You may remember that I forecast that I wouldn't be able to keep this thing going for more than three months. Now into its sixth month I have to say it's been fun, but it's been fun, but I just don't have the will anymore. It's gotten to be a political minefield and not worth the trouble. Our cult leader once pulled me up in front of the congregation and said God told him I had been blessed with a keen ability to see and speak the truth. He may have been right and if he was, I'd have to say it's more of a curse than a blessing. So since I don't want to be less than truthful or constantly look over my shoulder, I'm puttin' her to bed.
Thanks for your support over the months, dear reader.
Good night. Good luck.
Saint Fiacre
Sunday, August 27, 2006
Monday, August 21, 2006
Once Upon A Time There Were Three Beautiful Girls Who Went To The Police Academy
In our house we have back-to-school season. All three of the gals start their various school activities in a stagger - first SGK last Wednesday, then Self yesterday and YHWH on Thursday.
The first step, of course, was the annual school supply odyssey. Mid-July of every year the big box retailers close out the flip-flops and inflatables and concentrate all the school supplies for one stop shopping. At least that's the theory. There's always one specific item you can never find. Sometimes they forget to put the kleenex over there, or if they did put it there, they have a bundle of three 150 count, but you're supposed to get two 225s. Or they only have the .5 oz glue stick, but you're supposed to get the 1 oz. A sane and rational person would conclude that you could get two 100s of something instead of a 200, but that person has obviously never spied the look of anxiety in their child's eyes as thoughts of being the only kid in class who brought undersized gluesticks race through their minds projecting the year-long horror of seeing their name Sharpied on the tubes lying unused at the bottom of the community supply cache to be opened only in case of an emergency.
The other part of Supply Day is the ritual selection of the backpack and lunchpail. I myself looked forward to selecting a new lunchpail (never lunchbox by the way) every August almost more than I anticipated my birthday. I lunched in the Aladdin era, just after the introduction of plastic Thermoses to replace the glass-innard ones, but before those stupid soft puffy plastic ones they have now. The ones I remember were GI Joe, Six Million Dollar Man, Charlie's Angels (rowwwrrr), Land of the Giants, and in 1977 I got one that had all the NFL helmets on it - AFC on one side, NFC on the other. It was the bane of my year, though, because the Seattle Seahawks and Tampa Bay Buccaneers had switched leagues that season and my lunchpail did not reflect that. It drove me crazy. I must post about the reason I only ever took my lunch to school and avoided the cafeteria. Anyway, I was sure the Killer would take forever, but she gravitated immediately to her new backpack. There was no other backpack for her. This was it. She was sure. She was even willing to shun Hello Kitty, Bratz and Barbie lunchpail and get a generic one so that it would match her backpack. Here it is:
That is so SGK.
So, Super Giant Killer started last week on half days. Her sister had the same teacher SGK is getting this year. The Self was miserable with Ms. Legend as a teacher and said she was mean and grabbed kids by the neck or yelled at them for no reason. I'm not positive, but I think I remember Tex's eldest had the same experience. So, I didn't want to poison the well, but I tried to prepare SGK a little bit:
"Now, your new teacher is very serious, but if you behave and do your work, there won't be any problems."
She shrugged her shoulders and said, "I heard she was mean, but I can handle you, Dad, so I know I can handle her! In fact, you and Ms. Legend make a much better couple. So, if Mom can find a cute guy, you can be with Ms. Legend." She basically called me mean and ugly in the same sentence.
So on the first day, I told her if she jumped up and got dressed I would take her to Dunkin Donuts for breakfast. Actually, what happened was a week or so before her first day, YHWH and I worked out the transportation issues and since YHWH was not back to work yet, she was going to take SGK to school. Then at bedtime the night before, YHWH says, in front the Killer:
"Don't you wish you could take her to school on her first day?"
I felt the rush of rush of emotion flow through me like syrup and cola at a soda fountain - Bad Dad Cola and Backstabbing Wife Strangle Syrup.
"Well, maybe if I you had told me earlier I could've made arrangements at work to be late..."
"You've known when her first day is for months..."
I really wanted to blaspheme the Holy Ghost and invoke half of the seven words, but instead I was inspired (maybe by the Holy Ghost) to reply, "Well, since you probably won't be ready to leave on time, I thought I would take her to Dunkin Donuts before school to celebrate! How 'bout that Killer? Huh? A little Double-D to kick off the year?!"
She selected a Marble Frosted and we got YHWH a giant iced mocha (see, I'm forgiving). On the way back the Killer said, "I think they made a typo on the menu. It should be maple frosted."
She seems to be loving school so far but she misses her best friend from last year (Gouldie's niece) who didn't end up in her class.
Soon, I will relay the first day of High School. You won't want to miss it. I wish I had.
The first step, of course, was the annual school supply odyssey. Mid-July of every year the big box retailers close out the flip-flops and inflatables and concentrate all the school supplies for one stop shopping. At least that's the theory. There's always one specific item you can never find. Sometimes they forget to put the kleenex over there, or if they did put it there, they have a bundle of three 150 count, but you're supposed to get two 225s. Or they only have the .5 oz glue stick, but you're supposed to get the 1 oz. A sane and rational person would conclude that you could get two 100s of something instead of a 200, but that person has obviously never spied the look of anxiety in their child's eyes as thoughts of being the only kid in class who brought undersized gluesticks race through their minds projecting the year-long horror of seeing their name Sharpied on the tubes lying unused at the bottom of the community supply cache to be opened only in case of an emergency.
The other part of Supply Day is the ritual selection of the backpack and lunchpail. I myself looked forward to selecting a new lunchpail (never lunchbox by the way) every August almost more than I anticipated my birthday. I lunched in the Aladdin era, just after the introduction of plastic Thermoses to replace the glass-innard ones, but before those stupid soft puffy plastic ones they have now. The ones I remember were GI Joe, Six Million Dollar Man, Charlie's Angels (rowwwrrr), Land of the Giants, and in 1977 I got one that had all the NFL helmets on it - AFC on one side, NFC on the other. It was the bane of my year, though, because the Seattle Seahawks and Tampa Bay Buccaneers had switched leagues that season and my lunchpail did not reflect that. It drove me crazy. I must post about the reason I only ever took my lunch to school and avoided the cafeteria. Anyway, I was sure the Killer would take forever, but she gravitated immediately to her new backpack. There was no other backpack for her. This was it. She was sure. She was even willing to shun Hello Kitty, Bratz and Barbie lunchpail and get a generic one so that it would match her backpack. Here it is:
That is so SGK.
So, Super Giant Killer started last week on half days. Her sister had the same teacher SGK is getting this year. The Self was miserable with Ms. Legend as a teacher and said she was mean and grabbed kids by the neck or yelled at them for no reason. I'm not positive, but I think I remember Tex's eldest had the same experience. So, I didn't want to poison the well, but I tried to prepare SGK a little bit:
"Now, your new teacher is very serious, but if you behave and do your work, there won't be any problems."
She shrugged her shoulders and said, "I heard she was mean, but I can handle you, Dad, so I know I can handle her! In fact, you and Ms. Legend make a much better couple. So, if Mom can find a cute guy, you can be with Ms. Legend." She basically called me mean and ugly in the same sentence.
So on the first day, I told her if she jumped up and got dressed I would take her to Dunkin Donuts for breakfast. Actually, what happened was a week or so before her first day, YHWH and I worked out the transportation issues and since YHWH was not back to work yet, she was going to take SGK to school. Then at bedtime the night before, YHWH says, in front the Killer:
"Don't you wish you could take her to school on her first day?"
I felt the rush of rush of emotion flow through me like syrup and cola at a soda fountain - Bad Dad Cola and Backstabbing Wife Strangle Syrup.
"Well, maybe if I you had told me earlier I could've made arrangements at work to be late..."
"You've known when her first day is for months..."
I really wanted to blaspheme the Holy Ghost and invoke half of the seven words, but instead I was inspired (maybe by the Holy Ghost) to reply, "Well, since you probably won't be ready to leave on time, I thought I would take her to Dunkin Donuts before school to celebrate! How 'bout that Killer? Huh? A little Double-D to kick off the year?!"
She selected a Marble Frosted and we got YHWH a giant iced mocha (see, I'm forgiving). On the way back the Killer said, "I think they made a typo on the menu. It should be maple frosted."
She seems to be loving school so far but she misses her best friend from last year (Gouldie's niece) who didn't end up in her class.
Soon, I will relay the first day of High School. You won't want to miss it. I wish I had.
Saturday, August 05, 2006
ILL Be Seeing You
Something weird happened to my template. I'd like to think I was the target of some sophisticated hacker bent on rescuing the world from my scritto owing to the dangerous ideas but I'm sure it was only the result of my hitting the wrong button or something. I got tired of trying to keep up the other stuff anyway.
I just finished Soccer in Sun and Shadow by Eduardo Galeano which was loaned to me by DOOL who borrowed it from TCCL on ILL. By the way, any book which adheres to the long tail of readership in the state of Oklahoma is undoubtedly held at TCCL. I'm not sure where they keep all their books - probably some Cold War era bunker under the Sun refinery in West Tulsa or something. I can't tell you how many times we don't have some awesome book and I'll check WorldCat to ILL it for someone and damned if it's not at TCCL. Tex used to get mad when we'd say anything about it, but it is true. Anyway, this book - eh, wasn't so great. I usually don't judge books that have been translated too harshly because it is technically out of the author's hands once it gets translated. It mainly consisted of dozens of half- or one-page dissertations from the mind of Galeano on soccer-related topics. The outcome was that in reading it I kind of felt like I'd picked up Marcel Proust hitchhiking on a highway outside of Moscow just after he'd had his morning pot of espresso and we faced an eight hour drive to St. Petersburg on ice with no brakes, half a tank of gas, no radio, and he really, really liked soccer.
I'm starting Mirth of A Nation to-nite.
I just finished Soccer in Sun and Shadow by Eduardo Galeano which was loaned to me by DOOL who borrowed it from TCCL on ILL. By the way, any book which adheres to the long tail of readership in the state of Oklahoma is undoubtedly held at TCCL. I'm not sure where they keep all their books - probably some Cold War era bunker under the Sun refinery in West Tulsa or something. I can't tell you how many times we don't have some awesome book and I'll check WorldCat to ILL it for someone and damned if it's not at TCCL. Tex used to get mad when we'd say anything about it, but it is true. Anyway, this book - eh, wasn't so great. I usually don't judge books that have been translated too harshly because it is technically out of the author's hands once it gets translated. It mainly consisted of dozens of half- or one-page dissertations from the mind of Galeano on soccer-related topics. The outcome was that in reading it I kind of felt like I'd picked up Marcel Proust hitchhiking on a highway outside of Moscow just after he'd had his morning pot of espresso and we faced an eight hour drive to St. Petersburg on ice with no brakes, half a tank of gas, no radio, and he really, really liked soccer.
I'm starting Mirth of A Nation to-nite.
Friday, August 04, 2006
I'm Hip About Time
Rummy came after me yesterday with both barrels. You'll remember I have whined not once, but twice about people asking their own questions. Well yesterday, as Senator Clinton squared off with the King of the Anti-Socratics in a hearing, he went off a on a classic one minute and thirty second question and answer session - with himself! So when the news channels needed a soundbite all they needed was that! Brilliant! Check out the video. You can skip to 8:30 into the video to hear him go off.
I had the coolest thing happen yesterday. This elderly woman - about 75ish, not the greatest health, dressed like a churchlady - asked me for travel books for South America. I took her to the 918s and asked her my customary, "Do these seem like the kind of books you're looking for?" She said yes and then I said, "Y'know there're some nice travelogues on the other side of this range I could show you. I love reading those before taking a trip." And she said, "Oooh. Right on!" - like a caricature in a parody of Easy Rider. I showed them to her and then walked away smiling - first at the thought of a septagenarian wanting to go trekking around South America and then at the thought of hippies being that old. I just never thought that would happen.
Took SGK to Cactus Jack's today. She did pretty well for her age. 190 tickets. Here is the material assessment of what I got for my $10 (I'm not going to go all VISA and say "Afternoon kicking it with daughter - priceless," cause I can do that for free):
1 Fortune telling fish
1 Alien head glow-in-the-dark ring
2 Orange glow-in-the-dark bracelets
1 Amoeba bracelet
1 2" tall dinosaur
2 Human-shaped eraser
1 Fossil-making press
1 Sticky dart
252 Dollars in fake cash
I had the coolest thing happen yesterday. This elderly woman - about 75ish, not the greatest health, dressed like a churchlady - asked me for travel books for South America. I took her to the 918s and asked her my customary, "Do these seem like the kind of books you're looking for?" She said yes and then I said, "Y'know there're some nice travelogues on the other side of this range I could show you. I love reading those before taking a trip." And she said, "Oooh. Right on!" - like a caricature in a parody of Easy Rider. I showed them to her and then walked away smiling - first at the thought of a septagenarian wanting to go trekking around South America and then at the thought of hippies being that old. I just never thought that would happen.
Took SGK to Cactus Jack's today. She did pretty well for her age. 190 tickets. Here is the material assessment of what I got for my $10 (I'm not going to go all VISA and say "Afternoon kicking it with daughter - priceless," cause I can do that for free):
1 Fortune telling fish
1 Alien head glow-in-the-dark ring
2 Orange glow-in-the-dark bracelets
1 Amoeba bracelet
1 2" tall dinosaur
2 Human-shaped eraser
1 Fossil-making press
1 Sticky dart
252 Dollars in fake cash
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