What a snoozer!

You know it's a boring game if the announcer falls asleep in the middle of it: click here.

Granted, it's professional baseball, which is about as exciting as watching golf.

Strange things are afoot at the Circle K

Mister hits the 20-years-of-service mark in February of 2011. He's been threatening to retire at that moment since he hit his 15-years mark. Now more than ever, he's been talking it up, encouraging me to find myself so that we will not be too hard-hit when we lose the bulk of our income when he retires at the end of this year.

Until yesterday.

Yesterday he offered me a list of locations around the world where a person with his qualifications could be given a Special Duty Assignment (SDA) as an Attache, most for 3 years. The details aren't important, the locations are.

One demands males only, as it is a strict Islamic country that is also more in turmoil than not, and is surrounded by unstable countries as well. Some are in Africa, some are in the Balkans. One is in Israel, which seemed to appeal to Mister, as did the one in Hong Kong.

I will admit that I haven't been keen on his retirement. I'm just not ready to leave the safety net of the military. On the other hand, if uprooting my kids--again--is the other option...

The bonus is, once overseas, getting to wherever else we ever wanted to visit would be simply easy! From Hong Kong, visiting the Great Wall, Seoul, Kyoto, Vietnam, even Moscow would be a snap. The Girl would be in anime heaven. The Boy would at least be in a nearer time zone to his best friend from Virginia, who had moved to one of the islands near Japan. Israel is similar--all of Europe (and Asia, even) is just a trainride away. Granted, there's the whole 'we're not getting on with Palestine' thing, but it's generally safer than, for instance, Sudan.

Not sure how I feel about it, want input, etc, etc. If he applies and gets accepted for any of the few that accept his rank, he must be prepared to report by June of 2011. We would obviously follow only after he has secured housing. I've always been apprehensive about moves, even coming back to Augusta where we had lived before, so I expect to lose what little sleep I have regardless. The tough part would be renting our house out again after finally getting it back in order. I may be able to convince my sister to move down here and live in my house, if she could get a job. Perhaps we'd just sell it. I don't know. Again, input, ideas, blah blah.

So Sorry

I've ignored you. I'm sorry. I hope that with the conclusion of my contract, I'll have a little more free time to share with you.

Dookie Doodle Doo

On the drive to our Myrtle Beach Getaway in which it was snowing, we got to talking about illegal drugs. The conversation was relatively informative, and the children were asking very intelligent questions.

Out of the blue, Mister asks if I recall any information about a very deadly drug that was being made from human feces. I did not, but the children all decided that it would be a very nasty drug and that anyone who smoked poop deserved anything bad that happened because of it.

Then one of them pointed out that monkeys like to fling poop. The Boy says, "Now there's a weapon!"

I said, "Sure, sh*t bombs would be effective against terrorism alright, but who's going to load the planes?"

The Girl says, "Monkeys! You know, Gorilla Warfare!"

The Boy says, "OMG! That would make an excellent video game. It could be the new 'Call of Duty.'"

The Baby says, "Oh yeah! But we'd have to call it Call of Duty 7, because they've already made #2."

I almost wrecked the car, I was laughing so hard I got dizzy. I love my family.

65% of the time, it works all the time!

Here's a fact: I missed an election.

Here's my excuse: I really didn't know my region was involved.

Here's what happened: The representative from "Augusta" was chosen to be the state's Attorney General or some such. He needed a replacement. The election came about one year after the newly-anointed AG took his post and his representative seat was vacated. All the news channels were talking about the election "in Augusta," but I live in "Greater Augusta," and I never saw any signs, billboards, or other pre-election pollution alerting me to my choices or that I should be involved.

Here's how it ended: Apparently, people either thought like me or they just can't be bothered with an out-of-cycle election. 13% of eligible voters turned out to elect the representative for "Greater Augusta."

Kinda sad, and I'm partly to blame. *sigh* Here's to hoping the newly-elected representative really is the good guy his opponent said he was.

something something something dark side

I was talking with the Network Guru, who got his start in the early days of UseNet in the universities, about my son, who's a budding computer geek. As mentioned previously, I broke the Wii. It was supposedly unfixable, I damaged the delicate internal components, etc.

The Boy fixed it, although you can't tell by looking at it.

Instead of asking me to buy a triangular screwdriver, he just kinda broke apart the plastic casing so he could get to the guts.

Once inside the guts, he did a little fiddling. Then he either created or found a backdoor boot hack (I choose not to ask) and saved it to an SD card, which had to be inserted prior to start up. Once he got it booted, he used HomeBrew to download some more data and viola! A working [butt-ugly] Wii.

Now he's trying to find a way to hack it so it can run Playstation discs.

What I said to the Network Guru at work was that I just hope that in the future he bends back towards the path of good instead of the path of the Dark Side, as it seems he's doing right now.

This, of course, brings me to tonight's discussion: If the evil part of The Force is called "the Dark Side," what is the good part called?

New Year, New Wii

Had to get a new Wii. Dropping delicate electronics from about 5 feet onto a rain-flooded pavement isn't good. Delicate electronics tend to get their feelings hurt and refuse to come out and play.

And now we're rocking out. I want to create my own rockstar name and avatar for the game. I've only been able to come up with two possibilities: Mitzy vonFaustwright and Shadrak the Encourageable.

If you can think of anything better, by all means suggest away. I'm open.

Win

My kids are awesome. We were discussing a television show, and I made this comment:

"I would've just maced him by now."


I was thinking, "pepper spray." My kids, however, were thinking, "Medieval weaponry."

Death of the Hyphen

I have noticed a trend in professionally-written language, and that is the omission of the hyphen. Laziness has caused most editors and editting software to just give up on it. Unfortunately, that causes some of us grammar nazis to have to read a sentence twice or more to fully gauge the sentence's true meaning. The only thing more irritating is the improper use of the apostrophe, but that's another rant.

Back to my beloved and apparently deceased hyphen!

Consider this little tidbit: New age tool.

What does that mean? Is there some new weapon in the fight against aging? Actually, the answer is Deepak Chopra. Seriously. So, Deepak Chopra can help me look younger, longer? Sadly, no; however, you would not know that from the Fark headline I just read.

The actual sentence: "Deepak Chopra: new age tool, or EPIC new age tool?"

Including the hyphen that used to belong to "new-age" would have made this a good laugh, but alas--ear wax. The hyphen is now being left out of previously-hyphenated words at an alarming rate, causing responsible writers like me to actually struggle with reading. Well, not so much reading per se as not bashing our e-readers against our skulls in frustration.

I think it's pretty dreadful that some people are concerned that immigrants are not learning our language when there are so many shameful examples of born-and-bred citizens who don't even grasp the basic grammatical principles of their own language.

tumbleweeds

A parent is often mistaken for a parrot. Around my house, an oft-repeated mantra is "When the fat girl steps on things, things get broken," which of course means that if your things are left lying on the floor and Big Mama stumbles over them, they will get destroyed.

Big Mama also regularly feels like a nag, especially when it comes to electronics. One of these days, I do believe I will smack The Boy right upside his cranium because he "borrows" my computer and downloads crap onto the desktop rather than directly onto his thumb drive. I also can't begin to count the number of times I've had to nuke a hard drive and reload Windows because nobody but me updates virus protection.

This last week, I had the pleasure of not only blending those two facets of my existence into reality, but also to demonstrate the truth behind the words. From the moment it was unpacked, I repeated over the course of several days, "Mister, don't leave your laptop lying flat on the floor. If it gets stepped on/If I step on it..." yada yada yada.

And so, Thursday evening, in a search for something else, I stumbled over a toy left on the floor and stepped on the corner of his laptop, the very same laptop for which I stood in line in a store I don't particularly like in order to get a very good bargain, and I hear a sharp, "Crack!"

I instantly transform into Sailor Swears, but, being in a rush, I didn't check it and promptly forgot about it. The following night, Mister reports that his LCD screen is definitely cracked. I honestly don't think I've ever peppered my speech with so many f-words in so many languages. After inspecting the unit myself, it is still usable but would benefit from a new screen.

I just priced a new screen. Mister can bite my butt.

Days Like These

On a whimsy, we decided to drive two hours to Atlanta in order to visit a 'family' cemetery that was described as the centerpiece of the parking lot for a Walmart store, and then we went to a Persian restaurant to spend over $100 on kabobs and stew for dinner.

The 'family' part is that the people buried in the cemetery may be long-distant relatives of Mister's. It is in fact part of a parking lot, but it's actually cut off from the main Walmart parking lot and is instead off to far front corner.

The dinner was a quick hop a few exits up the beltway, and was extremely delicious. I didn't even like what I ordered but its yumminess was still begging me to eat it, and so I did. Even my non-adventurous girls were stuffing themselves.

How was your day?

Stay on target!

When the monkeys were younger, my problem with Christmas shopping was never what to get them but when to stop buying for them. I was mindful of not spoiling them; people who get everything they want inevitably suffer a decline in ambition.

Now that the monkeys are teenagers, I am almost at a complete loss.

They are in possession of portable entertainment devices. Our home also has a video game console, albeit not the one The Boy preferred. While they always have fun with the Smithsonian products I place under the tree, it's kinda boring to only get "educational" stuff as gifts.

Rock Band will be purchased, but as a "family" gift. Every year we also get movies and games (table and video) for the family. Individual gifts, however, are what stump me this year.

The Girl is an artist. She loves to paint and sketch. She also plays the flute, although I never hear her practicing anything. However, it's not her entire life. She also wastes an inordinate amount of her free time playing MMORPGs. Okay, she plays just one. She regularly spends her own cash money to buy virtual crap for her avatar even though gameplay is free.

The Boy loves computers and video games. He also plays an MMORPG, and exchanges labor for paid gameplay. He has a blog about video games. He will talk you into a coma about video games--you'll be like that guy on Airplane! who douses himself with gasoline and lights a match before Ted Striker is asked to fly the plane.

The Baby loves her Webkinz brand stuffed animals, but she really has way too many stuffed animals altogether. She is also an origami prodigy. You should see her miniature dragon. The full-size is hard enough to fold, but her mini is a perfect rendition and it's only one inch long. She's really artsy-craftsy, and enjoys learning new skills. Oh, and here's a surprise--she also has a favorite MMORPG, but it's Webkinz-related.

I had considered just purchasing each kid a brand new laptop, thereby allowing us to declutter the dining room, but several clever friends pointed out that laptops are non-repairable by DIY enthusiasts like me, and they get dropped/damaged on a regular basis. Plus, since they travel, they might very well end up in bedrooms, which is not allowed in my house. Instead I will upgrade the desktops we have and redesign my office space to create a more open look, replacing the hulking armoire-style cabinets.

I don't want to wimp out and just hand them all cash this year, but I'm stuck in a vacuum and just can't think of anything. I also don't want to spoil them or spend a metric assload of money.

Help!

Genius!

I'm watching an "old" concert on VH1 Classic channel by Queen. If I ever have any regrets in this short life, it will be that I never had an opportunity to see the band live in concert before Freddie Mercury's untimely death.

I'll be honest: I don't think The Beatles were all that great. I feel it's more that they hit the market at the right time and then changed enough over time to remain relevant. But brilliant? I dunno. I guess if you call writing music and lyrics whilst stoned "brilliant," then I'll have to give you that, albeit unwillingly. I will admit to being a rather big fan of "Octopus's Garden" and "Yellow Submarine." I'm sure if there were others that I liked, I could name them, but alas. Ear wax.

But Queen... They were just awesome. Every song had butt-kicking music, some had silly lyrics, some songs were heart-breakingly sad, all were singable. Their multi-talented front-man presented himself in the gayest way possible but rocked so hard that most fans just said "meh" and carried on regardless.

At any rate, you have to admit that a guy who can seriously compare feeling in love to wiggling like a jellyfish in a rock song is pretty awesome.

Things seen at high school football games

Possible answers:

• Crack, as in butt-crack
• Inappropriate t-shirts worn by band chaperones
• Hurling, as in lunch, especially when it's too humid to be outdoors
• Gang fights and tasering
• Arrests

The crack episode involves a spectator who is either addicted to tanning or really well over 40 but likes to dress as a teenager. Early in the season, after the national anthem was played, I spotted her as she bent over to fuss with a small child. The waistband of her thong panties clearly showed over the top of her skinny jeans. Add to that her tank top, zip-up skinny jacket, ball cap, and big hoop earrings, and we've got a woman who is refusing to act her age and embarrassing herself in the process.

A couple of weeks ago, a band chaperone was wearing a black, form-fitting tank top that had a big pink-ribbon logo on the front and read "celebrate ta-tas." As if that wasn't bad enough, "ta-tas" was about six inches tall and positioned directly over her breasts.

Yesterday was surprisingly humid after a week of cooler weather. Normal operating procedures have the band kids scattering after school to scarf down food. Most go home while some find fast-food. Yesterday was no different. Skip to the half-time, where the band is free to use the concession stand. One student didn't make it; the humidity was too much and he was sick to his stomach. Worse--his parents did not attend that game, an away game in a run-down neighborhood.

As a chaperone, I like to be last out of the stands to make sure we've got everyone. Last night was no different. As I was walking from the gate to the area where the buses were located, I noticed a group of youths walking with a sense of purpose from across the street into a grassy area located between the gate and me. There was lots of yelling going on, so I looked behind me and saw a second, similar-sized group of youths walking with a sense of purpose from the gate area into the same grassy area. Fighting commenced immediately; however, the police were rigth on top of things. Within moments I heard the sound of a Taser being fired. I looked back and saw a young man squirming on the ground. I announced that we needed to get out of there as fast as possible.

We arrived at the buses only to discover police at our end, too. Some "locals" decided to try to get onto the buses, and were being arrested for trespass. We were encouraged to board the buses as quickly as possible and then shut the doors.

Where were we? Downtown Augusta, at a school known for its quality educational program for "gifted" students.

no chinchilla

For the last two years, I have managed to average one post every three-ish days for a total of 100 posts annually. This year is nearly done and I have only managed 45 posts.

I don't believe there has been less to talk about; I think it's more a matter of motivation. I haven't been too motivated to post to my blog, and feel that maybe I have let you down. The Pittsburg Pirates still blow. People hopped up on drugs still do stupid stuff. Our government may have "changed the guard" but still has its head up its butt.

The only thing I can really report with any newness is that I am helping a gay man design and sew a Halloween costume, and while there will be neither Bedazzling nor fur or feathers, he is most excited.

oh the huge manatee

I love irony. Thanks to Fark.com, I can share this little tidbit:

"Yes, true change has come. Toby 'put a boot up your ass' Keith to perform at Nobel Peace Prize concert in Oslo"

The article goes on to list other artists who will be performing live at the concert. Fark's headline, however, is too awesome to pass by unmentioned.

woah.

Here's a quote you never expected to read, ever:

"This is believed to be the first time that a civilian has been killed by a box of public information leaflets."

Thanks, TimesOnline, for making me laugh at something sad, you evil bastards.

Light's Out!

"The Guiding Light," a daytime soap opera, is going off the air after 72 years. It was one of my beloved grandmother's "shows," and one of the odd ways I've always felt a connection to her, even after her death. And now, just like my sweet grandmother, it, too, will be gone.

My grandmother's house is an oddity. Normally one would enter the house from the front porch and then walk through a sitting room and living room to enter the dining room, kitchen and then bathroom. However, the rear entry was used as a front door because that was where the driveway brought you. Everyone entered into a small 'mud room' and then directly into the dining room. The dining room itself had a huge window looking out onto the front yard, main driveway, and road.

My grandmother never sat anywhere but in the dining room, and always at the head of the table. Within easy reach were her latest crocheting project. CB radio (they were in the sticks, and calls were expensive--heck, the area still doesn't have cellphone reception!), her typewriter, her address book and her radio.

She did not have a television in her dining room until she bought one with a remote back when I was still in elementary school. Instead, she used a special radio which had "TV" selections, and every day she listened to "The Young and the Restless" and "The Guiding Light," in the dining room while her daughters watched "that nonsense" show, "General Hospital" in the living room. She enjoyed clucking over the misadventures of the residents of Genoa City and Springville. In between the episodes, she would make dinner, type out a letter to a friend, or polish our nails with white-out. During the shows, however, we would sit with her at the dining room table, quietly drawing or writing while the episode was played out in our imaginations in time with the radio.

My grandmother was born before the show began, and had followed it nearly every day of her life until she died at age of 72. I think it is only fitting that if one of her favorite shows is also going to die, it should be at the ripe old age of 72.

Expectations are down...

...on the realization that sometimes words don't mean what you think they mean.

I'm shopping for a fancy dress. I'm a big girl which makes the shopping tricky. Another handicap is my attitude towards shopping in general and the mall in particular: I'd rather have my eyebrows waxed again.

Any smart shopper is going to do a little research before heading out. I am no exception. Because of the nature of the quest, I tried to limit myself to stores normally found at the mall. I found a few examples of dresses I kind-of liked at one, and so moved on to store 2 in hopes of finding the style I think I'm into this year.

Talk about raising an eyebrow. Now, I realize that the store is not actually a 'barn.' However, I do expect there to be some 'dresses' in it, since the damn store is called 'Dress Barn.' Inconceivable!

Don't want to be an American idiot

So I'm looking over some of the Facebook entries I missed during Dragon*Con, and I came across this item posted by a guy with whom I went to school:

"I bet anybody from Germany who remembers how Hitlers Rise To POWER happened is laughing at the USA right now. Hitler plead to the children with speeches sounding soooooooo good. Just like Obama now wants to SPEAK to the children. He changed his speech when people who how to think challenged him. HE IS EVIL!!!!!!!!!!! WAKE UP AMERICA"

Comments:

*Even though he changed his speech, I called the school and told them my kids wouldn't be watching it there. They will watch it AT HOME with me!
*i signed the permission form for paige to watch at school(6th grader)...i will watch today at home and compare notes when she gets home. she is pretty opinionated--wonder what she will think?
*I didn't get a permission slip or anything stating if they were going to watch it. Ryan is sooooo anti-Obama though and he doesn't care who knows it!!! LMAO

This guy and his regular followers are so "anti-Obama" I feel like maybe I never really knew some of my classmates at all. Mr. Obama's election to the presidency has encouraged them to loudly proclaim their opinions as facts, and that's fine because I'm an admirer of the Bill of Rights, but they sound more like parrots repeating the words of prominent pundits, capital letters and all.

These "friends" of mine have never traveled outside of the USA, not even to visit Canada or Mexico. Back in school they were not interested in the events of the world ("Bangladesh? Oh, you mean the company that makes my shirts. What about it?") or in learning world history or culture. Our high school offered only one foreign language (Spanish) and only state/USA history. "Honors" English was about as close to "culture" or "world history" as it got. I really thought that would change once we became adults and could spread our wings.

Or, maybe it's me.

Maybe I really am a socialist-nazi-communist, as suggested by the person who wrote the last comment quoted above. Maybe I'm naive and think that the 'truthers' and 'birthers' out there are completely insane. Or maybe I've become the one who doesn't know what's going on, although I do try to stay informed.

Growing up, it was vital that we watch the NBC evening news every night as a family. I think this was mostly because my dad was a controller, rather than that he wanted us to be smart. After all, girls don't need to be smart, just pretty.

As an adult, I could not function without my daily dose of CNN, and later, FoxNews (although I did quit that completely after I realized that the hosts of "Fox and Friends" were total morons and that Sean Hannity was a rabid lunatic). I also watched the local news morning and night.

I stopped watching all "world" news after Eric left for Iraq because I didn't want the kids to worry. Since then, I watch the local morning news, periodically check BBC Online for world events, or I watch the BBC World News on TV, but not regularly. This may have caused a problem.

For one, I don't understand all the hatin' vs Obama. I fail to understand how a person can attend a Christian church for all of his life and be considered Muslim. I also don't understand how people think Obama is destroying our nation. Supposedly he's a socialist and ruining the Constitution. I would argue that Bush was a communist who did in fact ruin the Constitution with the Patriot Act and Homeland Security.

Second, I sometimes worry that I'm raising children so completely unaware of the world at large, they are almost idiots.

After school, I asked the kids if they watched a special show at school. I got blank stares. I added, "...a speech by the President..?" and got several oh-yeahs in return. The older two did not see it, the younger one did, in social studies class.

I asked what she thought of it:

Her: Thought of what?
Me: The President's speech.
H: Oh.
M: Well?
H: Well, what?
M: GAH! What did you think of the President's speech?
H: I guess it was okay.
M: You "guess"?
H: Well, I didn't really watch it.
M: What else were you doing while it was on?
H: Uh, I don't know. I think I drew a picture. Or maybe I was thinking about origami. I don't know.
M: So, you don't know what he was talking about?
H: Who was talking?
M: ...

Oy.