Category / general

Cleaning … 18 December, 2007 at 3:19 pm

Yesterday I took the old TV in the basement to Salvation Army. And I took the five (six?) dead computers to the dump’s computer recycling. clears up some of hte basement, with the trash i took too. mostly have the exercise bike to eliminate, now.

Then it’s on to the miscellaneous boxed crap. We processed about a dozen or so a few months back, and now those compacted eight are back in the big room, waiting to figure out where they go to live. There’s another half dozen or so (3 of which are full of D&D books), then random unboxed crap, the butterfly (bowl) chair … then the freezer room has gotten stuffed with more bits as i cleared out the walk down the stairs (now cluttered with the (filled with miscellany) box from the carpet cleaner and the strollers). Need to go through there with a torch again.

And after all of that? Yeah, then comes the really hard part. We get to go through all 2.4 billion books on the shelves around the house, consolidate, collapse, condense. Dispose. Because we want to rearrange the back room, in a way that involves not having those shelves taking up a full wall and holding a plethora of books we browse maybe a couple times a year looking for one in particular (kiir at least goes through a lot of her romances ; me? i have tens of thousands of dollars worth of sci fi and mystery and such that i am unlikely to ever feel inclined to read again :/)

Of course, I’ve been working my way through cleaning since … h … before kiir was pregnant. Noticeably before. It’s been 18-24 months I’ve been working at this crap, although it did pick up a year ago when we found out we were having a baby. I’ve fallen off lately, b/c the time I might’ve been willing to give up spending with Des has to go for K, since he needs walking and exercise and the two of them are too much for one person to take out, especially for winter.

And now my Mother-in-Law has offered to come up and spend a weekend “helping me.” because i dislike having someone clean my stuff their way (kiir doesn’t count, since it’s her stuff too, obviously). So she’ll ‘clean under direction.’ Which I don’t really see how that works, actually, since won’t managing mean i have to spend the time anyway?

The big problem, the BIG problem, is that to me it feels like admitting defeat. Asking for help means saying “I can’t do it.” And that’s where it falls apart. Because, in my head, it also means ‘I can’t take care of my own family’ … So even though everyone agrees that I need the help to clean the house … I still haven’t agreed to it.

Because I suck.

I really need to just quit sitting on the sofa on weekend mornings, and start cleaning when des is still sleeping in the morning :/

thanks for what ? 25 November, 2007 at 9:37 am

So, we g ot back from our annual thanksgiving traipse to kiir’s folks. checking in at the airport was fun. two suitcases (one for us, one for him), the big stroller (we took it down so we could leave it at their place since we never use it and we were just going to donate it off otherwise), a carseat (not OUR carseat, b/c that’s in our car, but a new 40$ carseat that we figured was good to let the airlines whack-a-mole with), desmond, three carry ons (one for me, one for her, one for his butt) … ended up taking the stroller to the gate and gate-checking it. it was convenient to haul the bags around ;)

then we hauled that all over to car rental and picked up a car. and spent ~30 minutes or something getting set up to go. WHEE! ended up stealing a towel from the inlaws to put under the carseat on the way back b/c we decided it just wasn’t really properly stable. It was OK, and we drove out with it, but we decided we wanted to make it a bit better for the return trip.

spent most of the time with one or the other of us holding des b/c he was overwhelmed by the sheer number of people and kept wanting to go to someone he knew. and when he was willing to crawl around, people kept picking him up. I especially liked when dad picked up a happily crawling baby, and almost immediately handed him to kiir “he wants mommy” … uh, no, he wanted to not get picked up man! (she then handed him to me, and I took him back to his starting point, sat him down, and let him set off again, happy as a clam now that he was crawling like he wanted to)

every year at thanksgiving (well, for hte last few, don’t really remember doing it before that) dad goes around the table “everyone say something they’re thankful for” … which is boring and tedious and no one wants to participate. Zebras are popular at thanksgiving. (kiir went for wildebeasts this year, to be different). I “spoiled the mood” (my mother in law … makes you wonder why we do this yearly, eh?) when I said I was thankful for desmond being happy and healthy. I don’t even remember that dad did a serious one. grandpa did, happy for family being together, and my wifes sisters husband parents were there and they’re raising their granddaughter, and were thankful for her. but 3 out of 16 (? sounds right) why bother?

my sisterinlaw got all pissy one morning b/c des was awake and crying and I took him out ot the common room to see if he’d play with his toys or crawl around. she suggested that i should take him back to our room so that those who didn’t have kids didn’t have to suffer them, b/c it wasn’t her fault we brought him with us, and parents are so self centered. i took him for an hour walk to cool me off after that. at 7am … wheee. too bad i couldn’t find my car keys to get the stroller, certainly would’ve beeen less strain on my arms :o

overall des had fun, he likes seeing his nonnie and his uncles. i could do without his aunts a lot of the time, but his uncles actually aren’t raging egomaniacs, so they’re cool.

miscellany 16 November, 2007 at 3:04 pm

A few miscellaneous items.

my car’s starter went out, so i had to blow 500$ last night getting that fixed. bleargh.

does everyone get searing pain from things being “too bright” every time they get a headache? or is that actually unusual? my headaches have always come with light sensitivity, and it’s only recently that i realized that was a “migraine symptom” … and it occurred to me today that perhaps not everyone gets that all the time?

we picked up mario galaxy yesterday b/c toys ‘r’ us had a deal where you got a 25$ gift cert with it. i figured it was unlikely we’d get a better deal somewhere else (yeah we might save 10$ somewhere, but 25$? not likely). now, i figured we’d buy a second game with it, or hold onto it for later maybe. b/c we’re trying to stay away from plastic and chinese made toys (mmmm lead and ghb, what could be better for babe?) to the point that my parents are afraid of buying things for babe b/c “we might disapprove of it”. and we are not shy in being quite vocal about it when we dislike what they say or buy or whatever … anyway, we then spent ~30 minutes wandering around trying to find something to buy. b/c we had a gift card. so we had to spend it! oi :o

what is it with our parents and rice cereal? it is NOT a cureall wonderfood! eesh. you’d think babe’s very soul was in danger if we didn’t give him rice cereal STAT

Just Puppy and Me! 6 November, 2007 at 1:23 pm

So, yesterday we dropped Kiir and des at the airport for the week. Came home and cleaned (that’s part of my agenda for the week ; clean a little every day).

Then K and I played video games. well, I played, he slept on my lap. He was freaking HAPPY about it. he got to curl up on my lap and only had to move when my legs got cramped and I had to shift around. No baby coming for him, no daddy jumping up every few minutes to c hange a diaper or play with the baby. Just him and me.

He seemed blissful. I was a little fluttery. Before Des, we’d drop kiir off occasionally for a week, and K and I would hang out at home and be happy about it. But now? Now I’m kinda butterfly-y over the part where they’re not at home :/ *sigh*

new blog 26 October, 2007 at 9:39 pm

I’ve added a new blog (and added it to my list on the side there)

It’s for crypto stuff. I decided to separate them. Thank you, that is all.

New Section? 14 October, 2007 at 6:16 pm

So, I’m thinking of starting to do some indepth crypto stuff and i’m trying to decide if I should put it all in this blog and just make it a category, or if i should fork that off into a new blog …

Given teh general run when i chat with people and wax technical and geeky (the general run being people running me off to go talk to myself so they don’t get headaches), i figure it might make sense to break it off.

OTOH, there’s what like 4 of you reading this anyway, so maybe it doens’t really matter. give us your opinion.

(Un)Help Desk (2 of 2) 4 October, 2007 at 8:58 pm

Tonight I called support for the XBox.

In July the console was sent in for the Ring of Death issue. It was subsequently replaced and shipped back. Great, no problems with that. But then the XBox Live Arcade games that we’d downloaded suddenly started springing issues on us.
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Help(less) Desk (1 of 2) at 8:26 pm

Few days ago I called a help desk, to provide the “more information” they requested in a uspost letter. They’re request for information was in response to my sending them a letter with information in it. They were unable to identify the Reference Number (Which I had copied off their previous correspondence for just such an eventuality). So I call to give it to the guy on the phone.

He asks for the reference number. I have 3 numbers from their stuff, which is “reference”? It starts with zeroes. OK, great. “SRN00″ “No, it starts with zeroes” “Right. SRN0-” “The reference number” “I know. SRN: 0″ “No sir, I need the number that starts with zeroes.” SRN: “00…” Hello, you called it an SRN on your paperwork (I don’t know what the S is, perse, but the RN is “Reference Number”, dollars to donuts!) Moron, let me get further and you’ll see it starts with zeroes. But OK, my fault, I was reading off my notes, and they had the SRN listed with SRN: before it so I could identify it. Shouldn’t have read it.
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You might be white trash when … 2 October, 2007 at 8:45 pm

So, we went to a wedding (ok this is ~ a month out of date posting, whatever)

The groom seems decent (military man), and the bride is a friend and cousin of kiir’s. The wedding was on her father’s farm. Now, first off, I kept expecting the man to call out for a mint julip or something. I swear, he could’ve been colonel sanders in a different suit :o But he seemed nice.

After driving ~3hours to get there, we were completely ignored, except by my wife’s family (and frankly, i was still ignored, b/c family doesn’t see past the baby, no big). The groom looked relieved when another cousin grabbed his arm and dragged him (literally) over to introduce to everyone that was related to the bride beyond her parents.

But as for the title of this post …

You might be white trash when …

You have karaoke at your wedding
You spend more time hanging out with the djs than the guests (or the groom)
You play “Baby Got Back” at your wedding
You SING “Baby Got Back” at your wedding as a dedication to your mother, with the karaoke setup
(You totally don’t know the words to “Baby Got Back” while singing it as a dedication at your wedding …)
Someone else sings “Time Warp” (from Rocky Horror?)
Lets go back to having Karaoke at a wedding
Someone sings “Redneck Woman” at your wedding (I don’t think that was the bride … )

Actually, I also found it amusing that the first dance song … was apparently something from Ghost. Except, the words I was able to hear were basically about one person leaving the other … uh …

Petty and Vindictive. Cool! 16 August, 2007 at 7:50 am

I AM
67%
STARSCREAM
Take the Transformers Quiz

Starscream has delusions of grandeur. He chose to resemble an F-22 jet because it’s the pinnacle of human technical achievement. He serves Megatron but longs to fill his shoes.

Like Starscream, you are not compassionate and harbor evil thoughts. Your leadership skills are weak at best. You will never be the commander of the Decepticons. In addition, you enjoy being one step ahead of your friends as far as trends and technology.