My parents are visiting, and have been told our plans. Naturally, they think we've gone and lost our minds. Wait, that's my friends. My parents are thrilled.
So now everybody's in on the secret... and feeling the pain of waiting. Dad-unit has already complained that he has to wait another 6 months (or whatever), and half-seriously suggested we might have just waited until we had a permanent placement. Of course, that wouldn't do because I'm chafing under the wait too, and everybody knows that the best way to endure misery is to spread it around.
At least, that's the theory one of my friends has been operating on for the past decade or more.
It's been a month since we've had any contact at all with the DHS folks. I probably ought to put in a call in the vain hope that it might be returned. The waiting would be a lot easier if there were only a little bit of communication.
Monday, March 21, 2011
Monday, March 14, 2011
The James Lipton Interview
I don't watch Inside the Actors Studio much, and I'm not really a fan, but on the occasions I have caught it, I've always been intrigued by his version of the Proust interview. I wish I was famous enough to have him run me through it, but I'm not, so I'll just inflict it on everyone here.
What is your favorite word?
There are a bunch of them, and I'm a fan of the more esoteric ones. I like words that are used in novels but rarely seem to appear in conversation. Words like "rout", "laud", and "spoor". But every time I hear this question I remember Mr. Marquis, a teacher I had in high school, who said his favorite word was "squeegee". I think about it so often that I'd have to say it's my favorite word too.
What is your least favorite word?
Baby... I can't explain it. I've always preferred words like "infant" or "toddler" or "child". Baby just rubs me the wrong way for some reason. It seems too cutesy. I've disliked it since I was a kid.
What turns you on?
When people rise above their own expectations
What turns you off?
Thoughtless criticism
What sound or noise do you love?
Laughter, especially a woman's laughter, provided it isn't of the mean-spirited or derisive variety.
What sound or noise do you hate?
Suffering
What is your favorite curse word?
F***. It's a bad habit, and I'm sure I'll pay for it when I get some kidlets hanging around, but sometimes it just seems like no other word will do.
What profession other than your own would you like to attempt?
Personal trainer. I'd love to get paid to work out.
What profession would you not like to do?
Anything mind-numbing or that requires very little thought. I once worked on a small parts assembly line for all of about an hour. It nearly drove me insane.
If Heaven exists, what would you like to hear God say when you arrive at the Pearly Gates?
Everybody else is here too.
What is your favorite word?
There are a bunch of them, and I'm a fan of the more esoteric ones. I like words that are used in novels but rarely seem to appear in conversation. Words like "rout", "laud", and "spoor". But every time I hear this question I remember Mr. Marquis, a teacher I had in high school, who said his favorite word was "squeegee". I think about it so often that I'd have to say it's my favorite word too.
What is your least favorite word?
Baby... I can't explain it. I've always preferred words like "infant" or "toddler" or "child". Baby just rubs me the wrong way for some reason. It seems too cutesy. I've disliked it since I was a kid.
What turns you on?
When people rise above their own expectations
What turns you off?
Thoughtless criticism
What sound or noise do you love?
Laughter, especially a woman's laughter, provided it isn't of the mean-spirited or derisive variety.
What sound or noise do you hate?
Suffering
What is your favorite curse word?
F***. It's a bad habit, and I'm sure I'll pay for it when I get some kidlets hanging around, but sometimes it just seems like no other word will do.
What profession other than your own would you like to attempt?
Personal trainer. I'd love to get paid to work out.
What profession would you not like to do?
Anything mind-numbing or that requires very little thought. I once worked on a small parts assembly line for all of about an hour. It nearly drove me insane.
If Heaven exists, what would you like to hear God say when you arrive at the Pearly Gates?
Everybody else is here too.
Wednesday, March 9, 2011
Calling All Nerdlets
The wife sent me this article:
How "Dungeons & Dragons" changed my life
It outlines a lot of positive things that have come from the pencil-and-paper roleplaying genre of games. It passes up some of the family interaction upsides, which I was not fortunate enough to have as a kid, but I know people who did. One of my best friends gamed with his entire family, with his father usually running the game, and I find fascinating the potential for family bonding, shared creativity, and learning about one another.
I previously wrote that I'm torturing the wife with talk of running a game with the kids, but my interest is not solely fueled by my nerd-dom. I think it could be a wonderful way to allow kids to express themselves and provide launching points for conversation, not to mention being far more interactive and engaging than simply drooling in front of the TV together.
How "Dungeons & Dragons" changed my life
It outlines a lot of positive things that have come from the pencil-and-paper roleplaying genre of games. It passes up some of the family interaction upsides, which I was not fortunate enough to have as a kid, but I know people who did. One of my best friends gamed with his entire family, with his father usually running the game, and I find fascinating the potential for family bonding, shared creativity, and learning about one another.
I previously wrote that I'm torturing the wife with talk of running a game with the kids, but my interest is not solely fueled by my nerd-dom. I think it could be a wonderful way to allow kids to express themselves and provide launching points for conversation, not to mention being far more interactive and engaging than simply drooling in front of the TV together.
Monday, March 7, 2011
Let the good times (and pornbots) roll
One reader, whose feedback I enjoy, wondered generally on her own blog why some of us lock down our comment section with Captcha and moderation. Frankly for me, it's because my other blog receives a lot of comment spam from pornbots and viagrabots and dontspeakenglishbots. I figured that since Blogger is run by Google, and I don't view Google as a very security-minded company, the spamination would be orders of magnitude worse over here, and I've only got so much time in the day.
But in deference to those with more experience on Blogger, and because like any blogger I love getting feedback, I'll go ahead and ease up on the reins a bit and see where it gets me. Just don't blame me if the comments someday show acts that make you wonder "how is that even possible?!?!" I'll try to stay ahead of them, of course, but this is the internet. It's a petri dish for malcontents and misanthropes.
But in deference to those with more experience on Blogger, and because like any blogger I love getting feedback, I'll go ahead and ease up on the reins a bit and see where it gets me. Just don't blame me if the comments someday show acts that make you wonder "how is that even possible?!?!" I'll try to stay ahead of them, of course, but this is the internet. It's a petri dish for malcontents and misanthropes.
Sunday, March 6, 2011
Things you can't do with (most) kids
One of our favorite vacation/long weekend activities is renting cabins, and this being the wife-unit's birthday, it's how she wanted to spend it. We have a rule that the birthday person gets to be king/queen for the day, so we're down at Beaver's Bend State Park in southeastern Oklahoma.
Since we started getting back in shape a couple of years ago, we've also started truly enjoying hikes and more adventurous activities. We used to "enjoy" "hikes", if by "hike" we meant a largely leisurely stroll through the woods on basically level ground, and by "enjoy" we meant "didn't break a sweat".
Things are much different now. We've been doing P90X and similar workouts for a couple of years, and my new approach to hiking is as follows:
1: go to park office/visitor center
2: find hiking brochure
3: locate longest or most difficult trail, and declare that this is the one we're taking
4: pack some snacks and water and get to it
This is how we wound up on Skyline Trail, which was both the longest AND the most difficult (a two for one deal!). It's an interesting trail because all of the brochures say it's 5 miles long, but the park people said it's actually either 6, 7, or 9 miles long (they couldn't make up their minds). There is cell phone service in the park, so they told us to call if we got into trouble. I wondered why everyone was so anxious to scare us off before we started.
The problem as I see it is this: most places that say "expert trail" or "experienced hikers" generally mean only that the trail is not wheelchair accessible. Or that you might have to climb a grade once or twice. The roughest trail in the Wichita Mountains at the other end of the state fits this description: it's only hard if you go on a 100-degree day and don't bring any water. So when they started waving the voodoo sticks and giving us last rites, I'm all "pfft. Yeah, whatever."
It turns out that Skyline Trail is no joke. There are climbs that would require handholds if they were any steeper, and not just for 20 or 50 feet. Worse for me are the downhills of the same grade -- something about my right knee and ankle has hated a downhill slope since I was in my 20's.
I keep a mental list of my friends and acquaintances who are "outdoorsy", either in actuality or in their own minds. I like to pretend I know when they would drop off the excursion, and the crowd gets smaller and smaller. By the time we reached the 1/3 point marked by crossing a private road, I was down to my boss and his (adult) son. A couple of friends needed to be airlifted out. One fell to the ground and screamed "leave me! Save yourselves!"
The second third of the trip started really testing us. I remember at one point we were climbing a hill, and when we reached the top we found that someone had stacked another, longer, steeper hill on top of it. Just like life.
We were closing in on the 2/3 point when we came across some other hikers headed the opposite direction. We'd been on the trail for 2.5 hours at this point, and they said there was about an hour and a half behind them. By this time we'd gone through enough downhills that my right leg was starting to complain, although it was nothing compared to the imaginary children in my head.
("Daddy, I'm tired. Are we going to be done soon? How much longer is this?")
I've already got it in my head that the kids and I are going camping at some point, and that it's going to be real "roughing it" camping, not this nonsense at a park campsite where the electricity and modern conveniences are 50 yards away. But I had to admit to myself that Skyline Trail probably has a minimum age limit -- probably 16 years old unless the kid shows signs of some serious toughness earlier on.
The final third of the trail was an exercise in pain management. I got to the point where my right knee refused to bend on the downhills, my right ankle was producing this sickening grinding sensation, and I had to crab-step down like a 2-year-old learning to negotiate stairs. I probably would have done much better had I been wearing actual hiking boots instead of sneakers, but I was more enthusiastic than prepared. I remember at one point I said to myself "I can make it down this slope if this is the last one I have to do." Unfortunately I said that with 6 slopes left to go. Once again, kind of like life.
In the end though, through determination and as they say on TV, "a triumph of the human spirit", not to mention the desire to not wind up on the nightly news (or an episode of "I shouldn't be alive"), we finished the trail and limped back to the car. We immediately went for something to eat, then raced back to the cabin to soak our beaten bodies in the hot tub. My knee is still a little sore as I write this, but I'll survive, and we've got a great memory of the day we conquered Skyline Trail.
Today we're off to Texarkana to see what they've got to offer in the way of entertainment that doesn't require grinding bone against bone. It's her birthday, after all. I probably shouldn't death march her on her birthday. It might be seen as rude.
Since we started getting back in shape a couple of years ago, we've also started truly enjoying hikes and more adventurous activities. We used to "enjoy" "hikes", if by "hike" we meant a largely leisurely stroll through the woods on basically level ground, and by "enjoy" we meant "didn't break a sweat".
Things are much different now. We've been doing P90X and similar workouts for a couple of years, and my new approach to hiking is as follows:
1: go to park office/visitor center
2: find hiking brochure
3: locate longest or most difficult trail, and declare that this is the one we're taking
4: pack some snacks and water and get to it
This is how we wound up on Skyline Trail, which was both the longest AND the most difficult (a two for one deal!). It's an interesting trail because all of the brochures say it's 5 miles long, but the park people said it's actually either 6, 7, or 9 miles long (they couldn't make up their minds). There is cell phone service in the park, so they told us to call if we got into trouble. I wondered why everyone was so anxious to scare us off before we started.
The problem as I see it is this: most places that say "expert trail" or "experienced hikers" generally mean only that the trail is not wheelchair accessible. Or that you might have to climb a grade once or twice. The roughest trail in the Wichita Mountains at the other end of the state fits this description: it's only hard if you go on a 100-degree day and don't bring any water. So when they started waving the voodoo sticks and giving us last rites, I'm all "pfft. Yeah, whatever."
It turns out that Skyline Trail is no joke. There are climbs that would require handholds if they were any steeper, and not just for 20 or 50 feet. Worse for me are the downhills of the same grade -- something about my right knee and ankle has hated a downhill slope since I was in my 20's.
I keep a mental list of my friends and acquaintances who are "outdoorsy", either in actuality or in their own minds. I like to pretend I know when they would drop off the excursion, and the crowd gets smaller and smaller. By the time we reached the 1/3 point marked by crossing a private road, I was down to my boss and his (adult) son. A couple of friends needed to be airlifted out. One fell to the ground and screamed "leave me! Save yourselves!"
The second third of the trip started really testing us. I remember at one point we were climbing a hill, and when we reached the top we found that someone had stacked another, longer, steeper hill on top of it. Just like life.
We were closing in on the 2/3 point when we came across some other hikers headed the opposite direction. We'd been on the trail for 2.5 hours at this point, and they said there was about an hour and a half behind them. By this time we'd gone through enough downhills that my right leg was starting to complain, although it was nothing compared to the imaginary children in my head.
("Daddy, I'm tired. Are we going to be done soon? How much longer is this?")
I've already got it in my head that the kids and I are going camping at some point, and that it's going to be real "roughing it" camping, not this nonsense at a park campsite where the electricity and modern conveniences are 50 yards away. But I had to admit to myself that Skyline Trail probably has a minimum age limit -- probably 16 years old unless the kid shows signs of some serious toughness earlier on.
The final third of the trail was an exercise in pain management. I got to the point where my right knee refused to bend on the downhills, my right ankle was producing this sickening grinding sensation, and I had to crab-step down like a 2-year-old learning to negotiate stairs. I probably would have done much better had I been wearing actual hiking boots instead of sneakers, but I was more enthusiastic than prepared. I remember at one point I said to myself "I can make it down this slope if this is the last one I have to do." Unfortunately I said that with 6 slopes left to go. Once again, kind of like life.
In the end though, through determination and as they say on TV, "a triumph of the human spirit", not to mention the desire to not wind up on the nightly news (or an episode of "I shouldn't be alive"), we finished the trail and limped back to the car. We immediately went for something to eat, then raced back to the cabin to soak our beaten bodies in the hot tub. My knee is still a little sore as I write this, but I'll survive, and we've got a great memory of the day we conquered Skyline Trail.
Today we're off to Texarkana to see what they've got to offer in the way of entertainment that doesn't require grinding bone against bone. It's her birthday, after all. I probably shouldn't death march her on her birthday. It might be seen as rude.
Wednesday, March 2, 2011
Perspectives
My wife linked me this post, which we both agree was amusing. I particularly enjoyed this bit:
This spawned a pretty typical conversation between us:
Tom: My charm has never worked on you.
Lisa: Yes it has, I married you didn't I?
Tom: I figured it was out of pity.
Lisa: Nope. (Aw, she does love me!)
Tom: I'm sure the stairs post makes you think about my laundry. I'm getting it hung up and put away every other week, so that's progress.
Lisa: Yes, but wouldn't it be nicer if it was every week?
Tom: I'm not sure what you're getting at.
Lisa: Isn't it nice to get your clothes out of the closet instead of looking through all your laundry in the basket?
Tom: Seriously, you're not making any sense at all.
Lisa: See how you are? Butthead.
He thinks he's being cute and funny when he says it, hoping to distract me with his charm. THIS IS WHY I NEED A WHISTLE.
This spawned a pretty typical conversation between us:
Tom: My charm has never worked on you.
Lisa: Yes it has, I married you didn't I?
Tom: I figured it was out of pity.
Lisa: Nope. (Aw, she does love me!)
Tom: I'm sure the stairs post makes you think about my laundry. I'm getting it hung up and put away every other week, so that's progress.
Lisa: Yes, but wouldn't it be nicer if it was every week?
Tom: I'm not sure what you're getting at.
Lisa: Isn't it nice to get your clothes out of the closet instead of looking through all your laundry in the basket?
Tom: Seriously, you're not making any sense at all.
Lisa: See how you are? Butthead.
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