true story

So we went to a soccer game last week and had a great time. Here's a funny story I forgot to tell about what happened afterwards....

Leaving the stadium we are driving through neighborhood streets that aren't so nice. Traffic is pretty heavy but we are moving. Amanda, Sergey and I are having a good time chatting when we happen upon a little boy (10-12 maybe) dancing on the sidewalk shouting at the cars. I shout out the car window at him:

"IT'S PEANUT BUTTER JELLY TIME!!"

I was laughing. Amanda rolled her eyes and I think Sergey chuckled.

But that's not the funny part! Still stuck in traffic, we come up to an intersection where we don't have to stop but the cross traffic has a stop sign does. We go through the intersection bumper to bumper as a local motors her way up towards us. I hear the (I'm guessing here) Mom say to the son "No, we can't do that, tomorr' you have to go to Church." She then passes us and someone in the intersection pulls out and startles her and I hear her say "You M*TH*RF*CK*R!!".

Whenever I hear her words run through my head it doesn't stop being funny...

"No, we can't do that, tomorr' you have to go to Church............You M*TH*RF*CK*R!!"

what color is your thumb?

You aren't going to believe this crap. So we keep having visitors over to our house and we are overjoyed at the gobs of green goodness growing in our garden, however, there has been a slight hiccup. I've realized that my green and banana peppers have been looking a little funny. By 'funny', I mean, the seeds that I planted weren't growing up to look like the starter pepper we put in next to our tomatos.

I keep holding my breath thinking that one day they'll match up or suddenly they'll sprout a little pepper and everything will be fine and I can rest assured that I am indeed growing peppers. So we have a heavy rain and now the peppers have fallen over and are now growing along the ground. What the deuce?!

So the in-laws visit over the weekend and my MIL mentions that those peppers look like pumpkins. Dude, no, I distinctly remember picking up bell and banana pepper seeds from Ace. Then we have some friends over for s'mores saturday night and I mock my MIL's comment about them being pumpkin vines. Dude, no. I can see the package of seeds in my head. Not pumpkin!

So this morning over breakfast it dawns on Amanda that last year when we carved pumpkins we threw the insides into the compost pile. Months go by and I use my compost pile to fertilize my new garden. Aaaaaah ha!

Anybody know a pumpkin salsa recipe?

So now I have 9 tomato plants, 1 pepper, and 10 pumpkin vines.

Angels and Demons

I just finished Angels and Demons by Dan Brown. All I can say is, wow, I didn't see that one coming! I thought it was a pretty good book, but it seemed quite predictable through the middle of the book.

Here are some of my thoughts floating around in my head after reading it:
1. I wish I knew more about art. I sure would like to make time to read more about Michelangelo and DaVinci and Bernoulli. Eventually I'll pick up something on art and read it...maybe.

2. I don't understand the hub-bub surrounding Dan Brown's books. Specifically, why there was such bad press about this book and the DaVinci Code. I'm Catholic and these books don't offend me. If anything, they've increased my faith and make me want to learn more about Catholicism.
Did I tell you, that when we lived in The 'Nati (when The DaVinci Code came out) we went to Mass one weekend and the priest had a visit priest give a homily touting his book "100 and 1 things wrong with The DaVinci Code"? I don't know if that was the specific title, but it was the biggest waste of a homily. I was so angry and irritated that they would waste time over a work of FICTION! What's next? JK Rowling the Atheist?! Good grief. Is their faith so weak that they can't handle a work of fiction? Or is my faith so weak that I fail to understand how and when I should defend my faith? No clue what the right answer there is.

3. Better than Angels and Demons, better than The DaVinci Code, is another book by Dan Brown called Digital Fortress. I liked the characters better and I liked the adventure better. The author spent more time writing from the bad guys perspective which I find much more entertaining. Lately I've been entertained more by cunning deceitfulness than charming heroics.

woot!

I bought my very own mp3 player off of woot.com. They were having a woot off last week and I picked up a 2 GB SanDisk player for 35 buck including shipping. Online the cheapest I've seen have been 60 bucks, so I think it's quite a deal. So now the next time I fly for work I don't have to suffer through the music that they play.

One downside of it was that it was a refurbished model (hence the cheapness), so it came with no manuals or software, so I had to spend about an hour and a half how to make it work. A quick firmware update and some additional finagling and I'm in business!

And it's the weekend and I don't have to work!

And we are going to our first MLS game tomorrow!

Honey did list

I built a flower box for the wife. X helped me a little.

It is a plywood box with cedar legs and cedar siding. It was supposed to be cedar shingles on the sides, but the lumberyard I went to didn't have the shingles. This is before I put the top on.



And this is the completed box.



The hardest part was cutting the trim pieces for the top. I was supposed to put a beveled edge on it, but I wasn't going to try that with a circular saw. If I only had a table saw.... And I nearly went bonkers trying to get the 45 degree angles cut right. I knew that was going to be a pain so I skipped the beveling. Maybe I should get a miter box. I was supposed to join the top trim pieces together by routering out a hole and using glue and biscuits, but I don't have a router so it was good old hammer, nails and glue. I put a coat of stain on it and I'll put another on there tomorrow and call it done.

This cost probably 70 dollars in material (cedar is expensive!) and 7 hours of labor. I think it turned out pretty good for my first try and the wife looooves it, so it did turn out very well.

garden

The first 'maters of the season.

riddle me this, Batman

It feels nice that we are finally getting this house broken in. I think I'm getting used to living here and it feels like everything fits. Little by little we add in our own touches and make it better than we found it.

So one of the new touches that is on my honey-do list is to install ceiling fans in Xander's room and the spare room. In town there is a used household goods store where anybody can donate their surplus home renovation supplies. It is also full of home goods that are from persons renovating their homes and putting to good use gently used items. Cabinets, paint, doors, windows, mirrors and craploads of chandeliers. Well I went there this past saturday looking for ceiling fans. I pick out a couple and head up to the register. The guy at the register finally is able to ring up my two fans. He looks at the first one and somehow comes up with the price of 10 dollars. He looks at the second fan and says 'wow, that's a really nice fan. How much do you want to pay for it?'

'10 dollars,' I reply.

He gives me a 'you cheap ass' look, but I keep my mouth shut. First, there is a huge sign that says "ALL SALES FINAL"; all this crap here is used, how do I know it works? I don't. Second, don't ask me how much I want to pay for something and then act surprised when I'm cheap on what I want to pay. Mark the price next time. I'm shopping here because I'm cheap and want to capitalize on rich folks supersizing perfectly good household goodies.

Anyway, I got out of there, with what I hope are two just like new ceiling fans for 20 bucks.

Oh, and we are never again going to our local Dairy Queen. I can't emphasize the seething irritation that I have for unsupervised teenagers. Lazy, snotty, snooty and obnoxious. Although it was comical the sound that a large vanilla cone makes when it falls from a height of 4 feet. bllluurchhh.

Not all of them now, there were 2 of the 8 that were carrying the load.