Tuesday, August 19, 2008

Geeky word fun

See how many of the most common English words you can guess in 5 minutes.  

And yes, I'm out of my pajamas today. Even did push ups and squats this morning. 

Monday, August 18, 2008

It's 12:13 in the afternoon

And I'm still wearing my glasses.

This is a bad sign, because I don't think or plan clearly without my contacts in. 

The day started our fine. Bill and I woke up at 6 to pay our bills, industrious little beings that we are.  Because our housemate is in the Caymen Islands (!), we used Hard Hat Harry as our babysitter so we could focus on Quicken.  We finished at 8:00 as usual, but somehow, instead of moving into our normal day, I dithered.  At 8:01, I decided to fix my email problem (my "indexing file" puked and I haven't gotten email regularly for the past 2 weeks).  Hard Hat Harry taught my kids more about Airplanes, all 4032 of my emails that were on the server came rolling in, and I hit googlereader hard.  

Since then, I've fixated on the groovy little Flip Video (thanks to MochaMama), downloaded a ton of stories from  Lit2Go, Skyped with a friend about hair and camping equipment, watched videos from SonnyRadio.com, eaten 1 hot dog and 4 wheateen crackers with approximately a stick of butter. I'm not sure what the kids have consumed. They have however been playing some intricate submarine/pony/fighter jet/cat/Titanic/zoo game that includes the dog under a blanket, foam blocks and occasional screaming.

Normally on a Monday morning, by this time I've been up, done the bills, taken the kids for a run, cooked a nourishing breakfast, helped the kids do their chores and morning routines, practiced our guitars, had a snack, read aloud to the kids and maybe made a few house-business phone calls.

I'm not sure whether to count the morning as completely wasted or filling our need to have some unstructured time.  However, as the hot dog and wheateens are soon to wear off and the frequency of child screaming is increasing, I'm off to take a shower and put in my contacts.

Hopefully that will clear up the afternoon.

Saturday, August 2, 2008

Bad Liberal Day

One weekend a year I feel compelled to turn in my Liberal card so I can trail my kids all over town to bask in the power and glory of the military.

This is the weekend. Blue Angels screaming over our house cause the kids, dog and I to do the supersonic dance.

I know each F/A-18 Hornet costs over $41 million dollars, which means the funds paid to build those 7 blue and yellow jets could alone support the education and family support programs my pinko-liberal soul longs for ($278 million dollars, in case you were struggling with the math). Add in the monies needed to pay for the staff, supplies, fuel and marketing and I've got me the funding for a attachment parenting campaign that would reach every prospective parent in the country.

I know they are precision killing machines, designed for both ground and aerial attacks.  They support wars and other military action that under most uses go against everything I stand for in my personal life.

It would be convenient to blame my primal enjoyment of the mind-boggling speed and ear-shattering blast of the engines to the converge of my teenage hormones and the release of the 1986 movie Top Gun. Unfortunately for my liberal credentials, my addiction results from a pre-pubescent exposures  to the Blue Angels at air shows hosted by my uncle in Sheridan, Wyoming.  

The speed and the power appeal to me on a very basic level. They make me want to laugh and cry and scream and dance and jump up and down all at once.  So, for just this one weekend every year, I turn in my doing-the-right-thing card and scream along.

p.s.  One weekend a year I also seem to have minor crisis over the identity conflict the air show causes for me.  I wrote a similar post last year, except that time I remembered my camera.