Stuck for an original Mother’s Day card? Here you go: me and Little E made this. I printed it out, he colored it, and we’re good to go. Cost: ink, paper, crayons!
This is the “uncolored” version – get your own crayons! We can’t do all the work for you!
8-Bit Mother’s Day Card (PDF, 72K)
Fold it into quarters and you’re good to go. Thank Mom for helping you navigate the warp zones of life.… Read more
One of the things I’m hoping to accomplish with my blog, aside from “not running completely dry of material to write about,” is to leave something of a written history of me behind for my son. I’d love to say I’m going to write down the whole family history, but I’m no genealogist. I can’t vouch for the rest of my family. I can only vouch for me. Sometimes these stores will get a little outside your comfort zone (hell, imagine how I feel telling you about them). This will probably be one of those. But understand that one thing it is absolutely not meant to be is a sob story. I came out of this one intact. … Read more
It’s the end of an era here at der Greenhaus: the rope lights are coming down from the game room shelves. We’re talking about a lighting scheme that I’ve leaned on pretty hard since the last house I lived in, 
so… nine years exactly. And the funny thing is, a lot of these rope lights have been around since then, so at the very least it was time to look at replacing some of them.
But that’s not what the plan is. As with every other room in the house, the carpet has to come out of my room, so everything has to be disconnected, moved elsewhere in the house temporarily, and then moved back in when it’s torn down to a smooth concrete floor. Even that is temporary – at some point when we can afford it, we’ll get flooring put in (but not carpet – never again), so it’s kinda like all the fun of moving repeatedly, minus the fun of actually moving it to someplace new and exciting. … Read more
How you been doin’? Here’s a quick rundown of the things I’ve done today:
Sat back, obeyed the rules and did nothing as Mrs. G and Little E fished in the mon & son fishing tournament at Carol Ann Cross Park. No fish were caught by this family on this day. Man, I wanted to jump in there and help… but the rules specifically forbade it. I just had to sit back and shut up. Now I’m jonesing to go fish rainbow trout on the White River. Just me, a boat, a rod, a reel, some bait, some lures, a hat big enough to keep the sun out of my eyes, some tunes, absolutely no cell phone signal whatsoever, no wi-fi, no nothing. If you don’t hear from me in a few days, I’m probably sleeping with the fishes. In a good way.
As if that wasn’t enough to draw a crowd, among the crowd were two big, friendly stray pit bulls roaming around in front of the library. I stopped and petted them for a bit until they moved on, mainly to keep them from freaking folks out. Since Xena and Gabby were crashed when we all left at the crack of dawn, these two were the friendliest dogs I saw all morning. They had very obvious dogfighting injuries, and yet they were all over me, stinky-breath dog kisses and all.
Pit bulls aren’t bad dogs. Some pit bull owners, on the other hand, like whoever’s obviously keeping two injured fighting dogs around and letting mange eat them alive, are real pieces of shit. If not for the likely conflict of personalities with the existing canine security staff at my place, I might’ve taken them home. Great dogs. Didn’t ask for whatever’s happened to them. I couldn’t get them to stay long enough for animal control to show up. Good luck, pups. I want to find your ex-owner and keep him from ever breeding again (whether you read that to mean breeding dogs to fight or breeding more people like himself, you didn’t land too far from the truth). But I’ll settle for you two love-starved mutts finding a loving home.
Sadly, the BS myth about pit bulls being four-legged killing machines across the board will probably prevent this from happening.
Got soaked in pit bull slobber right before walking in for the library book sale. Also, next stop after the book sale was my niece’s birthday party at Fuji Steakhouse. Woohoo! Uncle Earl showed up smelling like pit bull slobber! Happy birthday! 😆 Little E got a book about doggies at the book sale; I was sorely tempted by the big box of old Star Trek novels, but I passed. Perused the LPs and tapes to see if there were any out-of-print, not-released-on-anything-but-vinyl movie soundtracks (library and estate sales are awesome for finds like that). No dice, or someone got there before me. (You know, the one other soundtrack nut who lives in this area, if indeed there is one other.)
Next week is the “mostly non-fiction sale.” As the former governor of California once said, “I’ll be back.” Hangin’ with my dawgs, no doubt.… Read more
So, daily bloggin’. Bloggin’ every day. That’s quite a deal. I’ve been falling back on some funny (no, scratch that, hilarious) war stories from my TV and radio days, but I also blawg about other stuff too. That being said, I am in the middle of a job hunt right now, one that has taken so long that I might have better results if I switched to hunting Sasquatch instead.
I’d file a prospective employer looking at my blog before interviewing or hiring as an unlikely event, but then we do live in the day and age where some employers want you to hand over your Facebook password, don’t we? … Read more
Based on a true story. Caruso is a few [thousand] cheeseburgers short of looking the part, though…… Read more
…he who falls asleep on laundry hamper has stayed too late past clothesing time.… Read more
A glimpse of our new carpet-less reality.
I laid my bathrobe on the coffee table for some reason that I forget (probably something to do with taking naps on that couch since it’s under a window that allows a lovely breeze into the house), and that table (and the robe) have now become a favorite vacation destination for the fearsome five. The only cat I haven’t seen take up temporary residence on the robe/table is Puck, but he’s a black cat, and it’s a black robe, so it’s possible that he was there, unseen, like a little furry ninja. A slightly fat little furry ninja.
We won’t be able to put in flooring for a while, and I need to duct tape the edges of the entryway tile and the kitchen/dining room tile so they don’t get chipped, but so far… I’m loving sweeping instead of vacuuming. It ain’t pretty, but it’s a hell of a lot cleaner, even if all of my decorating ideas (painting parking spaces for each cat, painting aircraft carrier stripes leading to the rest of the house) have been shot down.… Read more
Allow me to introduce you to my very Trekkie 2011 Christmas stash. Charles and Mr. Flibble threw a Hastings gift card my way, and John hurled an Amazon gift card at me with all of his might, taking off a couple of limbs* in the process. (Oddly enough, I turned around and spent the majority of both on the wife and kid, who don’t have folks from the internets buying stuff for them. Call it redistribution of wealth if you like.) Okay, here’s the Trek trove:
The big box is, of course, the first Star Trek Micro Machines box set that came out in the ’90s. I had one of these at one point… and took them out of the box, which meant that some of them went AWOL by the time I did a piece on my site about them. Now the set is complete once more – though given the little hands (and mischevious little paws) roaming through my house and getting into stuff, this one might be staying in the box. On a high shelf. Thanks, Dustin!
On top of that are Star Trek lotto cards from New Mexico, thanks to Paul and Charles. I haven’t scratched them yet. But I probably will soon (like I can claim them from Arkansas anyway – watch them all be worth $10,000 as a result – c’mon, Deep Space Nine, daddy needs a new pair of anti-grav boots).
Not shown are the new underwear (trust me, you don’t wanna see a picture of that, or at least not a customer action shot), a new dish towel and an oven mitt. What’s really funny is how happy I was to have any and all of it. I needed another oven mitt, and man, did I ever need some new underwear. Throw in some cash from the in-laws (already assimilated into the Borg-like household-bill-paying collective, just to keep the Star Trek theme going), and there ya go.
Not bad at all, considering that I’d told everyone in the family to spend their money on the kiddo. (And boy, did he make out like a bandit. Woody and Buzz and WALL-E and Artoo and the Mario Brothers have a red R/C Mustang convertible to drive around in. Now that’s a sight.)
I’m truly grateful to… well, anyone who sends anything my way, really. It’s not something I solicit or ask for, and under present circumstances it’s not something I can afford to reciprocate either, as much as I’d like to**. Thank you.
… Read more* from the tree outside my window – that man has deadly hurling accuracy
** things will be different after I win the New Mexico lottery, I promise
…