Ryan has some very strange bedfellows. 

To those of you who remember the pictures of Ryan mopping, and any who may have heard me describe Ryan's sheer terror of the vacuum (as recent as yesterday!) should marvel at this picture that I took 5 minutes ago. 

My Ramble

It seems inevitable that when I do make my way back into the full-time workforce I will be in some way interacting with computers. I think back to about 5 years ago when I left Borders, the ideas and plans that I had back then seem like miles from where I am or what I have done since then. Leaving that job (Shelving Supervisor for those memory-impaired individuals out there) to stay home full time with what eventually became Holly AND Ryan I had ideas of buying learn language tapes, and teaching them Spanish concurrent to their normal language development. And who knows if they responded well to that, I thought maybe more too, Japanese, or Italian. Who knows?

But I never did any of that. Holly and Ryan sure are, in my opinion well-advanced in alphabet, and phonics skills. And Ryan is a wicked color-er. He is so good! He could be an artist if he wanted to. Holly is spelling and inquisitive about the world in ways that I never was. It is actually kind of like therapy for me. I think that I have a block of some sort, I have hinted at this before but I'll restate it now. In my head the dialogue that I engage in is something along the lines of more intellectual curiosity, musings of quirks, and one might say something a bit more refined then you might read in Maxim or Entertainment Weekly. But when I open my mouth to speak, it is like I can't make the big words fit out through the ridiculously small opening into the world. Not that I feel like Einstein trapped in Forrest Gump's head, I won't mention my IQ here (but I think I will put it in my profile, heh) but sometimes I know that people don't "get me", or the ideas that I try to convey. I do think that I "get it" pretty regularly when people are describing concepts or ideas to me, but if I try to verbalize it and repeat it to someone else, I get tongue-tied like I have had a six-pack of lager.

So my point is that when Holly asks me about why the guy at the grocery store is bald, or where eggs come from (not chickens, the obvious answer, but where on a chicken they come out from), or how a wire holds the electricity for the light, it is like a push for me to think and verbalize the kind of concepts that I have trouble getting out into the light, even though I can think of diagrams and page numbers of books that would show her exactly what she wants to know.

Well, that seems a long way from the first sentence of this post so I might as well end it right here.

My Mug

For about a year and a half, I managed to avoid caffeine in all forms: chocolate, soda, and most importantly coffee.

But 2 or 3 months ago, I fell off the wagon. I started having coffee in the morning again. I guess it was probably the stress of the holidays and all that (January stupor). But the problem that I run in to, now and for the years that I drank coffee back when I had a life, is that my morning coffee routine turned in to a "beat the clock" scenario. I had to get up in order to have my coffee before I got the caffeine headache.

I guess the simple solution is don't drink anymore coffee, but I have to say that one of the best feelings in my world is the one I get after taking 3 or 4 sips of coffee. So I think I may have developed a solution. I don't have coffee in the morning when I first get up, I have my coffee with lunch. It isn't too much of a big deal to hold off on my coffee till 11 or 12, and it really helps with not getting headaches first thing from not getting up in time to feed the beast.

I'll keep trying this out and see if it continues to work out.

Their Burping Contest

The best quote that we heard at Emma's party was when they asked me: "What is the best burping soda?"

My Opinion

We made it through. And I managed to go all night without saying: "I told you so."

My Challenge

Please, everyone wish us luck! Tonight is Emma's birthday slumber party. There is going to be a rather distressing number (7 or 8) of tween girls here getting hopped up on pizza rolls (crescent rolls that you put a little sauce and cheese in before rolling them up) and ice cream cake. Since the theme is Monkeys, there will be a Tarzan or George of the Jungle viewing also.

I am pretty sure the Ryan and I are going to be hiding in our bedroom most of the evening.

My Success

I am all done. It took me until about midnight last night but I made it. Things went a lot faster after I installed Windows XP. I was having some serious trouble in Windows 98, the monitor resolution wouldn't get any better then 640x400 on 16 bit color. But after I installed Windows XP it automatically got the right drivers for the Nvidia Graphics Processor. After that it was really smooth sailing. It only took me a few more minutes to set up the printer sharing and the wireless network settings. Thank you Linksys for having such awesome utilities on their website for setting up a secure wireless network. They made it so easy, just thankfully I had the computer near the router so I could physically plug it in with a network cable to get it up and running. But now that it is configured correctly I can move it back into the girl's room and off of the floor in the living room.

---

Happy Scrubs Day, Kyle!

My Birthday

Well, it has been quite the whirlwind of the past couple weeks. Blinking is neccessary but sure is disorienting.

Before I forget, Stuart Murdoch the front man for Belle and Sebastian was on NPR today (Fresh Air) to talk about their US tour, and more importantly the genesis of the group in 1996, on through to what they have been up to recently. It is really interesting learning more about him and the group after the hours that I have spent listening to their music. Here is the link, and I am sure that NPR has a bunch of other content too, for anyone interested.

---

My birthday was Saturday. I didn't really do the whole "Introspection and Ponder" thing. I didn't go around talking about it, but everyone knows how much I talk! I am only 32, but it was interesting to see the kids get excited, because Holly and Ryan had their birthday's in January. I don't think that they even thought that Mommy or Daddy also had a day where they get cake and presents, it isn't just a thing that happens to kids.
I am seriously looking forward to firing up the pressure cooker that I got, and the gift card to Best Buy is really burning a hole in my pocket. Thanks!

---

I have been hard at work trying to get Emma's birthday computer up and running and connected to the network, quite a little chore. First of all when I plugged in the computer and turned it on, it wouldn't even start, just this odd clicking noise from the hard drive. I swapped out the apparently malfunctioning device with one that I had sitting around. It was a major chore getting the new hard drive to mesh with all the plug and play that wasn't playing nice. It was much more simple after I realized that I didn't throw away the spare 3.5" start-up bootable diskette. But after 2 hours I ended up still having to reformat. And that led to my installing the network card and finding out, much to my displeasure that Windows 98 and Windows XP don't network well. I got another copy of Windows XP, so that everything will run on the same operating system. That's where I stand now, waiting for the CD to finish the install. I can't wait to see if everything is ironed out after this. I had no idea that this project was going to take up so much of my time (About 4 or 5 hours, so far). It is progressing and even through all of this, I have learned more, and I guess as long as that happens I'm moving in the right direction.

I still want to buy a UPS for my computer though.