Posts (page 2)

Pretend he's pouring cement, and this picture magically becomes relevant to the story

Last weekend, I made a stunning realization. "It's frickin' summer, for frick's sake," I realized. Such a realization kicks a guy into high gear.  All the things we had been saying, "Let's do it sometime this spring," were now late. All the times I thought, "I can't wait until it's summer and I can finally get out and do things," now burned my lips like so much cheap tequila. So this weekend, we knew we had to make the most of summer. And you can't enjoy summer without a good outdoor project. So we poured some cement with my wife's parents.

My only real experience with cement was selling hundreds of bags of it to angry customers when I worked in lumberyards in college. I had no idea you could just order a truck full and have that pulled up to your house. I always figured cement trucks were filled one bag at a time by people who don't want to bring their cement truck into a lumberyard.

I learned a lot about cement that I had never thought about before, but now it seems so obvious.

Did you know:

• When cement is poured it's filled with a bunch of rocks about the size of a marble.
• It's a bad idea to play marbles around an area where people are pouring cement
• You can walk around in cement when it's freshly poured. It's like walking in mud with little marble sized rocks in it. You won't turn into a statue, as so many Bugs Bunny cartoons have led us to believe
  
• When you see little marble sized chunks of rock stuck together on the edge of freshly poured cement, it means that someone did not float property before leveling with the two-by-four
• When you see patches of cement that are smooth and don't have those tiny grades of even lines in them, that means the cement dried before someone could run a broom across it to give it traction
• When you see a wooden handle sticking out of a patch of cement, it means that the cement dried before someone could retrieve the floater
• When you see the shape of the back of someone's head in the cement, that means that someone thought that the cement was drying before they could retrieve the floater and went to yank it out but it really wasn't dried so they flew backwards into the cement
• If you see all of the above, you are probably looking at a spot of cement that I personally poured. Take a rubbing of the back of my head, and I'll sign it for you
• People put the cracks into the sidewalk on purpose. Ostensibly, it's to prevent the cement from cracking in unwanted places, but the real reason is that cement companies are often funded by evil chiropractors who desperately want you to step on a crack so they can get your grandmother's business
• There's a subtle difference between cement and concrete, and if you don't know what it is, your whole project could be ruined, and you'll be forbidden from ever pouring or walking on either one ever again. I forget what the difference is.
• There are a limited number of body parts you can press into fresh cement before you start getting some really weird looks
  

Our further weekend plans included going for a nature walk, cooking out, going to the beach for a swim, renting a kayak and taking it out on the lake, and doing a little gardening. After the cement thing though, we felt we needed to scale back a little. We went to the movies and also napped.

All in all, it was a perfect summer weekend.

...was "schooled."

Jeez. Thanks for guessing.

All right, that really wasn't fair. That was, like a month ago. Here's a new one.

Abe begins Uncle Ben's biopsy first.
From that group of words, find the one that fits worst
And after you've chosen the word that is wrong
Tell me the reason it doesn't belong

What's making you smile today?

Feel Good Ghosts (Tea-Partying Through Tornadoes)

Cloud Cult

1 comment

I was listening to the radio and they were talking about their favorite album of the year. Being hopelessly out of touch, I  didn't know any of the albums they discussed. Then, they got to the end and they said that everyone from the Current (the music station I sometimes listen to) agreed that one album was fantastic, some calling it the best of the year, and that was Minneapolis band Cloud Cult's Feel Good Ghosts. Then they played Everybody Here is a Cloud.

Made me smile.

For decorative purposes only

We went to a parade last weekend. It was a nice, wholesome way to spend a summer afternoon with the family getting to see the people in our community.

Too bad about the fire.

Fire trucks and rescue vehicles are a parade mainstay, and I think just about everyone has had the thought at one point: what would happen with those vehicles if there was a fire during the parade? With all the streets blocked off, how would emergency crews get in and out? What about the firetrucks from the 1950s? Would the mayor have to jump out and ride the dalmatian to safety as  the vintage fire truck sped off on one last great adventure?

It turns out, they keep going with the parade. Even if it's one of the vehicles about fifty yards behind them that started on fire.

See I never really considered this, but if they sprang into action and turned around, they'd probably kill a bunch of Shriners. So on Sunday, when one of the floats advertising a local Mexican restaurant suddenly burst out en fuego, the firetrucks kept going, blasting their horns and flashing their lights, leaving a cluster of terrified Mariachi singers to fend for themselves until non-parade affiliated emergency personnel arrived. In this case, that personnel was a guy who lives nearby and put out the fire with his garden hose. While huge crowds cheered as babies were rescued from the truck and fire was extinguished by the lawn implements that make suburban life so great, the rescue vehicles, local Marines, some bagpipers and a Shriners driving team suddenly found themselves the only parade members who were actually parading.

Fortunately, no one was hurt. But it got me to thinking about Rashomon effect. The parade route was, say twelve blocks long, and the fire started at about block 3. It would have been really interesting to get a snapshot of what people along every block in the parade were talking about when the fire broke out. Seeing an opportunity, I sprang up from our blanket, looked at the crowd, and made up a bunch of conversations.

Block 1: "Why is this parade not moving?"
"The horse patrol is just sitting here..."
"I think there's something going on ahead."
"Guys, the horse patrol is just sitting here."
"Is that truck supposed to be smoking?"
"Bad news! Bad news! There are a lot of horses, and they're not going anywhere!  Someone get this parade started before... too late! Noooooooooo!"

Block 2: "Did you guys notice anything odd about the Mexican restaurant float? It looked like it was smoking."
"You mean the girl in the green dress?"
"No, not the girl."
"There's smoking in the restaurant?"
"No, dude, the float."
"Maybe it's supposed to symbolize that the salsa is muy caliente."
"How about shooting flames and people panicking? What does that symbolize?"
"I've had Mexican food do that to me."

Block 3: "Fire! Truck on fire!"
"For cripe's sake, Margaret. I told you we should have sat down by the bank."
"Horace, that truck just burst into flames!"
"Why do you insist on picking a spot where something terrible always happens? Every year, Margaret!"
"People are panicking, Horace! This is horrible!"
"Last year we sat behind that crying baby. Remember '99, when that damn kid threw that sucker that practically impaled itself into my forehead. And now you pick the spot where the truck starts on fire."
"Horace, stop whining and listen to me. This is an emergency situation. Take some pictures!"

Block 4: "Look out! Did you see that float?"
"We've got to get out of here!"
"Oh no, Jerry. It's not affiliated with someplace you've eaten, is it?"
"No time to talk. Go, go go!"
"Jeez, Jerry. You've got to stop threatening to burn the place down every time you go out to eat."

Block 5: "Looks like they're putting on some kind of special events spectacular."
"Great. With our luck, they won't set that truck on fire again until it goes by the bank and we'll miss the whole thing."
"Well, hopefully that guy will at least squirt us with the garden hose."

Block 6: "The parade stopped."
"Sounds like it's time for a pair of superheroes to spring into action. Help me find a phone booth."
"It looks like there's some kind of truck on fire."
"Yikes. Never mind. That sounds dangerous. Help me find a corn dog."

Block 7: "It's been a long time since anyone has come by. What's going on?"
"I don't know. No one else is heading this way."
"Hmmm. I wonder why that could be."
"It's probably not..."
"I can't think of a single reason no one else on the parade would be coming this way."
"Barbara--"
"Something sure seems to have stopped them dead in their tracks, though."
"Okay, okay, I'll take off my Federal Breast Inspector hat. Are you happy?"
"You do look better without it."
"Hmph. This was going to be the best parade ever."

Block 8: "That's it? Two guys with candy? Last year I filled up my frickin' pillowcase."
"Well, maybe they're cutting back this year."
"I came out to this frickin' parade to get some frickin' candy. I'm not walking away from the big parade with six frickin' Tootsie Rolls."
"We can stop for candy on the way home."
"Is someone going to frickin' throw it at me? Because that's what I was frickin' expecting for today."
"For Pete's sake, Hank, you're 43 years old. You don't need more candy."

Block 9: "No one else seems to be coming."
"My sister was supposed to be in this parade."
"Well maybe she was and you missed her."
"I was looking. I didn't see her."
"Wasn't she the one playing the bagpipe with the long beard?"
"Maybe. I should probably see her more often than just at these parades."

Block 10:"What, that's it then? Two minutes worth of parade?"
"This thing gets shorter and shorter every year."

Block 11:"Huh, it looks like the parade just kind of cuts off after the shriners."
"That makes sense."
"How do you figure, Ernie?"
"Well they like little hats and little cars. Stands to reason they like little parades, too."

Block 12: "Here comes the fire truck."
"They always have fire trucks in the parade."
"What do you think they'd do if there was a parade and a fire at the same time?"
"You're an idiot."

What's that on your toilet? Oh, that's just the gorilla

There comes a time in every man's life when he decides that the time has come to fix the toilet. This is usually known as the time where the guy's life is pretty boring. Now, I have had a few epic showdowns with toilets in the past, but in those situations, there is no winner. This weekend, our toilet was in need of fixing, and I would not take unfixed toilet for an answer.

Unfortunately, I was just coming off a crushing defeat against a bedframe. No matter how many times I assembled it, then disassembled and reassembled it, then unassembled and pro-assembled it, the box spring would not fix into the frame. I was using a cordless drill! I had been let to believe that a man with a cordless drill would create and destroy worlds. Unfortunately, the only world I created was a world of despair and frustration, which really is not the best kind of world, if you ask me.

I tried every tactic I knew. I realigned the screws as far apart as I could. I reset the crossbar. I disinterred the flange joists. I yelled really loud while swinging the cordless drill in the air. I swore quietly enough that Aaron couldn't hear me, but the bedframe could. I used the threat of firewood. I solved a cryptic crossword puzzle. Nothing worked. I did not make the bed, nor could anyone sleep in it. As far as I know, the frame lies there still, unfinished, a mockery of what bedframes ought to be. Which is: less stupid.

So it was with a heavy heart that I faced the toilet. Jenna, having seen what happened to the bed frame, took her place by my side. We had a strategy: Jenna was going to carefully read the instructions before we started anything. Then I was going to disconnect some things. That way, Jenna could tell me exactly what I was doing wrong.

"You're not following the instructions," she would say.

Our mission was to replace that one part of the toilet. Not the bowl. Not the floaty. Not the tank cover. That other part, you know the one. But in order to replace it, first you have to disconnect the pipes.

I mean second, you have to disconnect the pipes. First, i was supposed to turn off the water. Then second, clean up the water that was all over the floor. Then third remember not to turn the water back on. Then disconnect the pipes. Except, disconnecting the pipes in a toilet is kind of like setting a snowman on fire because either way you end up with a lot of water on the floor and a deep sense of confusion about what made you think this was a good idea in the first place.

Now, the water was off. But every screw I turned led to another massive gush of toilet water on the floor. I had grabbed the wastebasket to collect it, but the wastebasket was clearly in on the joke here, because every time I held it under the leaking toilet, the leak would stop immediately. I'd take the wastebasket away, and the water would start squirting again. I could have sworn that the toilet was trying to get me back for something, but I couldn't imagine what I would have ever done to slight it. Well, you know, except for that.

After about twelve gallons had spilled out of our 1.8 gallon tank, I finally had everything disconnected. Then Jenna did the thing where you actually fix the toilet. I missed this part, so all I can do is fervently wish that nothing bad ever happens to our toilet again. Well, you know, except for that.

It took about thirty seconds for Jenna to take the broken part out and put in the new part. After that, the only thing left to do was reconnect the pipe. How it was still pouring out water is beyond me. Still reconnecting the pipe was much easier than disconnecting it.

Except that I put the pieces in backwards.

I didn't realize this until we had reconnected the water and given it the ol' test flush. Water all over the floor! Again! Hilarious, toilet, you stupid... you pile of...

How do you insult a toilet?

So it was simply a matter of starting over from the very beginning and redoing every step. Just like with the bed. However, the toilet was less resilient than the bed, and the second time I reconnected everything, it worked. Only a few drops leaked out of the tank with every flush, which by that point was OK by me. Finally the floor was relatively dry. I felt kind of like how Noah must have felt on the ark when he fixed his toilet.

So the next time you stop by and visit my place, don't be surprised if I give you a fifteen minute tour of the toilet.  I'm pretty proud of our accomplishment, and I don't want anyone to give our newly fixed toilet any crap.

Well, except for that.

I'll cry if I want to

1. Happy birthday to Jake and Katie. Also, happy anniversary guys! And happy father's day. Thank you for not cramming all of that stuff into late December instead of mid-June. Now let's stop buying presents for a while, OK?

2. Aaron is sick. When I was growing up, it always seemed like a crime against nature to get sick when the weather was this nice. Aaron missed going to the pool twice today. And it was the first day in something like three weeks where we didn't have a severe thunderstorm looming. However, he did get to go to the toy store instead, so we probably don't have to think of today as the Day That Ruined His Childhood.

3. For the two of you who read this blog for Aaron stories and who haven't heard this one yet: Aaron had a bad dream the other night. I went in there to calm him down and ask what happened.
Aaron: There was a mystery man in here. But now he's gone.
Me: Was he a nice man?
Aaron: No, he was a mystery man.
Me: I think you had a bad dream.
Aaron: But he wasn't you, Daddy.
Me: No?
Aaron: No, he had hair on his head.

4. I turned 31 on Saturday. My parents took me to the zoo.

Technically, my parents and siblings joined me in taking our kids to the zoo, but let's be honest here: it was my birthday. I also celebrated with a cookout at my parents' house. My birthday dinner included cherries, potato salad, those bars that have pretzels and strawberries and cream cheese, ice cream cake, chocolate chip cookies, and two other dinners.

The Wii Fit isn't speaking to me right now.

5. It was fantastic to see Bill and Jess while they were in town. They stopped by our house overnight. Here's what they brought: An extra wheel for playing Mario Kart, Ticket to Ride, Guitar Hero, root beer, rum, and maybe toothbrushes. I don't think I have to tell you what kind of crazy rum-fueled, guitar poundin', transcontinental-railroad-buildin' fun we had.
No wonder Aaron's sick.

Capsule time

Dr. Mario is back! He's on the Wii, and teaching a whole new generation that you can solve your problems with pills.

Have you ever played Dr. Mario and taken a Flintstones vitamin every time you kill a germ? It doesn't take long before you start to develop what I call Mario Focus. Even if you lose, you'll feel virtually unstoppable. Of course, there's also the hallucinations, but get those in check and learn the following guidelines, and you'll get your Mario doctorate in no time flat.

1. Learn which way the pill spins. When you press the button, you should know which color will be on the left and which one will be on the right. Learn this, and you're halfway to being the best Dr. Mario player in the universe.
2. Work your way down from the top. Those pills will start dropping pretty fast at the end of the game, and the distance it takes to get to the bottom gives you enough time to spin your pills properly. Don't leave any on the top!
3. If you screw up, don't get flustered. Getting rid of two poorly placed colors is easy. But if you lose focus and start dropping pills willy-nilly, it'll be a lot tougher to catch up.
4. Pretend that every color is important. If you've just got red and blue germs showing, imagine that one of them (preferably one between a red germ and a blue germ) is actually yellow, and place all of your yellows there until you uncover a real place for the yellows. It's fun to pretend things.
5. Don't get too clever. It is very cool to see those horizontal matches disappear, but if you can set up a vertical just as easily, do it. Set up the pills to get your combos, but remember the important thing is getting rid of the germs before their feelings are hurt, poor little guys.
6. Do all the yellow ones first. Yellow is the color of lemons and urine. Get that horrible color out of your pill bottle.
7. Time your drops carefully. If you can drop every pill on a downbeat in either Chill or Cough while Mario's hand is in the backmost position, you can unlock the nude Mario ending. It's shocking, but answers a lot of nagging questions.
8. Make sure your Wii-mote is pointed East. It's a well known fact that Dr. Mario is one of Japan's most nationalistic games, (next to Shenmue and River City Ransom) so you get extra rewards by pointing your Wii-mote toward the Land of the Rising Sun. If you do this on levels 20 and higher, you not only get more points, you will actually learn to speak Japanese.
9. Practice good hygiene. I have it on good authority that if you lose, the germs on the screen will be transferred to the Wii-mote over the internet and escape through the built-in microphone onto your hands. Scrub your hands! Get the germs off before they get into your skin. Dirty! Dirty! Dirty!
10. Buzzy buzzy goomba. Hail starman, or quake before the mighty spinies of lakitu's wrath. There are vines growing in the bricks, vines to heaven, sweet heaven awash in coins. Koopa troopa koopa troopa koopa troopa koopa troopa koopa troopa koopa troopa koopa troopa koopa troopa koopa troopa koopa troopa grab the power mushroom! 

As far as I know, this runs on magic

I used to have a job that relied heavily on my learning in psychology and biology. If you wanted to convey that the products we sold were simple, you had to say, "Come on, Dr. Jenkins, this isn't rocket science" because it actually was brain surgery. Now I work in a job that relies heavily on my knowledge of physics, which is a shame, because although I find physics really fascinating, I pretty much got no education in the subject in school.

I had a teacher who believed open-textbook testing. What that meant to me was that I didn't really have to read the textbook because I was already a good test taker, and smart enough to know there was an index in the back of the book. I also overloaded on extracurriculars that year and was taking some pretty time-intensive classes, so I coasted in physics. I learned only what I needed to and was very careful to forget it fifteen minutes after I was done with the test. The tests were easy. I was getting an A-, which was fine by me.

About two months into the semester, the teacher stopped coming into class. We had a sub, of course, but I never figured out what happened to our physics teacher. It was high school, so the rumor was that he was butchering students and using their remains for his grisly science experiments. Good enough story for me, I had bad teen poetry to write. Anyway, the sub who came in said that the days of open-textbook tests were over. I could see the writing on the wall, and it was filled with Greek characters I didn't recognize and some guy called Newton, so I hightailed it out of there dropped the class.

Man, do I regret that.

In college, Jenna took a class in physics on the micro- and macro- levels and it sounds like just about the coolest class ever. I've lost whole afternoons thumbing through 1001 Things Every Stupid Kid Should Know About Physics and marveling at how interesting it all was. Learning about the crazy rules of "why stuffs work the way they does" is just inherently interesting to me. But I've really never learned physics.

I think that must have been heartbreaking for my dad, the professional scientist. Dad was a great asset all through elementary school when science fair time rolled around. He'd find out what we were interested in and push us to make a really awesome science project. Also, he'd put in a lot of the heavy lifting himself. For example, I would tell my dad I was interested in rocket ships, and he'd go out and build a frame to hold nine dayglo-painted styrofoam balls and a black strobe light and I'd write a book report on a book called "What are the planets, Charlie Brown?" and make some labels and I had a science project the size of an air conditioner of a glow-in-the-dark solar system which, in those days, anyway, was a sufficiently good science fair project that I'd get to go on the school-sponsored trip to the zoo to honor young scientists.

I loved science fairs.

In fifth grade, I was interested in optical illusions. My dad already had about thirty books about optical illusions, so I picked some of the most interesting ones. I also inexplicably picked the one with the vase that's two faces that everyone has already seen a million times before, but since I had a lot of good ones, too, it was OK. My dad found a cool three dimensional model of an eyeball to supplement the illusions, and we built it together. It had little hinges so you could peel away the iris and pupil and see what was underneath. It was pretty cool, except that I smeared glue all over the lens, so we had to label that it had a cataract.

I took my eye to school, and was  pretty pleased with the project. But as soon as I got to school, my classmates, who had seen the kinds of projects my dad had engineered in the past, all wanted to know what the eye could do. "Does it blink?" they'd ask. "Will it follow you around the room?" "Can I connect it to my own eye and see out of it?" "Does it contain a black light of some sort?"

I showed them the hinge, and the cataract underneath, but clearly they were disappointed. They didn't even gasp in amazement at the vase that was also two faces. I went home disappointed, and my dad was very sympathetic.

"The important thing is that you got to learn more about something that interests you," he told me. "Science isn't all black lights and robots. It's about learning how things around you work."

That's great advice. I had a lot of fun with that particular project and it was something I could be proud of. To this day, my dad is sending me books about optical illusions because I still think they're cool. I can only hope to make a similar impression on Aaron someday.

At the time, however, I was not consoled by his words of wisdom. So my dad took the next step.

"Next year," he said. "We'll make a working laser."

And we did. And no one ever doubted my science fair projects again.

If you had to write your autobiography in 6 words, what would you write?
Submitted by mitzie.

I'm no fan of feathered pens

I think this kind of question is so irritating. Even if you could, why on earth would anyone want to sum up their lives in six words. Who I am today is not the same as who I was five years ago, and who I'll be in five years. An autobiography should be something that enlightens and gives real insight into who a person is and frankly, the idea that a person could do that in six words is ludicrous.

Here's my autobiography in ten words:
He likes hippos and has a blog he writes in.

This is National Headache Awareness Week. Show us what gives you a headache.

Don't let your neurosurgeon do this.