Princess Buttercup!!!! I mean Stephanie!

OK. OK. OK. I know the blog is neglected. WAY to much to explain. Will sum up. Have migraines, NOT ear infections. Different from TMJ migraines. Neurologist is working on them. NOT the end of the world yet. Basement is looking good. Has rained much. Kids are learning to swim. Rob went to Scout camp. Cat is still alive. Currently at D-Land w/ Steph on her 1st visit & decided she needed to go to the Bibbidty Bobbidy Bottique (why oh why does the blasted spell checker fail me when I need it most? curses!!!! It is a the scrourge of PCs everywhere!) So, here are more short videos of the make-over. A few notes -- the models in the hair style brochures looked to be 4 or 5 years old. The Skipper on the Jungle Cruise Boat called Steph "Sparkles" when she ducked because she thought the hippos were going to charge. A number of people flat out stared as she walked down the street because the glitter was somewhat blinding in the daylight. Even on the dark rides she sparkled AND she is intending to wear the sash and tiara tomorrow! Mentioned something about brothers and sisters not being here to bother her!





At first Jeremy didn't want anything to do with this crazy Princess store. But once he realized that he wasn't being attacked, he was OK to stay & watch.





These ladies were so fast with the hair. They were unbeleivable. And the hair that stood up straight. Wow. I got a great shot because that was the 2nd time. The first time it didn't quite meet the standards of the one fairy god mother in training so it got more goo!







Did I mention that I took like 500 hundred short little videos? I've found that it's easier on my ancient laptop.............I'm willing to burn a CD of the high quality videos for anyone who really wants one.




Oh --- and not only was I taking little mini videos, but Rob had our digital camera. AND Disney had photographers there. Since they didn't seem to be 100% booked and the 3 year old didn't seem to be real camera hogs, the one photographer seemed to dedicate herself to Steph, so there's quite a few photos on the Photopass!!!! I'm sure they'll make it onto Facebook sometime!!! OK -- gotta run -- we're trying to make to the park at o-dark hundred again! ack!!!!! Not bothering w/ spell check -- Humgub!!!

Aliens are always green Mommy

I was talking w/ Jeremy about what he's been learning in pre-school. They are in the Space section, so he told me which planets are gaseous, that Pluto has an erratic orbit, etc. I was pretty impressed with all the little bits of knowledge floating about his 5 year-old brain & decided to tease him a little. I asked if him there were aliens on the moon. He matter-of-factly said, "Yes, there are aliens on the moon just like all the planets." Naturally, I asked if they were the green or purple aliens. He replied that "real aliens are always green." What was I thinking?!?!?
Every now & then, I save extra special IM conversations that I have. This is one of my all-time favs, which seems to fit the topic:

Property Manager (you know who you are!!!): "so there was a sonic boom that we thought was an earthquake, something then immediately landed on the roof of identitycraft and made this huge hole. fire department is here to make sure it was not part of a spacecraft!!"

It was NOT aliens, but the firemen were reported to be unusually attractive!

Yes, I know the blog is neglected. April sucked. Too many blizzards, asthma attacks, ear infections, tonsillitis, tax returns & general mayhem!! May post photos & details later.....no promises though!

Spell checker update -- for once it highlighted 2 mis-spelled words! I still think it highlights random words just to make you second guess yourself!

That word you keep on-a using -- I do not think it means what you think it means!

Are we on blizzard # 5 or # 6 since the official start of spring? I can't remember!!! All I know is it feels wrong to be stocking up on eggs to color when I've still got to wade through drifts to brush the snow off my car! Ugh!! Oh, and just in case you were wondering, 5 year olds and 8 year olds are no help at all when it comes to dragging full shopping carts through the drifts in Sam's parking lot...grrr! My poor crocuses & tulips keep getting buried in snow. We'd worry about the apple tree in the front yard, except...wait we don't have an apple tree in the front yard anymore -- thanks to a dopey driver and a Dec blizzard. Humbug!

IOUSes (Icicles Of Unusual Size)

We'll never survive the blizzard!!! Nonsense, you are only saying that because no one ever has! Now that we have four wheel drive and 347 pairs of gloves, we'll be fine. What about the IOUSes? I don't think they exist........

So last Friday night the weatherman said that we'd get between 6 and 24 inches on snow on Monday, but guaranteed 6 inches.

1) He's an idiot on a good day. Friday's aren't good days for him -- well, at least not the ones when he gets picked up for a DUI after work? Yes, it's a SMALL town!!!!
2) between 6 and 24 inches? What kind of a range is that!!!!
3) Guaranteed 6! Come on! It's officially spring! It's not like he's Miracle Max with a chocolate pill!

It was snowing when I left for work Monday am, so I wore a jacket and my winter crocs. Well, I ended up coming home early, because they were closing school early. I was afraid that they would stop plowing my street and I'd be stuck!!!! We did get about 18 inches of snow. Did I mention that it's March!!!!! The winter crocs aren't really that helpful when I've got to go through 6+ inches of snow. The fluffy stuff gets wets, then the toes get cold. I've had to use the foot duvets I keep in my office more than once this week.

The IOUS photo is from Tuesday. Notice that to the right of the house, you can't see the 15 inch elevation change from my flower bed to the grass area -- right below the jog down in the fence. Also note that Rob had shoveled the driveway.

Monday evening I took some photos of the backyard during a brief break in the blizzard. The X thingy is an unfolded folding chair that's been bouncing around the back yard. I'm pretty sure it's still there, but it's currently totally buried.

The first level of the climbing dome is about 20 inches high. This photo was taken before things started drifting! If we'd put a plastic cover over it, we'd have our very own igloo out there!


Monday they let school out early. That actually made sense, the roads were bad, the plows couldn't keep up & it wasn't getting any better.

Tuesday they canceled school. That was dumb! The roads were fine, it wasn't that cold and we don't have any more unused snow days. That means the kids are supposed to go back for 1 Monday in June. Yeah!

Wednesday normal, was kind of warm & we had some good melting.

Thursday -- more snow, but only a few inches. They started school 2 hours late. Why didn't they do that on Tuesday?

It's supposed to warm up a bit for the weekend & then snow again on Sunday. Oh well, Rob is happy that the weather changed the Scout camping plans from a no plumbing outing to a cabin outing.
Other big news:

Cousins Abby & Iris sent Blue Devil shirts! They were SO excited to get a box in the mail!!! When Peter's school had "sports day" right before the SuperBowl, we discovered that Peter didn't have any kind of sports shirt. He's very happy to have one now. They'll both be able to wear their Duke shirts on sports day next year! After all, everyone knows Duke for their sports.....

And......the biggest news of all...........the Pinewood Derby was last Saturday!

The car got started a little late this year, but going over to Uncle Cliff's sped up the process quite a bit. The simple design w/ the LEGO overlay helped as well. Peter's car didn't win the speed race (6th I think??), but it won the Scout's Choice Trophy! Woohoo!!!! His best friend won 2nd place last year AND this year. Peter was very, very happy to get a trophy. This is his first trophy for anything ever! Next year will be his last Pinewood Derby race -- ACK!!!! How did he get so old!

Oh -- and Jeremy likes to take photos. I think he's seen the "I'm a PC and I'm 4 1/2 commercials" too many times. Anyway, I'm going to try to paste a link to a slide show of 100% Jeremy photos. The spell checker must read my blog -- now it won't even pretend that it works.

Iocane Powder -- I'd bet my life on it!

Umm -- six weeks since the last post......yeah -- well, it's been a little crazy around here. I've had the country's 500th anniversary to plan, my wife to murder and Guilder to frame for it! Oh and The Princess Bride showed up in the DVD rotation. The 20th anniversary edition!!! Inconceivable!

The first photo is of Peter and the Rice Krispy treat bowling alley desert we made for the Blue & Gold Banquet. The gutters are made of brownie -- a little hard to see. The bowling pins were sculpted by Peter & Jeremy out of gum paste and I used food coloring diluted in water to make them blue. I was really wishing that I'd had some vodka to mix w/ the food coloring so that it would dry faster. I've seen them do that on the Food Network, but were were fresh out that day! We used Whoppers for the bowling balls and the bowlers are Little People. This was not nearly as involved as many of the other desserts (since as I mentioned, I've had a few things going on), but somehow we won 1st place. Craziness!! Rob says that he didn't bribe the judge, but......

Peter was also awarded his Bear Rank that day. After looking at this photo, I'm thinking that I could have done my Cousin It imitation the whole day!

We took Helga (aka the Garmin) with us on our California trek. Helga is a little different than the Hertz Neverlost. Helga gets quite disappointed when she has to recalculate. And if she wants you to make a u-turn, she let's you know that without wasting any extra battery life! However, if you happen to be looking for an address in Cedar City on Sage Drive, beware!!! Helga only takes you to Sage Way. It wouldn't be quite so funny, except that we did the little Sage Way vs Sage Drive drama twice! Once on the way down looking for a Radio Shack and again on the way back looking for a BBQ restaurant. We did stumble upon the Radio Shack by accident, but we ended up eating at Chili's.

Helga was good about helping Rob get to the La Brea Tar Pits and the Natural History Museum. The kids had a fabulous time there. However, a couple of mornings Jeremy woke up and told me how his dinosaur toys (can't pass up a gift shop!) came to life when he's asleep. I think he's seen Night At the Museum one too many times!

We also managed to get in some practice at the driving range and a golf lesson. One the way home, we left LA a little earlier than usual and got out of CA much earlier than planned. So, when we got to Utah, we realized that we'd have a few hours to goof off. So, we asked Helga about bowling alleys. There was one in Hurricane not too far away from where we were. Well, it was a little farther than Helga led us to believe, and she didn't tell us to turn left in time & then she was very disappointed as she had to recalculate multiple times and since we ignored her direct orders about U-turns. Anyway, we found the bowling alley a little after six on Friday night. That's a little early for the party crowd, but there were cars in the lot and the sign clearly said open. I don't have any photos because the whole experience was a bit surreal. It really felt like the Twilight Zone. There was definitely a bit of deferred maintenance inside and out.

We were the only customers when we got there, which was a little odd. The employees looked at us a little odd. I think they were surprised to see someone they didn't know. The facility definitely hadn't been updated since sometime in the 80's. The decor was painted neon accents. The computer system at the lanes had the screen with the little green dots. The best part though was that when you got your ball going with any amount of speed, you could hear it bounce off the warps in the lane! Peter developed a technique where he'd throw the ball against the bumper rail and it would zig zag down the lane. Yes, he did get a strike with this technique and yes, he did beat me! Jeremy did a victory dance after every single throw! People started coming in after about an hour, so we had to restrict Jeremy to only dancing in our area. Jeremy only sent his ball down the wrong lane once and the guy in that lane managed to run down the middle of the lanes and grab the ball before it messed up his frame.

I had Peter & Jeremy pick out their clothes to pack for the trip. Jeremy was quite insistent on taking the Jedi costumes to wear to Disneyland. So, they wore them on two days at Disneyland. We had to restrict when they could have the light sabers out so that they didn't injure any bystanders. We did find a quiet area near Small World where they could have a battle. We asked them if they wanted to do the Jedi Training Academy again. They informed us that since they already had completed the Jedi training they did not need to do it again. We watched it as we ate lunch one day and that was just fine with them! Jeremy was Anakin and he decided that Peter was Obi-Wan. He proceeded to call Peter "Master" all day both Jedi days and did what Peter told him to do! I've got to get me a Jedi costume!

Again, the spell checker is completely useless! Why do I bother -- it highlighted zig zag, umm & Garmin, but has no issues w/ Obi-Wan? It is completely impossible for there to be no legitimate spelling errors....sigh....

I'm 27!!!!!!!!!

OK -- it's my Wii age -- but it counts!!!! I think I'm done testing my Wii age now. I'm happy with the 27 so I'll just keep that one. Rob is 30-something, Peter is 40-something and Jeremy has reached full retirement age. I wonder how much Wii Social Security is........it's probably bankrupt!

We've been having a good time with the Wii. Peter was the first to reach Pro status, in bowling. He lost it today in a sour game, but I'm sure he'll get it back soon. Rob is a Pro boxer, but I can probably still knock him out. I haven't tried since I KO'd him 6 times in a row 2 weeks ago and threw out my back -- TOTALLY worth it!!! Another 1 or 2 trips to the chiropractor and I should be fine!

I'm posting a few more New Year's Trip photos. The first is of the GIANT pots @ the Irvine Spectrum. I remember how amazed Cindy was when she saw them. After living here for a couple of years, they do seem kind of amazing. One day we had breakfast @ Norm's -- nothing like a healthy start! Then we saw Bolt in 3-D @ the Spectrum. The matinee prices were $12.25 and $11.50 for the kids! Matinee!!! Gees!!! Then we rode the ferris wheel at the Spectrum -- the one we used to have in our condo view. Side note -- our condo is now worth only slightly more than we paid for it in 1999 -- OUCH!!!!
Anyway after a lovely dinner @ Islands (aka the Wiki Tiki restaurant), we took the kids to Krispy Kreme. As you can see, they loved it! Of course, we got enough extra donuts so that we wouldn't have to buy breakfast on Sunday am.......


After the New Year's Trip, I was home for 5 days and the went back to LA for work. As I was following the snow plow out to the airport at O-dark hundred at some hideous temperature, I thought I might be crazy. OK -- I might be, but events later in the week confirmed that snow in your crocs is not the worst thing in the world. Actually, I found a pair of "winter crocs" @ Disneyland -- no holes on the side and they have fuzzy lining. So -- that Wednesday, we had a meeting at 3:00. We knew that there had been a tanker truck accident on the 210 that morning, so we left shortly before 2:00 instead of our planned 2:30. We even had a side streets route so that we would avoid the 210. At 2:45, we weren't even halfway there (it's only 25 miles). So, we called and said we'd be a "bit" late. At 3:30 we'd only made it another 5 miles -- still 10 miles to go. The meeting got canceled at that point. So we looked around one of our other properties for 10 minutes since we were in the area and then went back to the office. Got back to the office at 4:15. We were so frazzled that we decided to call it a day. I ordered some take-out and headed to my hotel -- which is only 5 miles from the office. Well, the stupid 210 was still shut down -- the tanker truck was filled with asphalt paving oil and had spilled into the sewer or some such catastrophic thing. At 5:00 I called the restaurant back and said that I'd probably be another 15 minutes and to please keep my dinner warm. I should have just parked the car then and walked......I didn't make it the last mile for another 45 minutes!!!!!!!!! They finally cleared out the stupid truck (13 hours AFTER the blasted accident). Two minutes after the radio station announced that the 210 was open, they came back on and said that there was another accident at the SAME SPOT which totally shut down the 210 AGAIN!!!!! The traffic photo is of the infamous 210 about 15 miles from the accident. I took the photo at about 9, after eating my cold dinner and working out. You can see that the Westbound traffic is moving pretty quick and the Eastbound is lots of red lights not moving very fast. I tried to get one short enough so that you could read the logo on the Fed-Ex truck, but I couldn't get enough light on the really short exposures. Just know that I futzed around for about 10 minutes while the Fed-Ex truck was in view.

A few miscellaneous rants:
- When did K-Earth start playing 80's music? Air Supply??? Really! I like them, but even I know they aren't classic rock! 80's!! Come on!!! K-Earth is the Oldies station!
- Why can't I listen to the radio on my iPod? Transistor radios have been around for decades? Why didn't Apple figure that out?
- Does Jay Leno have any jokes that don't slam George Bush? Jay has jumped the shark. It was time for him to move-on a year ago -- get Conan moved over already. Hey -- at least next year when Jay is clogging up a prime time slot I'll be guaranteed a perfect hour every day for Wii.
- I figured out that the entire taped shows of the Biggest Loser are taped before any of them air. So, the producers have the whole story line laid out when they decide what to air and they are deliberately trying to skew the results. Grrr -- I'm starting to think perhaps Vicki wasn't as evil as they made her seem last season. Ok -- I'm sure she's obnoxious, but she probably has 1 or 2 redeeming qualities. Yes, I know -- that's uncharacteristically generous of me. I'll get over it.....

I usually don't comment on politics since I assume that everyone knows what I think (cut taxes and quit wasting my money on stupid crap), but I heard this anonymous quote today and had to share it:

1.5 million people attended the inauguration. 14 missed work.

2009

This trip we decided to show the kids some of the other cool things about So. Cal -- like the Rose Parade, the Griffith Observatory, etc. So, we get up at the crack of dawn, go to D-land & ride some rides, then around lunch-time tear off and do something else exciting. Yesterday we went to the Griffith Observatory (you can see the Hollywood sign from there -- see photo). They liked it more than it seems from this shot. It was really smoggy yesterday, so Rob was fussing w/ the camera trying to get their faces & the sign to both look good.

Anyway, we saw about half of the floats while they were in process. Rob and I thought that was really cool. Peter got to write his name on a rose vial for the Cal Poly float -- that's the one w/ the roller coaster. We wrote Jeremy's name on a vial as well. We bought a couple of postcards which traveled down the parade route & they will mail them to us -- coming soon to a scrapbook near you! However, I think they liked the playground at the Rose Bowl park about as much as seeing the floats.

So, today we got up at the crack of dawn again, and headed up for the parade. Everything started out according to plan, although I didn't realize that breakfast was going to be chips, soda & pop tarts -- food options are limited on the parade route. It wasn't until we were leaving that we discovered the bacon wrapped hot dogs for sale. Anyway, the kids thought it took way too long for the parade to start. They liked the blimp, the sky writers & the B2 flyby, but about half-way through the parade, the "is it over yet" started. That was followed by "how many minutes", "can they move faster" and "are we doing anything else today". Sigh! We did decide to head back to our car when there were about 4 floats lefts in an effort to beat 1) the mad dash out of the bleachers, 2) the mad dash out of the parking garage and 3) the masses of idiots getting lost trying to drive out of Pasadena. Well, 2 out of 3 isn't bad and would have been a great success, except for the Jeremy factor. Turns out that he needed to go potty. The usual distraction efforts were not having much effect and we were stuck in the masses of idiots trying to leave Pasadena in a lovely one-way street area of Pasadena w/out much in the way of fast food or gas stations and moving very slowly. So, I started thinking up alternatives, quickly. We were in the Cal-tech rocket scientist area and I came up with the NASA option. Yup, that's right -- I handed a mostly empty bottle of Vitamin Water to Rob to empty and Jeremy filled it back up in the back-seat. I was fairly grossed out by holding the almost full bottle, so I opened up the car door and set it on the pavement. Rob was absolutely horrified by my dastardly action, but I think it's likely that the bottle got run over before a homeless guy found the 'lucky' bottle. Besides, if not and if the homeless guy didn't realize that Vitamin Water doesn't come in that shade, and doesn't smell any difference, then there's no harm done. With that cheerful thought, let me just wish you a Happy New Year!