for our retirement, like the ones my aunt and uncle in Kansas are always buying and upgrading (the last one I saw was nicer than our house). Unlike them, however, we would pay for our motor home with the money we'd save driving all around the country, mooching off the far-flung network of friends, acquaintances, and blackmail victims we've been cultivating for decades. In fact, if you're reading this, we'll probably be parked in front of your home someday. I've even practiced by driving the giant coach bus in Grand Theft Auto 3 whenever possible. I discovered an unexpected advantage to this vehicle: while it may be easy for the cops to catch it, it's almost impossible for them to stop it. Yes, I often end up dunking it in the harbor, but there's better signage in the real world. Plus we'll do most of our driving in the Midwest. But that was before I learned about the Hubbert Peak and the attendant likelihood that by the time we reach retirement age, people will be doing most of their cross-country traveling on the backs of horses and bicycles, so we figured we'd better not wait. For this upcoming trip, we're starting relatively small. We're renting, for one thing. We did consider buying a used one for a few grand, but we don't have any place to park it (and as of now, neither do any of the neighbors who owe us favors). The other thing is that we're not popping our RV cherry with a behemoth that could have been Elton John's tour bus, but with a relatively modest 24-footer. I've never driven anything bigger than a 15-passenger van, so this seemed like a good first step. Besides, M. Edium has insisted on being able to sleep above the driver's seat, and most of your bigger Class A models don't have the overhead bunk. Unless you hang a sleeping loft above the driver's seat like the cockpit is a college dorm room, but we won't have the time for that (even if we do have the space). We're looking forward to this grand experiment. After we divide our giant stacks of camping gear into stuff we won't need when we have an RV (the tent) and stuff we will (uh…shit, everything else, I guess), this whole experience is going to be rich with novelty. Sure, I won't be able to dart through freeway traffic like I can in the Saturns, but I'm hoping we can make up for that by virtue of the fact that on hard-driving days we'll only stop when I have to pee, and I plan to totally dehydrate myself in advance. And there's a lot we're going to have to figure out on the fly, from how to cook meals in a space the size of a catbox to the meaning of this ominous phrase I keep running across in the course of my research, that phrase being "sewer hookup." We're open to any tips you might have, except one: don't ask us to rent the Robin Williams "comedy" RV for research, because it's not going to happen. posted by M. Giant 7:20 PM 4 comments 4 Comments:You should probably watch RV because according to my parents (full timers) there is a scene about what happens if you don't follow the sewer hook up directions. They've seen it in action and it ain't pretty. Leah
By We took an RV vacation when i was about 7 or 8, and it was seriously the best thing ever. Hanging out in the bunk above the driver's seat while the RV is driving? Is awesome. It'll knock M. Edium's socks off, and being able to walk around, pee, and eat without stopping definitely helps the "are we there yet?" issues.
By
We had a VW camper van pretty much my whole childhood and it was awesome for traveling. The back seat folds down to a two-person bed, and there was a cot that stretched out from the four support pillars over the driver's and shotgun seats. It stretches really tight, not like a hammock, which is a pain to set up but fine to sleep in. (That was usually my berth until we got a pop-up camper van which was EVEN BETTER). A little sink, an insulated icebox cooler, curtains for privacy, and lots of ingenious storage, plus it drives more like a biggish normal car than an RV. And you can park it in normal places without inducing the neighborhood's wrath. On the downside, you are really close to everyone all the time, and there are no built-in bathroom facilities.
By
I have always harbored a dream of renting an RV and driving across the country one summer for an extended vacation. I first told my beloved husband about this dream back when he was just "boyfriend" and not "husband" yet and he looked at me like I was *insane* for thinking such a thing could be fun. Turns our he was traumatized by a few childhood vacations in which his family rented an RV and drove around the eastern seaboard, specifically to stop at places pertaining to the Civil War (his father being something of a war history buff). I guess spending hours cooped up with your younger siblings in a low-end RV followed by being bored out of your gourd by your father explaining in great detail the military maneuvering of the North and the South while you were standing in the middle of a field somewhere wasn't Hubby's idea of an acceptable alternative to something like Cedar Point or Disney World.
By Wednesday, June 09, 2010 Houston, Part II I want to thank Ellie for advising me to spring for the GPS on our rental car, because as it turns out, Houston freeways are the stuff of nightmares. Literally, I have had recurring bad dreams about some of the stuff I saw on the way from the airport to Webster, way down on the other side of the city. My driving nightmares generally have a couple of motifs. One is when I find myself trying to drive from the back seat and can't reach the brake (although for some inexplicable reason the gas is never a problem) and the other is vertiginously high freeway bridges that look like roller coasters on first approach. Now, the Kia Spectra I got was probably small enough that I could have driven it from the back. But I wouldn't have also been able to deal with some of the theme park-inspired highway architecture I found myself facing. There was that bridge somewhere on either 59 or 45 that looked more like a giant harbor crane. There were any number of turns marked by a sign displaying the unnerving visual of a semitruck in the process of tipping over. There was the fact that two or three of the ten lanes seemed to be either merging or exiting or crossing each other at any given time. There was the time I crossed under no less than six other roadways, and wasn't even at the bottom of the tangle. And then there was the challenge of keeping up with midday traffic that seemed determined to be the first one there. Where? Anywhere. All of this would have been panic-inducing, but with the GPS calling out directions in her calm, clear voice, it was merely alarming. Fortunately I was able to distract myself from the constant fear of death by racing the GPS's ETA. And I would have won, too, if our hotel had an address that actually existed. But I did get to the empty field where the computer map thought I was going in record time. * * * This wasn't such a great trip for novel candy, unfortunately. M. Edium and I hit Food Town to buy 2.5 meals' worth of groceries, and all the candy there was stuff I see at home. Except for the separate, Spanish-language candy, set off to one side. The only new things I tried were "Carlos V," a package of simple chocolate planks with epigrams stamped into the top that I'm sure I would have found very witty if I could read Spanish. And maybe you read Spanish, but I can't even transcribe what they said because they melted before I got online. I'm sure you would have busted a gut, though. And then there was the horribly misnamed "Kranky," which, for being nothing but a small pouch of chocolate-covered corn flakes, made me a lot less Kranky than the Carlos V did. I offered to share those with M. Edium, but he declined, which was good because I didn't really mean it anyway. They made me the opposite of kranky. And then I had some "Big Red" soda, which I've had before but have trouble finding up here. I love any soda that has so much sugar that you can almost taste the individual grains. And yet I felt healthy drinking it, because I got it in those little eight-ounce cans that soda comes in when you're in the hospital. They wouldn't do that if it weren't good for you, right? posted by M. Giant 8:32 PM 0 comments 0 Comments:Monday, June 07, 2010 This Sucks We switched to a bagless vacuum cleaner a couple of years ago. Our previous one was a decade old and worn out and falling apart and it was made by a company that's better known for manufacturing sewing machines, but the main reason we got rid of it was because we were out of bags for it. There's nothing particularly remarkable about it. It's not a three-ton Kirby and it's not a smug-ass Dyson in some 80s color and it's not one of those "canister" models that never made sense to me even though I grew up with one in the house (a Kenmore, BTW). I mean, since I'm in charge of the vacuuming I guess I could have convinced Trash that I needed to vacuum the rug with a wand on a hose attached to a big unwieldy motor on wheels I have to drag around that would bang up the furniture and the baseboards, and occasionally even take me out if I got enough extension going to effectively springload it and slingshot forty pounds of whining appliance at my shins. But it would have been a pyrrhic victory at best. It's also not as reliable as one might hope. I generally vacuum the area rugs in the living room and the hallway every two to three days, with rugs in other parts of the house get more, shall we say, intermittent attention. But lately the living room has been looking like I've been letting it go for a week, even after I just got done. Now, my mom's old canister vacuum had a little plastic door on the wand that you could open up, to reduce suction and allow you to do a shitty job of vacuuming should the mood strike you. I think the settings were "Full Suction," "Light Suction," and "Passive-Aggression." But our vacuum does not have this feature, and if it did, I would not be using it. At least not intentionally. One nice thing about being a husband in charge of the vacuuming is that there are no frustrated breakdowns in communication between the person in charge of using it and the person in charge of keeping it in working order. I don't have to try to describe a noise to a skeptical mechanic; after a session, I just make a mental note of the still-dirty rug and the smell of plastic that's nearing the melting point and get on with my day. Now, it's not like I haven't tried to fix it. Especially after we replaced a couple of windows in the living room back in April and the rug ended up looking like the construction zone it was, something got jammed in the beater bar during the cleanup. I took it apart and cleared it out, and that seemed to address the problem, as well as clearing out most of the pine needles from January in the process. I turned it upright and turned it on, and the vacuum worked brilliantly again. It even eagerly tried to pull itself forward across the rug, like a self-propelled lawn mower. (Speaking of which, I did try to scam Trash into buying me a riding vacuum cleaner for Father's Day, but I'm not sure it's going to fly). Unfortunately, some damage had already been done. As I discovered over the course of the next few weeks of rooting around under the vacuum's hood over the next month and a half on an almost weekly basis, the beater bar wasn't spinning as freely as it should. As a result of the friction caused by the blockage, some kind of plastic bearing on one end had partially melted or something, with the result that even after clearing out all of the human and feline hair, loose threads, and Legos out from under there, the thing still ended up cleaning like my mom's old canister model on the "Oh, What's The Freaking Point?" setting. Finally, Trash had enough last night and said, "Fix it now." "I've already fixed it half a dozen times!" I protested. "How much more fixed do you want it to be?" This got me nowhere, but at least I didn't have to help with dinner. Instead I took my repair attempts further than ever before: outside. I sat out on the deck, with vacuum parts laid out next to me on a kitchen towel from Martha Stewart's "Passive-Aggression" line of linens, making M. Edium watch me slather motor oil onto every part of the beater bar I could get loose and several that I couldn't. When I had it mostly back together, our next-door neighbor saw me holding it upended, with my face lowered over the whirring beater bar, awaiting some whiff of overheated petrochemical, and asked if I was having any luck fixing it. "I've fixed it enough times that I think I'm getting pretty good at it," I said. He offered to lend me theirs, but when I got the vacuum back inside on the living room rug, it purred like a kitten, yet leaped forward like a panther. The rug was cleaner than it's been in months, even accounting for the black streaks of excess motor oil left behind. I don't know how long it's going to last this time, but just in case I'm going to research whether I can order spare beater bar assemblies online. Either that or go buy myself the biggest, heaviest, antiquest canister model I can find, and then run myself over with it. posted by M. Giant 9:04 PM 3 comments 3 Comments:
Our stupid vacuum wasn't working and I was totally pumped to get a new one when my husband decided we should at least TRY to take it to a vacuum repair place and get it fixed. And fix it they did in a matter of 20 minutes and $20. I was sad. No new vacuum for me.
By I have a Dyson and it has worked very well. I was skeptical but we've had it for a number of years now and have had no issues and it does indeed still have suction. But my question is this, if Mr. Dyson worked on eighty million prototypes before coming up with the perfect vacuum cleaner why did it not occur to him at any point that he should have included a retractable cord? This seems like a pretty big oversight for someone who's sole purpose in life was coming up with the perfect vacuum cleaner!
By Carole: I have one with a retractable cord and the retraction(?) unit ceased functioning on about the third use. Vacuums great, but the cord is a pain since the retractable feature means there's no place to hang the cord once it stops retracting.
By Saturday, June 05, 2010 Houston, Part I Coming at you from our hotel suite in Houston. Yes, it's an actual suite, even though we're paying what we're used to paying for a room. M. Edium's feeling pretty smug about that.  Yes, that's the bedroom in the background. This is shot from the kitchen, shown below:  Note that it's equipped with a fridge, a microwave, a stove, a sink, and a dishwasher, as well as adequately stocked cabinets. No oven, though, so I felt pretty stupid coming back from the grocery store on the second day with a frozen pizza. Fortunately M. Edium didn't mind eating it chewy-style out of the microwave. But we didn't come all the way to Houston to spend our time in the hotel suite, nice as it was. No. M. Edium couldn't wait to get out of the room and into what he came for:  With a pool behind the building, it actually took some convincing to get him to agree to head over to Johnson Space Center first. He claimed to be shy about meeting Clone Troopers there, but he needn't have worried. They don't have any. The Clone Wars exhibit, although it has pride of place the second you walk in, isn't that kind of thing. But that's fine, because the whole reason he wanted to come here was because he heard that you can get into a Space Shuttle cockpit, unlike the one at Kennedy Space Center in Florida, where you can only walk through the back of the crew compartment. And here it he is, doing just that:  Alas, he didn't hang out in there very long. In fact, the only reason he isn't a blur going from one side of the frame to the other is because I made him hold still and smile. He was much more interested in the five-story-tall play structure. If you're a parent of a child under ten, You've probably seen these terrifying towers of miniature mayhem, perhaps even crawled through one or two of them after your little one, trying desperately to keep him or her in sight while squeezing through passages designed for people a fifth of your size. Luckily, since this one is at NASA, it has live feeds from video cameras so you can see your kid most of the time without having to scramble up in there. Not that you can do anything about it. He would have spent the whole time up there if I'd let him -- all three visits. On the last one, he even dragged me up there. Here he is, showing off the tiny little space he refers to as the "Escape Pod."  By the way, it doesn't work. I tried. And when he wasn't there, he wanted to be in the pool back at the hotel. This afternoon, someone was having a tenth birthday party, and the whole pool area was filled with loud, boisterous, older kids he didn't know. Did that deter him from wanting to swim?  What do you think? One more day left. We have to be out of the hotel by noon, have the car back by 5:00, and the plane leaves at 7:00. I'm sure he'll want to spend most of that time doing something like going to an art museum or maybe a wine tasting. posted by M. Giant 8:38 PM 0 comments 0 Comments:Thursday, June 03, 2010 Turning Turtle Thought I'd give you an update on which of the two schools we'd narrowed it down to for M. Edium to start kindergarten at in September. As previously stated, one's further away, but has more resources and will challenge him further, while one is closer but seems less likely to push him out of the comfort zone he has that isn't much bigger than he is. Of course, we could just leave it up to M. Edium himself. He's toured both of the schools now. He saw the farther away school a couple of months ago, but we didn't get to the closer school until just a couple of weeks ago. Up to that point, he'd been pretty dead set on the farther school, but we hoped that seeing the closer school would help him to have a more open mind to both options. Basically, this could be a wrenching decision for him, so we want it to be equally wrenching either way. M. Edium followed along with me on the self-guided tour of the school on a late Friday afternoon, showing polite interest. I generally take his polite interest as sincere, if only because he's not yet old enough to fake interest out of politeness. Then we got to the library. In a fish tank by the window was a turtle that looked just like Tuck on Wonder Pets, only a lot happier to see us. I've never seen such an excited turtle in my life. Now, as we learned a few minutes later from the teacher who had adopted it, that may have been because it was her feeding time. And the teacher let M. Edium feed the turtle. So the turtle may be even happier to see M. Edium next time. As he followed the teacher's instructions, dropping in pellets one at a time and then pointing them out to the nearsighted reptile with his finger, he learned all about her. Her name was "Lucky," because she had been rescued from the middle of the street by one of the school's students. No word on whether the student had also been dubbed "Lucky" as a result of darting into traffic to save a turtle, or if the kid was now simply known as "Grounded." Needless to say, after M. Edium had made friends with Lucky the Turtle, he'd made up his mind that he was going to the closer school. Apparently Lucky trumps the biggest thing that the farther school had going for it, which was Star Wars books in the school library. Of course, there may or may not have been some of those in the closer school, but I didn't look that hard. Again, we don't want to tip the scales in any given direction just yet, at least until his mom and I make up our minds. After all, we have the rest of the month to do that. posted by M. Giant 6:49 AM 1 comments 1 Comments:I inherited a turtle from a grade 8 science class once and Lucy the wonder Turtle was the best ever! She played with the cats, knew her name and ate food out of our hands. Totally worth the choice in schools in my opinion!
By Tuesday, June 01, 2010 M. Ovie Reviews: MacGruber When I go to movies based on some other medium, I lately seem to be only dimly aware of that fact. I never would have known that Kick-Ass was a comic book adaptation unless it was in every word I read about it. I've never touched an Iron Man comic in my life. And I have some vague understanding that there was a series of novels about a bare-knuckle pit fighter and part-time schizophrenic living in Victorian London, but that was all at the back of my mind when I saw Sherlock Holmes. Likewise, in the past I-don't-know-how-many-years, I haven't seen any Saturday Night Live at all beyond what makes it to the top of YouTube (and that includes "What Is Burn Notice?" sketch, har de har har), so that time Tara mentioned something about seeing Will Forte in the elevator when she was still working at 30 Rock, I was impressed not because she sighted an SNL cast member, but because she was able to recognize one. But I still think I would have been able to figure out that MacGruber was based on an SNL sketch even if I hadn't seen it mentioned in all of the minimal reading I'd done before going to see it last Thursday. That's one nice thing about being some hack blogger instead of an actual movie critic; if you don't feel like doing the most basic research into an adaptation's source material, you don't gotta. And I'll be honest, part of the point of this whole feature is to try to build a reputation as a resource for people who are looking for movie reviews written by someone who doesn't know anything. Not that it matters. Nobody's going to see MacGruber for trenchant insights into the human condition. They're going to see a dopey comedy. In that sense, at least, MacGruber certainly delivers; at least the dopey part. It starts off slow and dumb, with mostly jokes you can write yourself, but once it gets past the setup it picks up quickly. Other things not to expect; realism, i.e. how this dude became such a legendary figure even though he's a complete idiot. But then just think of him as an American Austin Powers and it gets easier. Do what I did; just go in with low expectations, and you'll eventually realize you're laughing in spite of yourself. I'm not going to give away the jokes, obviously, because this kind of movie lives and dies on its jokes, but I will tell you one funny thing. After it was over, and Chao and I were heading back to the car, we saw the line outside the theater for the Sex and the City 2 premiere. Man, the ladies dressed up for that one. Given the target audience, Chao wondered, "for whom?" * * * In case you hadn't noticed, up top you see the new name for this feature, as suggested by dzwez. dzwez, please feel free to collect your prize, which is to have me review any movie you like that I can get to here in the Twin Cities, unless I don't get around to it before it goes away, in which case you get to pick a new one. Suddenly I'm realizing I maybe shouldn't have offered to do this in the month that Sex and the City 2 came out. posted by M. Giant 5:19 AM 1 comments 1 Comments:
Color me happy that you picked my suggestion! Keeping in mind the last movie I saw in the theater was the sixth Harry Potter movie, I feel in no position to send you to the theater to see anything. I'm content to check back frequently and read what you've seen under the M. Ovie title.
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