Rainy Day

The rain continues to fall here in LA. Last night I made cookies with the girls.

Yes, it looks like play-do, but it’s not. The cookie dough comes in various colors and you get to mix the dough into different shapes before you bake it. The girls & I had fun. Unfortunately, the cookies didn’t taste so good. I spinkled sugar on the second batch and it was much better.
I didn’t leave the house today. I spent the morning building an antenna for the wardriving. Yes, I’ve got the bug to try out wardriving again. I’ll write up the story tomorrow.
In the mean time, someone please buy me this space suit.

A glorious day

Today started out wonderfully. It was raining all night and when I awoke, the rain was still pounding. The girls climbed into bed with Michele & me to snuggle and listen to the rain fall.
One of the strange attributes of Southern California denizens is that we actually like it rains, especially the first big rain of the year. I can’t explain why, but it happens. Even people born elsewhere begin to feel this way after living in SoCal for a while.
Yesterday, that the infamous 4×4 lunch, I even talked about the joy of climbing up the ladder in the rain to clear the leaves from the rain gutter.
Today I had the pleasure of actually doing it. Much to Michele’s chagrin, I climbed up the ladder in my good raincoat and tossed the leaves blocking the drain onto the lawn. The satisfying woosh sound told me it was going to be a good day.
Work was OK. My meeting load was at a minimum and I was able to actually get some work done. I had a good trip at lunch to the electronics store and then to Poquito Mas.
The book I’m reading,
Declare, is really getting going. After 200 pages of Ludlum style spy tradecraft, the magic side of the story is kicking in. It’s cool stuff. I’d say more, but that might ruin it.

Declare
Cool graphic from Amazon, eh?

4×4

Today after a trip to Ikea on the lunch hour, Brad, Chris, Pat and I stopped at In ‘n Out Burger for lunch. In my last two visits, I have consumed 3×3 burgers. At the suggestion of Brad & Chris, I tried a 4×4. That’s a burger with 4 patties and 4 slices of cheese. in ‘in Out will make them as big as you want. Brad and Chris tried the 3x3s and were also surprised how easy it was to eat those.
Amazingly, the burger went down smoothly. The 5×5 seems easily doable.
Where will the madness end?

Gotta get back in my groove

OK, it’s been a rough couple days, but it’s time to update ye olde weblog.
The Election: What can I say that hasn’t been said. I’m disappointed. I’m frustrated. Others have written good things about the effects of this election so I won’t go over those points here. It simply sucks…
Today I was trying to figure out why I had the sinking feeling in my gut. The reality is that as a highly paid white married man with children, the direct effects of the GOP control of government won’t target me or my family. I’m the kind of person they want happy. I thought to myself, “Why do I care about this so much?” “Why can’t I just let this go? I’ll never need an abortion or Medicaid, or hopefully Social Security.”
Then the answer came to me. It’s not that I disagree so much with the ideas. I do disagree, but not to dramatic levels. The real issue is that the Republicans appear to me to always, ALWAYS, lying about the real reasons behind their policies.
It’s the thought that our government is run by a group that surrounds themselves in deception and duplicity that fills me with dread.
They are lying about the reason to invade Iraq.
They are lying about the environment.
They are lying about privatizing Social Security.
They are lying about the Patriot Act.
They are lying about tax cuts and the economy.
They are lying about widespread corporate fraud.
They are lying about role of religion in government.
They are lying about the War on Drugs.
They are lying about EVERYTHING.
If they simply told the truth behind what they were doing to the public, I might not feel as if the wool was pulled over the country’s eyes. My fear is that the Republicans have just run an elaborate con game on the country and the country is to oblivious to realize this.
After I expressed my loathing of Bush & the GOP to a Republican friend, he told me, “Now you know how I felt for 8 years when Clinton was President.” Payback is a bitch.
My brother and many others are pissed at their fellow American citizens for not voting. Personally, I wish every citizen did vote, I don’t think we can lay the results of the election at their feet. People have the right to not use their rights if they want.
Enough of the political talk. It’s not my strong suit. I lost $40 betting on the election. I need to stick to the things I know to get my mind and body back in good shape.
In an all too common “wow, it’s a small world” occurance, Styrofoamkitty was reading my weblog and saw my South Pasadena t-shirt. Long term Cruft readers know that I live in the tiny town of South Pasadena, surrounded on all sides by the behemoth cities of LA, Pasadena, and Alhambra. It seems that Styrofoamkitty used to live in So. Pas. during her high school years. Currently she lives somewhere near DC in my brothers group of DC bloggers.
She mentioned the street address of her old house and it’s on my way to work.
Here’s her old house:

It’s a tiny, itsy-bitsy world with the net tying us together.
The Gaming Front:
I’ve been playing Battlefield 1942 and the RtCW mod Wild West. I enjoy them both greatly, and they help get me into an alpha state in my mind. The relaxation I get from gaming helps me stay sane. Sounds strange, but it’s true.
The blood patch for Battlefield 1942 makes a big difference in gameplay. I’m hoping they make it part of the next game patch.
Here are a couple funny links I saw on Metafilter that you might enjoy:
Anakin’s Switch
Dems Strategy Working
Michele is home from the last of six quilt shows this year. I am happy to have her home for a while. Once again I get to enjoy being in the study with her, me on my computer, her making art (currently making beaded necklaces), and the both of us listening to Loveline on the radio. If only I could get her to update her weblog.
Speaking of weblogs, I was reading Anita Rowland’s weblog and saw this post about a public weblog discussion. Too bad it’s in Seattle.
I was reading SeaDoc’s weblog and saw a cool link to screen shots from Longhorn, the post-XP operating system from Microsoft.
Lastly, one good thing that came out of my lunch meeting was hearing about starsinrehab.com. I think there is no limit to the details of celebrity life that America wants to know about.
OK, time to play some BF1942.

It’s gunna be a long night

The Halloween candy finally caught up with my 6 year old, Zoe. About 30 minutes before bed, she complains about an upset stomach.
15 mintues later, she throws up a blue candy/dinner mixture. My mother-in-law is in town, so the eating rules have disappeared.
She says she feels better and climbs into bed. An hour later I hear a noise from her room. She’s on her hands & knees puking on the bed. I clean her up, toss her into my bed, pull off the sheets, put on new sheets, put her back in bed and start a load of laundry.
A couple hours later, I hear her again. She’s puking into the trash basket next to her bed. Still a bit of blue in the puke. Clean her up, clean up the the trash can, etc. She drinks a little water.
An hour later, she walks out of the bathroom and proceeds to puke up the water into the toliet while I hold her hair out of her face. She rinses out her mouth, but I don’t let her drink any more water.
It’s not even 1AM yet. It’s gunna be a long night…
Did I mention that my wife was out of town? 🙂

Success

I have broken the great conspiracy!

After visiting the fifth store of the day looking for Diet Vanilla COke, I finally found it at Ralph’s hidden behind the Diet Coke w/ Lemon.
Is it all I hoped it would be? Yes.
The kids are asleep in bed. Time for me to go play BF1942. Later…