Holiday: Day 1

First off, I just ate the last piece of lemon chiffon pie and am currently working my way through a piece of banana-walnut upside down... cake? Pie? Whatever. It's covered with melted brown sugar and butter so really, it could be dirt and I'm still going to eat it with a smile on my face. Guilt... not really. Maybe once he's come down from the sugar high he'll have something to say. For now he's keeping to himself.

Holiday has been pretty relaxing so far. Did pretty much nothing this weekend. Bern worked both days so it was mostly just me and the boys pretending like we were going to do something but mostly just playing Lego Star Wars and Super Mario Galaxy on the Wii. I have lots of plans for this holiday. Lots of plans. Just haven't got to many of them yet. Sure you could call it procrastination but I like to call it careful and well thought out planning. And lists. I'm all about the lists. I have a lovely one on my iPod right now. I've even crossed a few things off. Ok, some of them were things I found out I didn't have to do anymore, but whatever.

I did start the gardening! The boys and I had a lovely time hunting worms. Liam played with all sorts of big juicy worms and then ate potato chips from a little bag I brought out for him. Mmmm. Speaking of chips, have you tried these?

Pringles Select. Ooooh my. They're Pringles, so they're like crack anyway. Now they're parmesan and roasted garlic flavoured crack. Mmmmm. We also have a bag of sun dried tomato and cinnamon and sweet potato we haven't opened yet.

I had plans today involving a surprise for Bern, but they fell through. For today anyway. However I did get myself a lovely new hoodie from Lululemon modelled here by Connor:


Anyway, I can see by the time that I don't have enough time to feed the boys dinner before leaving to pick Bern up from work. Happy Meals! I could lie about doing this but they'll just rat me out to their mother anyway.

Ads

Fat dogs



Pasta



Yogurt (American Beauty if you're missing the reference)

Jesus Is Cold

Dad: Geez that's cold!
Liam: Jesus is cold. Jesus is cold.
Dad: Sigh

Holiday, Finally

"How was the 'Star today, hon?"
"It was a bitch, babe. A real bitch."

Note to Wife

1. When I snuck into our room this morning to find a pair of socks that I forgot to get last night and I kinda woke you up and you made that sucking-back-a-bucket-of-drool sound... sexy. Dead sexy.

2. When we crank up the heat in the bathroom for the kids bath time, we really need to make sure the garbage can isn't resting on the heater. Plastic, diapers... I'm just saying.

Spring, Art, Sidewalk Etiquette & My iPod

Went out for a walk yesterday at lunch and saw this in a gallery window on Granville.


Oh yes, Toronto, it is you. Ha ha.

Some early morning thoughts:

Forsythia, they're like the drag queens of Spring. No matter the weather or time of day, they're in your face with their giant yellow happiness. Smile mofo! It's Spring!

When you get off the bus and you need to do God knows what in your purse or whatever, either move off to the side of the sidewalk or WALK IN A STRAIGHT LINE! Be happy I didn't shove your dumb ass in front of that bus. Good morning!

Finally, had a brief scare this morning when the note pad in my iPod wouldn't work. I'd open it up to write something and it would just close itself. WTF? I tried it again when I got to work and it seems fine now. Played music just fine. And speaking of music, last song before I got to work... Sex Machine by James Brown. Get on up.

Coming Soon To An Army Near You!

A company called Boston Dynamics has developed this robot for army applications. Watch what happens when one of the engineers tries to kick it over, or when it slips on ice.



From Clusterflock

Easter Egg Cakes

I know Easter's come and gone, but this is pretty cool.



Found on Mighty Girl

For Auntie Lucy...

... due to complaints regarding the lack of family content lately.


(that's a zipper imprint on his chin)

After picking Mommy up this afternoon:
Connor: Mommy. Guess what Daddy said when he was driving?
Mommy: What?
Connor: He said 'Jesus.'
Mommy: Oh, he shouldn't say that should he?
Connor: No, that's bad. He also said 'hell.'

My son's a rat.

300

Review of the film 300 by Kottke:

300 would have benefitted greatly from a little worship at the altar of Jason Bourne: don't stop the fucking action, ever.

Hello. Are You A Sock?

Marc Johns

Bunny Love

Texting With Aaron

Me: Is it true about you and the dog?
Aaron: She said she loved me.
Me: Oh. Well that's different.

Kinetic Sculptures

"How'd you lose your eye?"
Wednesday shovelled half a dozen pieces of bacon into his mouth, chewed, wiped the fat from his lips with the back of his hand. "Didn't lose it," he said. "I still know exactly where it is."

-American Gods, Neil Gaiman

Quotes From Friday

Liam: I DON'T WANT PRETTY FEET!

(I'm good with that.)

Bernadette: All these blonde kids look the same.

Me: What was that? You're a secret agent or a secret Asian? You could be a secret Asian. AHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!

(Kids are half Asian. Get it? Get it?)

Last Supper Skateboards

Just for Easter

White Gold - One Gallon Axe

I found an insane number of great things to post this morning before I even started work, but once I found this on One Plus Infinity, well, it all just seemed pointless...

Wake Up!

You get to sleep in tomorrow. From The Morning News.

Personal Paparazzo

That sounds like a pizza, but I digress. Methodizaz is a photography...studio? who... um... I'll let them explain it:

MethodIzaz is a unique photography experience. Subjects are unaware of the exact moment they will be photographed and of the photographer's identity. Instead, the subject is photographed completely naturally, living life as normal.

Which is kinda cool. No posing, no dressing up special for a picture, just you being you.

From bb-blog

What's eating you, Mother Nature? Is it us?

An open letter to Mother Nature from Maclean's on this years winter.

We know it was wrong of us to stand idly by and let Al Gore show all those explicit photographs of what you're going to look like 30 years from now. But seriously — ease off.

Guess my part of Canada must have done something nice for her. Suckas.

64 Years Later...

A German WWII pilot, Horst Rippert, recently found out that he was responsible for shooting down one of his favourite authors, French writer Antoine de Saint-Exupery.

From The Mail On Sunday by way of Clusterflock.

Octopus Cookies

-Linda Kovacevic by way of TasteSpotting.

Fat Bastard

Who's that fat bastard wearing my pants!?

Oh...

Real & Perceived

There's Connor and Liam's actual size, then there's Connor & Liam's fighting/screaming/crying size...

Cute, But I Know How He Feels...

Happy St. Patrick's Day

Thanks to Meg Fowler's Friday Love List.

Speed Racer

Two new trailers. There's a shampoo ad in between but wait for the second one, it's cooler.

Why?

3:44am

Why did I drink Dizzy's coffee so late last night?

Hug It, Love It, Squish It, BOOM!

Hug it, love it, squish it, BOOM! from Zoo Keeper on Vimeo.

Saturday's To Do List:

Mom's at work today so it's just the boys and I. Much as we'd all love to sit around playing Wii in our underwear, we should probably get some shit done. Today's list of shit to do:

1.Get boys dressed, teeth brushed, fed. (not necessarily in that order) -10:06am done!
2. Remember all of the above for myself. - 10:06am done!
3. Best Buy for a new Wii game and possibly a new cordless phone. -1:27pm got the phone, no luck on the game
4. Home Depot for a little window (?) shopping.
5. Gardening. Need to expand the flower beds up front and nobody else seems to be doing it. Less grass=less grass to cut.
6. Laundry, as always.
7. Find snow shovel to clean all the toys out of the living room.
8. Remove the last of the wall paper from the bathroom so we (I) can finally get around to painting it.
9. Water indoor plants. Apparently they need that. -10:06am done!

... there's no real end to this list...

Ok, 9:12am and both boys are now in their rooms for some "quiet" time. Guess the first step in this list would be getting off my ass.

Marshmallow

Ferarri Limo

A guy in England cut a Ferarri Modena in half and turned it into a limo. Ferarri was not impressed. Now he's got 14 days to remove the Ferarri symbol or they're gonna sue his ass.



From Clusterflock

Friday: What Will The Day Bring?

I'm A Whale!

Just cause he looks so happy and I had a good day at work yesterday. Well, the first half was atrocious, but the last half was great.

Puddleblog

It's a blog. About a puddle.

My Motto...

Coffee Talk

I make myself two cups of coffee in the morning. It used to be just one, but I've been trying to spend less money and buying coffee 20 days of the month adds up. Also, since I do enjoy the double double and all that delicious cream... Hmm. I went to the Tim Horton's website to find a picture of a cup of coffee that I could post in here and then noticed they have nutritional information. Turns out the have a calculator where you can pick not only specific menu items, but can alter it to the way you eat them. I just wanted to know about my coffee, an extra large double double (and if you live outside of Canada or in most of the United States not lucky enough to have Tim Horton's, that means two cream, two sugar) and how fat it's making me. So, my daily dose gives me 280 calories, 14g of fat (9 saturated and 0.6 trans...what's the other 4.4?), 60mg of cholesterol & 60mg of sodium.

Not sure how good/bad that is but judging by my muffin top, I'm thinking not great. Five cups a week is 1400 calories. Times four weeks in a month... 5600 calories. Fuck. On the bright side, one cup is providing 12% of both my Vitamin A and Calcium needs.... ya.

Funny, when I sat down to write this, all I was going to say was that I forgot to put a second cup of water in the coffee machine last night so it's really strong this morning.

Everybody Needs A Hug

Parenting Differences

Sunday night Bern made salmon with a rice pilaf for the kids and I. Last night it was just dad because Bern had to work late. Left over pancakes.

Whatever, they didn't go to bed hungry.

Pedicure

I bought Bernadette a pedicure last Mother's Day. Saturday she finally got around to getting it, but that's another story. The boys have never seen her with painted toes and were FASCINATED when they saw them. Connor already has a strange interest in feet, but whatever. Liam was amazed. Bern was sitting down in the kitchen relaxing while the kids played with her new feet. A few minutes later she realized that Liam was slowly picking the paint off her big toe. At least they were pretty for half an hour.

My Day

Scattered

So I'm simultaneously trying to read Meg Fowler's Sunday afternoon love list, Caillou's "Where is Teddy" to Liam and build a Lego plane for Connor while copying/pasting the name Bill Kurtis into google cause his name rings a bell but I just can't place it and somehow end up on a wikipedia entry for a Meitav, which is a military base where new Israel Defense Forces recruits are sorted in to their respective corps or basic training bases after hitting some unknown combination of letters and the control key.

Huh?

I Love You, Weng Weng

Before he retired to the Island with Mr. Rourke, Tattoo was a playa.'

Sleeping With A Stegosaurus

Sure he's a two year old Stegosaurus, but he's still a dinosaur. A dinosaur who kept spinning and spinning, much like an agitator in a washing machine. Who suddenly screamed, "YOU CAN'T SIT IN THAT CHAIR!" a propros of nothing at about midnight, not even bothering to wake up. He did eventually wake up though, at 3:48am.



Then he just spun more. Didn't say anything. No complaining, no crying, no talking at all. Just turning and turning and turning. Then he was put back in his own bed. At 6:30 the dinosaur's older bother woke up and I gave up on sleep altogether.

Won't See This In Your Dentist's Office

I'm Repelled And Hungry At The Same Time

Donut burger.



The Lady's Brunch Burger

Big MacChicken



Take one Big Mac and 3 MacChickens. Replace the buns of the Big Mac with the chicken patties of the McChicken. Oh my. From Grocery Eats.

Brain Control 2: Sleep Disturbance

Because I had so much fun with yesterday's...

Heart: So what was your favourite?
Lungs: I loved the eliptical machine, that was a great workout.
Heart: True, that was...

ALARMS-people scrambling back to their desks, putting on headsets and grabbing checklists

Night Shift Supervisor: Report!
Emergency Response Team: Sir, Auditory picked up noises from the youngest child. May turn into a cry.
NSS: Ok, Adrenaline?
ERT: Adrenaline is on line and ready to go, all organs, muscle groups and Circulatory system have been alerted and are ready as well.
NSS: Ok then...what's the time?
ERT: 3:21am

Cry over the loudspeakers-control room, quiet until now, bursts into action.

ERT: Adrenaline pumped. He's fully awake.
NSS: Alright, looks like he's waiting to see if the boy will fall back asleep.
ERT: Sir, Auditory is requesting that the Eyes close to boost their signal strength.
NSS: Do it.

Second cry

ERT: Child is definately awake. He's up and leaving the bedroom. Circulatory reports full dispersal of Adrenaline, primary functions are all in the green.
NSS: Good stuff. Ok, to the child's room without accident then. And kneeling beside the bed... how are the knees?
ERT: Noisey but they're not reporting any pain. They don't recommend him holding this position for too long.
NSS: Child Assessment?
Night Shift Child Manager (Liam): Sir, we believe the child has woken up from a mildly disturbing dream. The arrival of a parent has already relaxed him back into semi-consciousness. Our suggestion of soothing words and a gentle rubbing of the head seems to be doing the trick.
NSS: Excellent.
ERT: Sir, the Lower Intestine and Sphincter are requesting a gas release. Apparently this sitting position is putting a great deal of pressure on the Sphincter.
NSS: Let's see the numbers on screen. Wow, that's a big one. Look at the estimated decibil level. Child Assessment, what will his response be?
CA: Definite laughter, regardless of sleepiness. It will bring him back to consciousness.
NSS: That's what I figured. Ok, negative to gas release. Bladder looks to be full, tell them they can release at the same time once the child has been dealt with.

5 minutes later...

NSS: Alright, good work people. He's back in bed and drifting off.

34 minutes later... 4am

NSS: What the hell was that?
ERT: First born is awake and calling for help, sir. We're all ready but he'll be sluggish this time around.
NSS: Ok, let's get him up before First Born wakes up Second.
ERT: Sir! Right knee reports receiving "I'll get him" signal tap from wife.
NSS: Good. Ok, wind him down. Unfortunately the damage is done, advise morning crew that he'll need additional coffee this morning. Let's try and make this last hour as relaxing as possible. So much for the early bedtime.

Brain Control

I've always had this image of the inside of my brain looking like one of Nasa's control centres. Huge banks of tv monitors and row after row of technicians and scientists in charge of specific systems. I wonder what that would look like...



Brain Control: Good morning, Body, this is Brain Control, can I have everyone return to their stations for today's pre-wake systems check. Ok, today is March the 5th, 2008, let's make it a good day. REM has been disabled and final dream is wrapping up. Consciousness?
Consc: Consciousness is warming up and on stand by. ETA on change over?
BC: Early estimates show change over to self consciousness to be slightly delayed this morning, we believe he'll wake up with or just before the alarm clock today. Thankfully the handover to sleep came early last night for a change.
(Sarcastic cheer from the control room with shouts of "it's about time.")
BC: Ok, ok, keep it down, let's get back to it. Consciousness?
Cons: We'll compensate for wake up time.
BC: Good. Ok, let's switch over to systems... Coronary?
Heart: Check. All systems running within parameters. We'd like to request another exercise reminder though.
BC: Noted. He is looking at another bike ride this week or weekend. The wife's new schedule is still causing problems.
Heart: Excuses...
BC: We know, we know... Ok, Respiratory?
Lungs: Ready. All systems green, ready to go back to full power. We'd also like to forward exercise request. We're running within parameters but we could be doing much better.
BC: Noted. Circulatory?
Blood: 5 by 5. White count is returning to normal as the back is healing quite nicely. We're good.
BC: Excellent. Excretory?
Excretory: Check. Bladder is full and all systems on-line, waiting for green light.
BC: Ok, major systems are go. We still have a few minutes, lets go through as many departments as we can before he's up. Alright, Skin, how is the back doing?
Skin: Healing is ahead of schedule, most scabs have detached, only larger ones remain. Itching is still an issue but he seems to be handling it fairly well. Need a reminder placed that he should not be rubbing the area, that while he's not using his nails even the friction from the skin on his hand can damage the sensitive areas.
BC: Good stuff. How we looking today?
Skin: Pretty good, no new blemishes to report today. He's switched to a new washing pad for his facial cleanser, less abrasive than old one. This is looking like a positive change. Do we have an ETA for the next tattoo session?
BC: End of May. This will be the last session and we're hearing that it will only be an hour to an hour and a half of work. We're almost there. Ok... looks like we're almost there... might start up with slight disorientation. Consciousness, we might need a prod to get him out of bed.
Consc: Ok, we're ready.
BC: Balance, readiness?
Inner ear: We're ready.
BC: Thank you. Ok, we're up people, let's start the countdown. Looks like he's waking up with the alarm today.
Countdown....
BC: Partial consciousness transfer... alarm clock off... Conscious, give him a shot.
Cons: Copy. There he goes.
BC: We're up. Clothes picked up, moving to door. Motor functions?
MF: Early on systems working within parameters, he's fine for stair decent.
BC: Alright, looking good people. Early reports?
Skin: He's cold. Remind him he could put on some clothes before going downstairs to turn on the coffee.
BC: Pre-established routine, he's not going to deviate. First thoughts?
Sub-conscious: Quite a jumble this morning. Unable to decipher initial thought, second was an idea for his story, and then rapid idea development for this blog.
BC: Good work team. Hand off to full consciousness is complete. Let's get to work.

Note in my iPod

-develop pigs

WTF?

Found this on Faster Pussycat this morning, what tarot card are you? I am the Magician.

You are The Magician

Skill, wisdom, adaptation. Craft, cunning, depending on dignity.

Eleoquent and charismatic both verbally and in writing,
you are clever, witty, inventive and persuasive.

The Magician is the male power of creation, creation by willpower and desire. In that ancient sense, it is the ability to make things so just by speaking them aloud. Reflecting this is the fact that the Magician is represented by Mercury. He represents the gift of tongues, a smooth talker, a salesman. Also clever with the slight of hand and a medicine man - either a real doctor or someone trying to sell you snake oil.

What Tarot Card are You?
Take the Test to Find Out.

Spring

Had the kids outside for some fresh air and a little yard work yesterday. Went around to the side of the house and saw a strange plastic bag that had a bit of a yellow glow to it.



Last fall Bern's dad gave us a bag of miniature daffodil bulbs. They were put aside with the intent of being planted before winter and obviously forgotten. There was a bit of soil in there and I guess it was open enough to let rain water in. I can't believe they survived the snow and freezing temperatures in a plastic bag sitting on concrete.

Another Saturday Morning

It's 9:04am, both boys have been fed, one's upstairs watching the Empire Strikes Back and the other's down here playing on the Wii. Mommy is at work (and oh so happy about that), Daddy is on his second load of laundry, second cup of coffee and third eggo. It's sunny out so I know I'm going to have to get the monkeys out at some point today. Right now though, it's daddy time. The dishes, vacuuming, all around general disaster that is our house will still be there after my coffee.