Paint Horse

We’re talking about getting our house painted. Actually, are you allowed to say “talking about” if you’ve put down a deposit? Probably not.

So, we’re going to get our house painted. Deep in the summertime, because we hate people who do physical labor. Jessica decided to get a paint catalog and went with Frazee because, you know, they have good paint. I suppose, they do anyway. I’ve seen ads.

We picked a few colors we liked, but I noticed something odd. Whoever named these paints either a) had a thing for race horses; b) received a memo that read, “Send horse paint names” instead of “Send house paint names”; or c) does a lot of work near the track and absorbs things through some sort of name osmosis. Nomenmosis?

Anyway, here are a few examples of the paint names. You’ll be surprised at how well they work, both as horse names and as a perfect description of the color itself.

Well-Appointed
Spontaneity
Adaptable
The Good Life
Effortless
Attention to Detail
Air of Distinction
Vivacious
Burnished Sage

Okay, that last one is pushing it, but you get the idea. And do you see how immediately think of a kind of navy blue when you hear “The Good Life”? No? I told you that you’d be surprised how well they work.

In completely unrelated news, my Outlook calendar informed me today that I was 21,326 weeks overdue for a haircut appointment. This is about 410 years. Apparently I made this appointment in 1600. This may be a sign that my computer is totally messed up, but it is also completely awesome.

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Stickery Situations

Abigail enjoys stickers quite a bit. In particular, she enjoys putting stickers on people. Actually, she would prefer to put most of her stickers on pets, but that often proves to be more trouble than it’s worth.

On a recent trip, she particularly wanted to put stickers on Hannah and Janna, the twins from across the street. Since we were in the car at the time, she had to resort to putting stickers on me. Given that she was already slumming it, she had to have some standards – the stickers could only be placed on my t-shirt, not my sweatshirt. I was already well buckled in, so I just leaned over and let her put a few stars and a butterfly on the strip of blue t-shirt that stuck out from the very top of my sweatshirt.

This is why I had a conversation with a painting contractor about potential work on the house with a neck full of stars and butterfly.

I actually frequently find stickers I was unaware of on my clothes, even after they’ve been washed. It’s possible there’s some random sticker transfer going on, but I think Abigail can be really stealthy about it. When she’s in the zone, her mind fully on her task, she can give the pets a pretty good stickering. On Mother’s Day, my goal was to have her decorate a card with stickers for her waiting mother. Then Henry walked by and Abigail managed to slap a purple heart on his behind (Before there’s any swift-boating, he didn’t earn it). Once she realized Henry was a potential sticker target, the card was essentially finished.

Maggie is an easier target, and often wanders the house with a star or smiley face emblazoned somewhere on her fur. Actually, tail taping has been a popular move of late. Basically anything that can be stuck can end up on Maggie. It’s a pretty serious dogupational hazard.

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Restronauts

I’m tired and I don’t have much to say, but I want to mention Restronauts. Technically, this is what Abigail calls a restaurant. However, I am now going to start using this to describe myself – or any other diner – who is actually eating at a restaurant.

At one time or another, we’re all Restronauts.

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Ocean Playtime

Video! Of my daughter! Playing in the ocean! Warning!

Phew, now that we’ve gotten that out of the way, I’d like to discuss the real message of this post: How to keep your blog traffic up if you’re going to be on the road for a few days.

Step 1: take video of your two-year-old daughter playing in the ocean.

Step 2: Post this on your blog.

That’s about it.

PS – Okay, that’s not really it. I love that Abigail is learning that questions have implications. See, the last 1o seconds or so of the video.

PPS – I also love that she was repeating parts of the Bengal story I told her back to herself after I turned out the lights. That was truly awesome.

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Aesthetic Preferences

Jessica and I were having a debate this morning. It was based, initially anyway, on our limited artistic abilities, particularly in the medium of crayon-and-placemat mixed media design. I would like your help to resolve the primary question that arose over the course of discussing the stylistic merits of our opposing approaches.

Which is better, having jagged little hands, or hands with three fingers?

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Doctor Physics

For those of you who like you physics Doctor Who’d up, have I got a post for you. A physicist – an actual one – wrote a paper called, “A mildly relativistic radio jet from the normal Type Ic Supernova 2007gr.”

While this sounds like an excellent story in and of itself, she decided to write it up as a Doctor Who story. Seriously. Check it out.


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Blogging the Parliament (reverse temporal)

6:05 pm – The power just went out at last. I can smell the fires from downtown already, the wind blowing it in through the shattered remains of the front door. Alex shattered it when he finally succumbed to madness and ran out into the night, screaming for mercy from whatever demons now torment his mind from the inside. I sit in the darkness, staring at the now blank screen of the television, still haunted by the images from the English countryside, by the plague unleashed by the Time Dinos, in their mad, headlong rush toward power at any cost.

5:45 pm – I’m not sure what happened. Apparently I’ve been out for a while. I just don’t know. I woke up to blinding light. Tears streaming down my face, I leapt to my feet, trying to blink away my blindness. I can hear Alex upstairs. It sounds like he’s throwing furniture out the window, but I can’t be sure. On the television, I can see the massive explosions blossoming in Scotland. I assume that’s the source of the light. Or it could be the time vortex, maybe it’s starting to break my mind as well. Maybe it will bring us all down in the end. The image on the screen is already starting to flicker.

5:04 pm – It’s starting to feel like the vortex is staring to have an effect, just like the television commentator’s behavior seemed to suggest. Alex has been making grunting noises and keeps pounding on his chest in an exaggerated, some might say, gorilla-like fashion. Perhaps we were wrong about the Time Dino strategy. Maybe they aren’t looking to win Parliament at all. Maybe they want to destroy the entirety of mammalian society.

4:46 pm – The BBC commentator just took out the Liberal Democrat commentator with a wicked haymaker and seems to be … well, it’s unclear what he’s doing back there with the Conservative commentator, but it sounds like a good time all around. The Time Vortex keeps getting bigger. They’ll have this worked out, right? I mean, they’re British.

4:22 pm – Apparently the glowing orb is actually a time vortex! The experts are saying that when humans stand in close proximity to something like that would drive them insane. I’m not sure how they would know something like that. They’re saying that the effect will start in England, but will spread quickly to the rest of the world. These things really do always start in England.

4:05 pm – It does seem like the original exit polls are holding. The Time Dinos just won’t win many seats in this election. In fact, I don’t think they’ll win any. And if they do, it’s unclear what effect the Sunderland rampage would have on the legality of their party. They’re speculating now that if the polls had been held open in Sheffield than that might have helped the Time Dinos, radically changing the mood in their camp. I’m also wondering if the angry dino demographic will limit themselves to physical violence or if they’ll resort to some of their time based powers. In totally separate news, the BBC is reporting some strange behavior is central London, near that strange glowing orb. Apparently people seem to be going crazy. Could it be excited conservatives? Despondent labour fans?

3:52 pm – The BBC is reporting a strange glowing orb in downtown London. There’s not much more info than that yet, but it sounds like the glowing area is vaguely dinosaur shaped.

3:42 pm – The Conservatives just barely beat out the Time Dinos for Sunderland Central. I was a little worried that this one might be a difficult one, since the Time Dino here is a huge Tyrannosaur. Still, the vote count is in and he’s done little more than offer a growl. They’re just finalizing the winner and … Oh my god! The Tyrannosaur just chomped the newly elected conservative MP! After throwing what was left of him into the crowd he’s going after the rest of the podium. It looks like pandemonium in Sunderland. This isn’t going to be good for the Reptilian Rights movement.

3:28 pm – Labour holds Washington and we get our first carnivore of the night. Admittedly, it’s just a little raptor who stands near the podium. He picked up a few more votes – 186 in this case – but the only indication of his mood is a quick twitching of his tail and a clacking of his claws. I think he might see a mouse in the audience somewhere.

2:54 pm – It looks like it a might be a quiet night. As the results come in for Houghton and Sunderland South and Labour holds the seat comfortably, the Time Dinos don’t seem to be causing much trouble. The Stegasaur at the end of the platform simply hangs his head and lets out a long stuttering moan when it hears its count of 45 votes. But he’s an omnivore, spiky tail notwithstanding. We’ll have to see what happens when we get to seat with a hungry meat eater.

2:15 pm – I’m just getting here, a little late. It looks like the polls show that the Conservatives are going to win the day, if not the majority if Parliament. Oddly, it shows the Liberal Democrats losing a few seats. Maybe that’s the effect of the Time Dinos, who have been lumped in with the “Other” category, at least on the BBC. ITV seems to have a few interesting Dino themed graphics, but they still don’t seemed overly concerned. I’m wondering if the swing away from the Lib Dems is due to urban hipsters thinking a dinosaur MP is just cool.

(For slightly more accurate liveblogging …)

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Reading Boneshaker

Do you like zombies? Do you like your zombies historical? How about alternative historical? Say, around the civil war-era, if it had lasted twenty years. Except you’re in Seattle.

If that sort of thing floats your boat, then Cherie Priest’s Boneshaker is going to be a real treat for you. If it doesn’t … well then this probably isn’t going to be a very interesting review. Because that kind of sums it up.

I really loved the promise of Boneshaker. The first few chapters draw the picture of the city without telling you to much. Priest let’s the world unfold slowly, chapter by chapter. Even the time frame of the story, and the way she’s played with the timeline, aren’t apparent for quite a while. These opening sequences are beautifully written as she explores the characters and the world they inhabit. Priest leaves you entranced by the world she’s creating and nervous about the promised horrors to come.

However, it doesn’t always quite hold up.

Despite the horror setting, there were repeated points when I got a seriously Young Adult Fiction vibe from Boneshaker. That may have been because one of the protagonists is a teenage boy. Perhaps my old age just doesn’t allow me to relate to them anymore.

Priest’s descriptions are often packed with details that actually left me more confused than informed. The action sequences in particular are best skimmed, getting a feel for the chaos without reading the messy detail.

There are also several characters that seem unnecessary and dialogue in desperate need of an edit. It may be the way people talk, but it isn’t the way we want to read people talking.

Priest also chose to center much of the story around a family drama that I found boring. I didn’t care whether one of the characters was an imposter or not, and yet as the story progresses, that becomes almost the only focus of the story. There were other fascinating aspects of the family history that Priest chose to leave vague or unexplored, and I think that’s a shame, as well.

However, in the end, the story swings back onto a more interesting thread, which saves the novel. And there are sections that are just beautifully written. While there are sections in the middle that lack polish and direction, the novel is a very quick read with a fascinating premise. It’s far from perfect, but despite its faults, Boneshaker is a book well worth reading.

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Hopping on Moonlight

On the way back from Alex and Jessica‘s Kentucky Derby party, we decided to stop at the beach. Well, I say we decided, but in fact, Abigail demanded that she be allowed to see ocean waves the entire drive back. We took the coast highway for exactly this reason. However, just looking at ocean waves (really, this is one of her favorite terms) was insufficient. She needed to be on the shoreline.

So we stopped at Moonlight Beach in Encinitas, the same hot spot where she played with many a crampa and cramma.

I’m pretty tired and I don’t have much to say today, so I’m going to just give you a few pictures and let these tell the story. There was splashing and dancing and general joyfulness. I hope they brighten your morning/day/otherwise dreary existence.

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Dinosaur Mask

I frequently look at my blog stats to see who is looking at what and where people are coming from. Apparently today someone found my blog by searching for “how to make a dinosaur mask step by step”. I searched for that myself on google and didn’t find it in the first 10 pages, so that’s some dedicated searching right there.

OR it could be some kind of ploy by the Time Dinos. It’s about time for them to make a move, if they’re going to have any impact on the parliamentary election a week from now.

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