Blogolalia

Wednesday, June 25, 2008

I’m starting to get excited about our California vacation next month. The week is shaping up nicely, with enough touristy things and visits with people to keep us happy and busy. Here’s how things are looking so far:

Saturday: Travel Day - it’ll be a wash even though we’re supposed to land at Burbank airport at about noon PST. We figure we’ll all be tired enough to want to just get to Beau’s uncle’s house (not far from Santa Barbara) to relax.

Sunday: We plan to go to church with Beau’s uncle in the morning. Then we’ll head back south to Simi Valley to try to meet up with CalTechGirl and her husband to tour the Reagan Presidential Library and then have dinner together if Jesse’s mood will allow it. Then back to Beau’s uncle for the night.

Monday: We’ll make the trip north to “home” with a stop at Solvang on the way. We’ll check into our hotel room and then probably go spend some time with Beau’s parents or other family that may be in town already.

Tuesday: Chill out with Beau’s parents for the day. Visit Morro Bay and surrounding scenic areas maybe. This is the night we have the dessert with family friends who want to meet me and Jesse. I think Beau’s brother and sister (and maybe their families) will be there, too.

Wednesday: Tour Cannery Row and the Aquarium in Monterey during the day and end with dinner with Ith. I owe Ith an email to confirm the date and plans.

Thursday: Tour Hearst Castle and then have dinner with our friend Barb. We owe an email to Barb to confirm the date/plans, too. Beau has known Barb for years. I have only known Barb via internet since I met and married Beau and I can’t wait to meet her in person!

Friday: The start of the family reunion. We have no clue of the specifics of the reunion weekend, so we’re keeping this day open to be available to Beau’s parents to help where we can.

Saturday: The reunion continues…all family all the time!

Sunday: We head back to the airport in Burbank for our red-eye flight home.

Should be a fun, nostalgic week for both of us. I’m looking forward to revisiting places that I haven’t seen since I lived in Monterey back in the early 1980s. Beau is looking forward to a visit with his parents and extended family. And I am looking forward to meeting the folks I have heard so much about and introducing them to one of the newest family members.

Tuesday, June 24, 2008

Based on two reviews I read just today (in addition to the others I’ve seen as well), I have removed The Happening from the viewing queue. What follows may contain spoilers.

First negative review was Jan’s:

The Happening feels like someone came up with a really great concept: “Hey, what if the plants decided to get rid of humans?” “Yeah, and people just started dying!” “Yeah!” And then they filmed that. Leaving out one little thing… what was the point?

Here’s a synopsis:
The wind blows.
People get confused.
People kill themselves.
The wind blows.
More dead bodies.
The wind blows some more.
More different and inventive ways for people to kill themselves.
Then it stops.
Or does it…
The End.

Don’t worry… there’s no spoiler here. The spoiler would be letting it slip that they forgot an ending for the movie. The unexpected surprise was that there was no more movie, when the credits rolled at just over 90 minutes.

Basically the same thing that Jared said, but he has the line that made me snort out loud in my office.

Stupid. Stupid stupid stupid.
This movie is not just bad. It is beyond bad. It is Ed Wood bad, only not entertainingly bad.
I want to set this movie on fire and pee on it.

Italics mine. So funny.

And sad. I like Shamaylan’s movies. I even gave Lady in the Water 3 stars for all of its flaws. I loved Signs and The Sixth Sense and count myself among others who consider Unbreakable to be his best.

But for him to get such awful reviews means I will not bother. Sad.

Watch me when the DVD comes out, though. I’ll find myself trying to rent it. You who saw it need to stop me, OK?

Two things that bug me in the blog world…

1. It bugs me when I go through my blogroll and discover that blogs that have not been updated are showing as updated merely because someone left a comment. A comment is not a true blog update, imho.

2. I’m becoming seriously anti-Twitter. Twittering is not blogging, imho. I don’t want to read your Twitter list. Pick one or the other.

Monday, June 23, 2008

What everyone needs ... instructions for How to Nap. Brilliant!

[via evangelical outpost]

Sunday, June 22, 2008

There is new video of the kid and the cat at WC. It is definitely boring for non-family, I think.

Wednesday, June 11, 2008

I won’t bore you with the details, but I discovered something about the comment page yesterday when I was poking around the template code and I thought I’d test my theory about it. It looks like I was able to fix the commenting problem. So I’ve turned off moderation and turned on the captcha again. After a test, it seems to be working now.

Please email me if you get an error message when attempting to comment (or if you need hints for some of the captcha questions).

Given that I can’t use the captcha for security against comment spam here until we figure out what’s wrong with the template code, I am considering requiring registration for commenters. I really don’t want to leave my comments open to spammers like they are now. So, my faithful readers, are you willing to register in order to comment? Please let me know if the for-now wide open comments.

[UPDATE]: With further thought, I may wait to implement the registration requirement until I see how long it take to get spammed. I was getting enough comment spam before the upgrade that it caused me to do the upgrade. So we’ll see if they come back now that things are a little more open to them.

But I’d still like your feedback on whether or not you’d tolerate having to register to leave a comment here, please.

[UPDATE 10:45am]: Just got hit by a spammer. Registration is being turned on immediately. I’m sorry to have to do it. I blame Algore, inventor of the internets.

[UPDATE 12:20pm]: Because nothing hard is ever easy, it seems that the registration thingy wasn’t asking for you to register. So I’ve turned that function off. Comments are now set for moderation, which means there will be a delay to your comment appearing until I release it. Supposedly.

Not that anyone is really trying to comment anyway, besides spammers. My blog has become exceedingly boring. I despair.

Tuesday, June 10, 2008

I turned comments back on but without the captcha requirement. We’ll see if that works or not.

In the meantime, go look at the pics of my kid I posted last week after our trip and talk to me over there, please.

This assumes you will be able to see this post in order to click the link. If I broke things again, then this is moot.

Tuesday, May 20, 2008

Dinner with the Sleepys was fun last night. Baby Josh is a sweetie and getting so big. Jesse slept through dinner, which was good. Then he woke up and amused us while he ate his dinner. And then we chilled out while Jesse roamed the living room, had a wonderful dessert of peanut butter brownies and coffee, and enjoyed good conversation.

Our dinner was very good - I think we all agreed that the chicken was delicious. It’s always a gamble to make something new for company, but as I told Beth, sometimes you read a recipe and you just know it’s going to be good. The Chicken with Green Curry Sauce is a winner. Since it is not my own recipe, I’ll let you go to the link to print it out for your own collection. I highly recommend it.

One thing I did that I think made it better than it might have been otherwise - I mixed the coconut milk, chilies, and spices together in the morning and put it in the frig to let the flavors meld before cooking. Also, I didn’t have cilantro on hand, so we didn’t have that garnish, but apart from the visual I don’t think it mattered. I’m not a fan of cilantro anyway. Next time I may use the hot madras curry powder that we have instead of the regular curry powder - or maybe half of each.

I made plain couscous and cooked plain old frozen peas. Beth asked what I did to the peas because she normally doesn’t like peas. I seasoned them when I put them in the pot and just covered them with water. Let the water come to a boil and then turned off the heat to let them finish cooking. I did spritz them with Smart Balance spray before serving. That’s it.

Beau went out to an Indian grocery to buy three kinds of flatbread - Nan, Chapati, and some other kind that I can’t remember the name. I am going to try to make my own next time though, since I found Manjula‘s YouTube tutorials. She’s awesome and makes it look super easy.

So today’s cooking tasks are underway in the crock pot, starting with the pulled chicken. Since I started with an entire bag of frozen chicken breasts, I am positive that it will take the full 8 hours (or more) to get it cooked fully. I’ll get home in time to shred it and then I’ll work on the other dishes for tomorrow’s luncheon.

Friday, May 16, 2008

My church is one of the satellite sites for the Willow Creek Leadership Summit every summer. Having attended two of those summits at Willow Creek, I can attest that they are great and I highly recommend them.

However, they are entirely mock-able as shown here.

Hilarious. I love the quote from Ike.

Wednesday, May 07, 2008

I’m proud to say that I have not read a single one of the 50 Best Cult Books.

[via chai llama]

Tuesday, May 06, 2008

I’ve read posts by Brant Hansen that I’ve seen linked at other blogs. He’s a funny writer with good insights into the Christian faith. His newest category addition is If Jesus Had a Blog and the first two posts are brilliant.

He just moved and this post sums up my apprehension about our newly pending move this summer.

Gilbert Meilander once wrote about moving.  He likened it, for the young, single person, to flitting about in a glider.  You want to go left?  You go left.  Want to dip?  You dip.  Wham.  That easy.

With a family?  It’s different.  More like commanding an aircraft carrier. You want to go left?  You signal about six months in advance, and begin a process that throws every hand on deck into upheaval.  More accurately, it’s like commanding an aircraft carrier to begin turning left, then losing your glasses, iPod, and underwear for a week.

I can’t find anything.

He’s been added to my blogroll.

Monday, April 28, 2008

I mentioned that I went to high school with Chris McCandless of Into the Wild fame (or infamy). My sister saw the movie and shares her thought on it here as well as some memories of McCandless and a picture of him from school, too.

Saturday, April 26, 2008

From Jaynee at Cootiehog.

The rules are:
The rules of the game get posted at the beginning.
Each player answers the questions about themselves.
At the end of the post, the player then tags 5-6 people and posts their names, then goes to their blogs and leaves them a comment, letting them know they’ve been tagged and asking them to read your blog.
Let the person who tagged you know when you’ve posted your answer.

1. What was I doing 10 years ago. I was in New Hampshire. In April 1998, I was probably preparing for the summer camp season and enjoying my second spring mud season in New England.

2. What are 5 things on my to-do list for today? 1) Work on special order, 2) pick up groceries for lunch at Beau’s Sis’s tomorrow, 3) go to church, 4) take a nap, 5) laundry.

3. Snacks I enjoy: chips/salsa, chocolate, chips/salsa

4. Things I would do if I was a billionaire. This is an unimaginable amount of money. There would be much tithing and giving to charity. I would set up trusts for family. I would buy a house. I would invest in small business ventures (think of my friend’s shop that closed because of a bad location but was fantastic). I would take lapidary and metalsmith classes. Beyond that I can’t think…

5. Three of my bad habits: procrastination, piling my clothes instead of putting them away, potty mouth

6. 5 Places I have lived: Washington, England, Virginia, California, New Hampshire

7. 5 Jobs I have had: retail customer service clerk, telemarketer, tech writer, executive secretary, budget analyst

8. 5 people I want to know more about: Anyone! Feel free to participate!

Friday, April 18, 2008

The following is graphic.

As caltechgirl said, “Wanna-Be murderer jihadists planting an IED without sufficient training, as captured by a US AC-130.”