As both of you who read this already know, I am going to be a father.  And last week we learned that she is a girl, which came as not surprise to me.  I have known that it was going to be a girl since before conception, since we started trying.  In my world of doubt and uncertainty and non-absolutes, this was something I KNEW.  I cant really explain it, be even more certain than any belief in a god, I believed I was to father a little girl.
With this knowledge, I have been searching for my daughters name for years.  The steady stream of media input I take in, TV, movies, books and audio, all have provided potential names. NPR corrispondants names are a wealth of potentials, especially the names like Lourdes Garcia-Navarro or Ofeibea Quist-Arcton. But when I was listing to Assimov's Foundation Trilogy, I found the name, Jezebel.  OMG, you are thinking, how can he do that!!  Or, good name, but...  If it weren't for Betty Davis making her into a hussy in the 1930's, I think it would fly.  Here is a strong-willed, independent woman who knows how to get what she wants.  Yeah, my kind of girl!
My wife, of course, is totally against this name.  "She will be beat up in school, or worse!" she claims.  I hate to think we still live in times where bullying is allowed, kids are made fun of for their shape, size, color or names.  I know growing up the closest I ever came to getting in a fight in all the years of school was one day on the bus defending my sister who was the focus of some white-trash red-necks peppering her with racial slurs, and i suppose not much has changed, at least for the better, in the 30 years since then.  And maybe she will get some unwanted evilness flung her way, but will gain strength though it.  Like Johnny Cash's A Boy Named Sue.
So I will lose this battle, She will be named Rowan or something out-of-the-top-1000-names list, but will always be Jezebel to me.  She will grow up to change the world, making it a better place.  Her influence will be as legendary as the name... at least in my world.

so what to blog about?
How the Brew guild annoys me?
How work in "the dungeon" sucks?
How I cant make a massage chair work?
How car shopping with wife who has completely different ideas is impossible?
How Brewing Beer should be fun?
How My body is falling apart?
How impending fatherhood effects me?
NoBloPoMo?... nobody tell me anything!

isn't that just so cute!  

who cares about the rest of it!

Halloween

I like Halloween, among the top 10 days of the year.  ( like a lot of things…)  It’s that day to dress up or dress down or just be a little goofy… and not be out of line with everyone else.  It is the day that I can wear my kilt to work, and not worry about getting sent home.  Sure I get the “what do you have on under your kilt” question, and being in the harassment free work place (No Fun Zone), I reply with a “yes” or simply smile.  Other work friendly costume I have worn, a toga as I was Socrates, a custom home-made Cowardly Lion, and this year a frontier bartender, of course I was tending bar, so not much of a stretch.

I also like the benefits of Halloween, candy, especially the small size.  It is the only time spending more money for cute little candy bars is not frivolous.  Since I have decision making problems, I can have two and satisfy myself doubly!  And Smartee’s and Skittles’ and Tootsie Rolls and…

Past my trick-r-treating days, I can also get a great measure of joy handing out candy.  In years past there has been a party surrounding this, the first one when I lived in Prairie Park, across the street from a grade school.  As with many of my parties, adult beverages where served and we took turns handing out the candy everyone brought over.  When we ran out of candy, we broke into the freezer and started to hand out frozen burritos, until reason prevailed and we turned off the porch light.  There were quite a few kids, but nothing compared to our current location.  Old West Lawrence, maybe due to it’s proximity to downtown and that candy handout, or maybe the reputation of the neighborhood, we get A LOT of kids!!  For several years we had parties, we needed extra people bringing goodies to supply candy to all the goblins and princesses, and then last year I took a tally, 170 something, if I remember right.  Broken down by time, there was a quick start about 6:30, then a lull followed by a rising tide that crested around 7:30, and slowly receded until 8, when all that was left roaming the streets where bands of teen agers. 

This year, we were prepared.  With the house in various stages of (dis)repair, we didn’t have a party, so my wife bought 10 bags of candy, including 2 super sized bags.  Wading home from Angler’s though the sea of people sucking up the candy handouts down town, I knew we had it coming.  The doorbell rang with the first pair of kids just before 6:30.  I grabbed the caldron of candy and my beer and headed for the porch.  4 super heros  into it, we got a note pad and pen to keep track, and soon after that I went in and filled a pitcher of homebrewed IPA for the parents.  It was fast and furious and when we ran out of candy bars at 7:30, our tally was in the 170’s again, and we were down to the tootsie family multi pack.  I wanted to make it last, so 2-3 treats got handed out instead of handfuls, and it worked, at 7:58, we hit the magic 200 trick-r-treater mark.  And as I ran glass the last of the 3 pitchers of beer I poured next door, 2 more came up, final tally 202!!  Whew!

Now a short little complaint.  I don’t think kids know what Halloween is, or even what they are supposed to do.  Half the kids mumbled “Trick or Treat”, and only one offered to show us his trick.  And while some parents stayed on the sidewalk, many walked all the way up to the porch escorting the little zombies.  I suppose it was crowded and busy enough there was not time for tricks, but at least say the line.  My first Halloween memory, I was a football player, and for my trick I would pose with the football like I was OJ running past a defender, the posture that I later recognized as that of the Heisman trophy.  I was cute.  And my little sister was a cheerleader, even cuter (but cant find that picture…)

Here is one with the two of us.  I don’t think this is Halloween, but it could have been, or maybe someone’s wedding, Upton is pretty rural. 

Cute, cute, cute!!!

I Like Everything

Unlike my friend that blogged I Hate Everything, I have the problem that I Like Everything. This is especially an issue when it comes to food and entertainment. Anyone who has eaten out with me knows of my legendary indecisiveness. How many times has the Jeopardy theme been hummed for me? I just can’t decide, I like it all… Marriage has simplified some of this, if I hesitate for even a second when ordering, my wife will say, “you’re getting the special.” At home, “what sounds good for dinner” is almost a trick question. “Anything” isn’t the right answer, but neither is “Tacos!” usually. Beverage selection can be difficult, too, so many choices, all of them good. Beer, wine, cocktail… with multiple choices each and that is just when I get home from work!

I also like movies. I like action, drama, thriller, romantic, comedy movies. I like indie film and blockbusters. While I disagree that Titanic was the best movie of whatever year that was, I did like it. Witty movies, stupid movies, I am just pretty easy to entertain. When it comes to reading, I just want to be entertained, and edutainment is good too. I like I like I like. Just look at my Goodreads ratings, nothing less than a 3.

And I like TV. Deprived as a child, I grew up with one fuzzy channel on a small B&W TV until we moved to Lawrence. And when the picture tube went out, my sis and I would listen to Saturday morning cartoon, but that was too pathetic and soon that went away and for the next 10 years I grew up in the TV-less household. I remember renting a TV for the Olympics, and getting the TV from the school in a couple summers, but nothing was cooler than the friend with cable! Once we got TV and cable, I bought the nicest VCR my $1000 at the Army Exchange would buy and recorded… and watched and recorded some more. Now the major factor in my TV viewing is time. I have to pick and choose what I want to watch, sometime a really hard decision needs to be made. External factors, DVR space and time conflicts seem to be the most important decision making tools.

One of the best filters I have is price. If I can decide how much I want to spend, that can narrow down my choices. When I picked out a car, I factored price, performance, utility, economy and style into the mix, but that wasn’t defined enough, I like so many. So I weighted the top three factors, then threw out price, since I knew how much I wanted to spend, and got Utility and Economy, which lead me to one car, well, 2, the Matrix and Vibe. The duchieness of the Toyota dealer pushed me into my happy Vibe. Similar decision tree for food and beverage happens too, but I have minutes not days to resolve. I think I am getting better, tho.

Multiple Tasking

I like multitasking. It seems wasteful to only do one thing at a time. Surf the internet while watching TV, shaving in the shower, walking and chewing gum all fine task doublers. My favorite is when it involves work. For years I have listened to audio books while making maps, each just enough distraction from the other to help me concentrate on both. I find it difficult to listen to an audiobook without multitasking, my mind wonders and I realize I have no idea what just happened. This happens while working sometimes, when I come upon a challenge that requires little more brain power than I have dedicated to work, and have to steal thought cycles from the listening part.

Recently I have been multi-processor multitasking. With 2 computers on my desk and a network that allows me to take control of several others, I can really get some work done. Yesterday I could be found with a mouse in each hand, setting up processes on both machines at the same time. After kicking those off, I remotely connected to a third machine and started up another batch. I had 3 computers, a total 6 CPU/core’s doing my bidding!! (Of course they where windows 32 bit machines, so really only one of the cpu’s on each machine was working for me, the other against me…) I was connecting to another machine, a quad-core beast when others needed one of my (like that, mine, all mine) machines for some little process…psh. Oh well, they crank away, making maps, while I blog, multi tasking again. Ooo, and soon I will pick up with my audiobook. Stephen King, here I come!

Eeek!

For the first time in our current old house, we found a mouse. I think maybe the brown recluse colony, no, civilization, in the basement had been keeping them out, but now with that in better control, the rodents can compete. We heard a scraping noise and isolated it to the cold air return where this little mouse was trying to scramble up the pipe. We watch in amusement at it would get to a certain vertical angle then slide down again. So I grabbed a towel, lowered it down the pipe and replaced the grate, the thought being that it would get itself out and the kids would find it.

The “kids” being the fur-kids, 2 cats and the dog, Annie. Annie and the older cat, EO (Ebony-Obsidian, guess what color she is) are proven mousers, having racked up multiple tag team take-downs at the previous old house we lived in. Ixxie, aka “Kitten”, however was untested. Since showing up at our house 2 years ago, the skinny, skittish, broken-tailed little thing has grown to be the next vowel in our clan. She has a playful streak longer than what EO will put up with, so she can be found making friends with sticks. Not “so to speak”, but really sticks, and weather stripping, and earrings, even coins. I watched her one morning, pick a penny up in her mouth off the slate bathroom floor, carry it out the door where she dropped it and proceeded to play hockey on the hardwood. That helped to explain the change that was found on the floor everywhere, even in the cold air return.

And it was that cold air return where we found the mouse, and Ixxie was in the next room, making us wonder if she had been playing with her new friend before knocking it into the grate. So fast forward 45 minutes, we are watching TV and suddenly Annie is guarding this little grey thing… oh my, with a tail… on the floor, with Ixxie a couple feet away looking on, blankly as she does at what I suspected she had played with all the way into the living room. The mouse was moving slightly and breathing fast, so Annie gave it a quick little nibble, pick it up and repositioned herself further from the cat, mouse between her front paws. Implored by my wife to get rid of it, I pick up the tiny little thing in a paper towel and after showing it to EO, who had just wondered in the room, tossed it out side.

With winter approaching, the little creatures looking for someplace warm might be better served to find accomidation elsewhere, this old barn is hostile!

Nuts!!

I stayed home to get some work done this fine Saturday, but my remote connection to work was down so the fall back was house work. after getting the old bed broken down and out of the way, I resumed cleaning the spare bedroom where it will be going, eventually. I made some headway and then moved the foot board and box springs (split-queen) into that room. I don't want to get too carried away, as there are some repairs needed in the wall and ceiling. First week in the house, we hear a loud noise, and when we looked, a section of ceiling had collapsed. Hum, right over the water damaged section of flooring. Nice disclosure. When we investigated further, the upstairs shower/tub sliding doors didn't drain in the correct direction, with the water in the trough leaking OUT of the tub, down to the, and saturating the ceiling until collapse. I guess the previous owner didn't shower... Then we lost hot water in the upstairs and then a leak started to show up in the basement, so we cut a floor to ceiling gash in the wall to fix... plumber called and replaced all upstairs pipes, requiring more ceiling demo...

So, i check again, still having network issues, so I mow. I realize there are a few acorns on the sidewalk and they are kind of like marbles, making the already tricky brick treacherous, and with delivery men showing up, i decided this would be a good time to join the safety police. I grab my new blower, and get the nuts and leaves off the stairs and short walk to the house. I now have several inches of acorns collecting in the low spot of the brick, so i get the vac attachments for the blower. OMG! that didn't work very well, the aerodynamics of the acorns pretty slippery. So I upgrade to the Billy Goat, electric yard vac! That will work, right!, big powerful thing... not really. It sucked up leaves and sticks, but really struggled to make headway against the pile of acorns, and not any better on the scattered ones. Back to the blower, and I blow them into a large pile and go old school, push broom and dust bin. Then the small scoop shovel, then the snow shovel! I fill the first trash can and drag up the next and fill it, too. There were some leaves and sticks, but mostly nuts. A couple hundred pounds, 6 bushels I estimate. Much more to come, I am sure, not to mention the piles in the grass. What a productive tree this year, I cant wait for the leave to fall...