Rooftop scene

You know the rooftop scene of the Matrix (the first and only good one) when Neo and Trinity are kicking butt? You know when Neo does that dodging bullets thing? Well, and the only reason I am saying this is because I do not post on the weekends, I think the little one might have dodged the asthma attack bullets in a similar milieu. Then again, he could just be dodging bullet number 2 at the moment, the 3rd on is on the way, and If I remember correctly, nicks Neo on the leg. So maybe we are not out of the woods yet.

The work thing is continuing on. It is good to be busy, and it seems that the busy is not going to get too busy. A nice level of busy. Nice level of busy is good. In fact, on the work front, people are happier here than they have been in a good long while. There seems to be a good energy flowing about the office area. i am sure it will dissipate and then coalesce into something nasty in a week or so, but at the moment the office is not a bad place to be.

So I think I may have started down a path that will leads to some creative outlets. Everything is a bit too up in the air at the moment to really nail down and make public, but eventually I will (if I can really make this a reality) make a public announcement via this web-forum. I am hoping that this endeavor will bring me out of the funk that I have been wallowing in for the past few months. Now if I could only find a way to fit in exercise.

So to review today's and yesterday's blogs: Sword of Damocles is an obscure reference. It is more obscure than I originally thought. Crappricola ham is a fun thing to say, but capricola ham is better on pizza. Childcare is expensive unless you have someone with bad hips and unexplained diarrhea to sporadically watch your kid for free. Work gets in the way of fun stuff. Any movie that has Keanu Reeves in it, must have a scene where he says in surfer-esque, "Whoa." I used the word "milieu" and I spelled it correctly on the first try. The little one is not out of the woods yet. Work was not soooo sword of Damocles-ish as I had thought. I might have found a creative outlet, but I am still not exercising.

The floodgate has openned

Again, I am going for totally non-Joycian stream of consciousness baby! It just works better when I get interrupted constantly whilst writing to the blogopshere. So, without further ado...

Okay remember all that crap about not having work to get done, and work was dangling over my head like the Sword of Damocles? well, the sword fell, and now there is to be a mad dash of work until Tuesday of next week. It might include some weekend work, but I get paid so it's all good.

If little man were an Italian meat, he would be crappricola ham at the moment. He feels absolutely crappy. I have no idea that a human could possibly produce so much snot, but my goodness golly goshness, that is an amazing amount of ejected mucus membrane. His nose is constantly running, and when he sneezes, good lord almighty!!!! I swear you could catch the stuff in a bucket. We are waiting for the next sword of Damocles to drop (I think the horse hair is fraying). This time it is the Asthmatic Sword of Damocles. It is a +2 Sword of Wheezing for you D&D types out there.

Anyway... It turns out is hipal hemorrhaging for the caregiver. She called yesterday and explained that the Dr.'s thought she would be out of the Hospital by the weekend and available next week to watch the yougun, but this is starting to occur too frequently for our comfort level. She feels awful about us having to rearrange our schedules due to her frailties, and we feel horrid for having to do that, but it is not really the stable childcare arrangement that we were hoping for. Something is going to have to change, and she ain't gonna like it, most likely.

Work is calling. So no recap for all of you guys.

Bu-bye

Mr. Grump

Turns out the little one is bit grumpy today. Glad I am not home to suffer the wrath of the little man. He awoke angry and intent on letting anyone and everyone know about it, but that is just how he rolls it. He rolls it old school, baybay!

So I have determined that the rest of today's post will be written in a stream of consciousness vein. So, without further ado...

It is the proverbial calm before the, ummm..., proverbial storm. There are 4 major meetings looming on the horizon for myself and my intrepid staff. So far there is some work that is pending for these various meetings, but a bulk of the work will come to us during an insanely short time frame and expect us to generate an insane amount of work in that insanely short time frame. (I have got to work on my modifier words, also known as adjectives). It pays the bills, so I cannot complain too much.

One of my intrepid cartographers is flying to Jamaica as I am typing this, so there is much animosity being sent her direction her. Darn her and her Jamaica vacation. The other intrepid cartographer will be traveling to Vegas in May. My vacation was to a State Park and it snowed. Stupid vacations.

On to something completely different.... The caregiver is back in the hospital again. This time with ungodly amounts of pain in her hip that was recently replaced (November 27-ish). The medical staff up at the Cleveland Clinic are not sure, but think it is hemorrhaging in the whole hipal area. That is, how should I say, not good. Not good in the least. In fact, one might say it is bad. We here in the Columbus area of Ohio are hoping that it is merely an infection brought about by the lengthy illness that she was suffering from less than 2 weeks ago. Infection is much easier to deal with than hip hemorrhaging. We should know more about this by this afternoon, hopefully.

So the search for alternative childcare is in full swing. We have some family friends that have offered to be safety valves for us, if we need it, but they are, unfortunately no where near anywhere that the wife and I will be traveling on a daily basis. They will be good for safety valves, but we cannot look to them for any sort of permanent solution. Which sucks, heartily, because they would be great for our little guy and not insanely expensive.

The main issue that hampers our use of daycare facilities is the food allergies associated with the little guy. It is difficult on us, his parents, to keep all the ingredients straight, there is no hope for a typical day care institution. As a reminder, or to all of you who have just joined in, the little boy is allergic to dairy, egg, soy, tree nuts, peanuts, and potatoes. This list makes it difficult to feed the little bugger. A few days ago he got hold of a K.C. Masterpiece Bar-B-Q Baked Lays Potato Chip, and just scarfed it down (funny thing about food allergies: often one craves what one is allergic to). Turns out that K.C. Masterpiece Bar-B-Q Baked Lays Potato Chips contain dairy, egg, soy, and, of course, potato. He had a reaction that night, let me tell you...

Anyway... back to childcare for the little one. During eating times the little one would need to be quarantined from other kids to ensure that he did not partake of any forbidden foods off of the plates of his fellow day care goers. I just do not trust the daycare workers to take those kinds of precautions to take care of my child. Oh well. So we are still looking.

To review today's post: Little man is grumpy today. I am all about the stream of consciousness, and yet, not Joycian stream of consciousness. Work is a bit light right now, but it won't be for long. Jamaica is the destination of one of my cart staff. "Sasquatch" is a fun word to say. "Nessie" is not so fun. Go figure. My other cartographer will be going to Vegas soon. Snow at the state park sucked. Hipal hemorrhaging is worse than an infection. The little one is allergic to food. "How much wood could a woodchuck chuck, if a woodchuck could chuck wood?" requires a definition of the verb "to chuck." I do not trust day care workers. As a follow up to yesterday, yard gnomes are not cool due to expedia.com's commercials.

Weathermen

Okay,

I got news for you weathermen types of folks.... 1.25 inches of snow is a bit more than "flurries."

As late as Friday afternoon (3:45-ish) The Weather Channel was predicting "flurries" for Saturday evening and Sunday morning.

Now as some of you might have guessed from Thursday's post, me and the fam were supposed to be at a cabin in a local State Park getting our hike on. Okay, renting a cabin with the fam for some mildly outdoorsey stuff is a fun time to be had by all, especially the extremely inquisitive not quite 2 year old boy who loves, and I mean absolutely frikkin loves the not indoors. And even though it was drizzling on Saturday morning we enjoyed the hike that we were able to get in. By Saturday afternoon the drizzle had turned to freezing rain/sleet/really wet snow and we couldn't really let the little one who has grown out of his winter clothes out in that mess. So we stayed in on Saturday afternoon, and made the little one explore the 4 room cabin for fun. He did really really well on Saturday afternoon. He ate a boatload of spaghetti that evening, and then he slept great that night.

Here comes Sunday morning with at least, AT LEAST!, 1.25 inches of snow on the car. Now little man's wardrobe would have been able to handle flurries, not a steady and consistent snowfall adding to the .25 inches of snow already on the ground (latent ground heat constantly melted about an inch of snow). By 9 am little man was stir crazy. He was running around like a madman, so we decided to call the vacation short and head back home. It was a good decision since it snowed all frikkin day.

In review: Here I am at work instead of hiking with the fam. There is a significant difference between flurries and actual accumulation. Kids grow out of clothes quickly. It is not easy to use the word "Stoichiometrist" accurately and effectively in a conversation. Cats do not like to be dunked in liquids. Yard gnomes are not cool.

The vacation to nowhere

Okay, so it has been, like frikkin' beautiful for 3 weeks in a row. Should be safe to go on a bit of a vacation for a long weekend, right? Wrong!!! If one lives in Central Frikkin' Ohio one must be ready at all time for the snow to come and screw up a weekend. The vacation was supposed to be something simple, something local, something short, and something out-doorsey. So, it was at least 80 degrees Fahrenheit yesterday, but we have the possibility of SNOW on Sunday. What the hell, SNOW?!!?!!? I ask you again.... SNOW??!?!?!

So now the fam has a cabin rented at a local state park-ish area for a long weekend, and the highs this weekend are not supposed to go above 55. I am sure that the little one will have a great time playing at the state park in the 40 degree rainy drizzle. In actuality he will. Hell, as long as little man is outside, he is happy. We just have to make sure we take enough dry, clean clothes for the little booger. So tons of clothes and indoor toys and food (since he is allergic to soy, dairy, eggs, and potatoes). Seems like we are going to have to take a whole hella a bunch of stuff for a long weekend. Why not just pay for the cabin, and stay home. At least he could go to indoor playgrounds this way.

Oh well, enough of a rant from me. Stupid Ohio weather!!!!

Pope Conservative XXVII or there is a Rat in the Papacy

Yeah, a new Pope! Oh wait, you picked one of the most conservative ones of the whole bunch.

Does it really surprise me that the Conclave picked a rather conservative Pope? Not really. The Catholic Church is consistently and historically self-destructive in its clinging to tradition. South American and Central American Catholics are leaving in droves due to the Catholic Church's stance on contraception. U.S. Catholics may not be leaving, but are significantly disenchanted due to the child sex abuse scandals. Europeans are becoming increasingly less "churchified." Especially in the U.S. and in Europe the number of men desiring to become clergy is decreasing significantly. Who should the conclave pick for a new Pope? How about someone who will hold the church's line on its more antiquated ideologies. I am sure that will increase the membership. No really. Might I suggest 2 changes to your policies? I am sure you have heard them before: Number 1: allow the clergy to marry, there is nothing doctrinal about celibate priests, it is all tradition, just let it go. Number 2: contraception is not against God's plan. Think of it as quality of life, not quantity. If those 2 changes occur, South and Central Americans come back to the fold, and your eligible base for priesthood increases drastically. That being said, I am a not a Catholic, so do what you want to.

Oh well, what can you say?

I do not have much to post about today. I need to investigate alternate exercise programs to the one I am on at the moment. That program being nothing but sinking 26 bucks monthly to a fitness club that I do not go to. Something has to give here, and sadly it is my waistline. My schedule that I have to keep for work, and my desire to actually have family time with my, umm well, family (not my best piece of writing there by any means) makes it nigh impossible to exercise at the club to which I currently belong. The place is jam packed after work where one has to wait for 20 minutes for a machine to exercise on, but I absolutely cannot get up at 5 am to get to workout before work at 7. I am really at my wits end about this whole exercise thing. I would feel so much better if I could do it, but I am unwilling to make the time to do it with my current schedule. Stupid schedule.

Another day, other dollar.

Another day another dollar, hopefully at least. I should find out about the old raise today. That being said, there is nothing I can do about the raise. If I feel it is inadequate... too bad. It is already in effect. I get the new rate on the paycheck that I receive on Friday. So if by some strange occurrence, or not so strange occurrence, I do not find out today, the latest that I will have to wait is Friday.

Well, we are going to have to purchase a new central air unit, so there goes the tax refund. At least we will have nice and cool air this summer without having to charge up the Freon. We have been in our house for 3 summers so far, and each of the 3 summers we have had to have the Freon recharged. Well, it is time to bite the bullet and get the new unit. Luckily we loaned the government enough of an interest free loan this year, that when they paid it back we could get a new air conditioner. Side note: Initially my craptastic typing ability typed "condictioning." I imagine that would help someone speak words more properly... a condictioner, that is. Not quite sure what an air condictioner would do though. Anyway... So we are looking at central air units right now. They are much more expensive than I remember, in fact, about 1k more expensive. Oh well, gotta make the investment, it is going to get hot soon enough.

Not much else going on so I will make a list of words that should be used more often in everyday speech.

1: Whilst: just more fun than the boring "while"
2: Ergo: more archaic and intelligent sounding than "therefore" or "so"
3: Shiny: ooohh shiny!!
4: Pointy: why not?
5: Amid: short sweet and to the point, especially considering "in the middle of"
6: Bugger: more humorous than the F-Bomb, especially fun when used as a gerund or in past tense: Buggered
7: Aforementioned: A bit lawyer-ish, but fun nonetheless
8: Expound: that is a fun one.
9: Boorish: just plain meaner than obnoxious
10: Asshat: come on, that just makes good sense

Please leave a comment with either your favorite word, or a word that you wish were used more conversationally.

ADD/ADHD and the dreaded N-Word

My review went very well, even if it did not last terribly long. I was a little upset by the lack of scheduling and the brevity of the review, but the marks I got were nice enough, so I really should not complain much. I will, but I should not. The universal thing to bitch about is money, and I am from this universe baby. I need mo money!!!!! The next step is for me to set up my expectations for the up-coming year. That always ends up being more difficult than it should be. If they were merely goals, it would not be so bad, but they are "expectations" so I think I will be aiming low.

Edit: My boss just left for the day without giving me my numbers. I guess I will get it tomorrow.

A little more meaty matter....

I overheard (eavesdropped, if you will) a conversation about ADD or ADHD in kids, and the rampant diagnosing of this/these conditions. One of the participants felt that ADD (for simplicity's sake I will not continually use ADD/ADHD) did not really exist, and that it was just "kids with bad parents who do not teach them to pay attention." The other combatant in this conversation held the position that it was under-diagnosed earlier and that it is just now being properly medicated and taken care of. I fall somewhere ion the middle of this argument.

I have met kids with true ADD. There was on kid that I went to school with that if he was off his medication would eventually start chewing on furniture after doing about 300 hundred laps around the room while talking 10 miles a minute about whatever came into his head (oftentimes it was about sports statistics).

On a side note: this was also a kid that was disappointed (as well as his parents) that he did not get a full scholarship to Auburn University for never missing a day of school in his life. That's right, he never missed a day of school in his 12 year primary education life. Ever. At all. Granted ADD was not his only issue, but he really had it, and he had it badly.

On a side, side note: This child is the product of parents that made a racial slur... did I type "a racial slur?" I meant "the" racial slur, the big gun, the slur that separates the klansmen from the klansboys, the, shudder to see it posted, N-WORD!!!!!, while myself, my best friend, my neighbor's mom, and my biracial fiancé (fiancé at the time, now wife of over 7 years) were unfortunately catching a ride with them after one of the Olympic soccer games being held in Birmingham, Al at the 1996 Atlanta Olympics. I did mention biracial fiancé, didn't I? After insulting the policeman of African geneology (I didn't mention that part, did I? The parents of said ADD kid used THE racial epithet when referring to a cop), the driver of the vehicle must have realized that there was a person of color in the car when most of the car's occupants stopped talking entirely, and she addressed my fiancé with the innocuous question, "So who are you, honey?". We still laugh about that event to this day.

Anyway... back to the topic at hand...

So I have seen where it is an actual no questions asked diagnosis, but there are also tons of kids out there getting medicated for this disorder who really just need to get some attention themselves. They are acting out in behaviors that are negative and destructive because it gets them attention, and for them any attention is good attention. One of my nephews is this case, in my expert cartographic medical opinion. This kids calms down and interacts really well and pays attention when he is engaged and interacted with. In this case I feel this poor kid is being medicinialized instead of parented.

Oh well, off to work...

Penguins

A promise is a promise, so here it is:

My post about penguins.

Penguins have always intrigued me. They are such an odd evolutionary step. Just plain bizarre. Their adaptations for living in the extremely cold climates of the southern hemisphere really makes one wonder why the ancestor little birds didn't say, "Good gaddamnit!!!! It's flipping cold! I'm moving away from here!" and then subsequently move. Instead some birds said, "Screw all y'all, I'm staying!" Subsequently they got fat, lost the ability to fly, and determined that waddling was the best means of locomotion on the ice sheets. If polar bears where in the southern hemisphere, you can bet good money that they would be snacking on emperors. Hell, if a polar bear can kill a whale, I am sure a penguin would be no trouble at all. Penguins can move in the water, but out of the water, they are worse than sitting ducks. As it is orcas and sea lions are really the only predators of these majestic birds of the sea. So far the best documentary I have ever seen about the penguin is from the Blue Planet series produced by the BBC and Discovery Channel, and it was only a small segment of one of the hour long specials.

Penguins are funny. They make me laugh.

Anyway.... All is well and right in the world of childcare again. The woman who watches the boy is back from the hospital. Only 2 weeks in the hospital that did not diagnose what was causing the problem. But that being said... the juggling of schedules is at an end for the moment. He is back to spending q time with his surrogate grand-parents. With all that happiness in tow, we (the wife and me) realized that the little one seems to really dig being around other kids. So now we need to start thinking about integrating his little butt into society.

Predator and Prey

I was in a conversation the other day with someone, and they were wondering why the Boy Scouts historically had so many pedophiles within its organizational structure. The conversation was in regards to the director of programming for the BSA that was nabbed from a German kiddy porn sting.

The answer is quite simple, actually. It has nothing to do with how good or bad the BSA is, it has nothing to do with homosexuality (as the BSA would like you to believe), but it has everything to do with the predator/prey relationship. If one is a predator, one tries to spend most of one's time near one's prey. For a pedophile, that proximity means being around kids. Pedophiles find positions that involve them being around kids, serial rapist tend to hover around college campuses, cheetahs stay near the impalas. A sandwich just isn't a sandwich without the tangy zip of Miracle Whip, much like a predator is just not a predator without prey.

Pedophiles seem to be draw to teaching jobs, Boy Scouts, day care workers, priests, etc... all positions where there is some power differential between predator and prey. The predator is in a position of authority and the prey is, well, his prey. Pedophilia is typically perpetrated by middle aged white men who identify themselves as heterosexual, and typically it is not about finding young boys and girls attractive, but about power and control through the subjugation of young boys and girls. This subjugation usually takes to for ot the most intimate of subjugations... sex or sexual acts. That is why the Boy Scouts of America and the Catholic Church have consistently been in the news for pedophiles. Adults with positions of power and little supervision with kids. This, of course, is a complete over-simplification of the concept of sexual predation on minors, but as my own rule of thumb it works.

I am an Eagle Scout. I spent many years of my life going through the BSA's rigmarole, and I have my ideas about the adults in my troop alone, whom I think might have been not so good for the character for the Boy Scouts. At the time, I just thought that I didn't particularly like them as leaders in my troop, but looking back, I think that some of them might have had some "special" relationships with kids in the troop. That was just my troop. I would have testified in court about some of the adults in my district being predatory, but the suits haven't ever come up.... yet. Oddly enough though, the "rampant" pedophilia in Scouts is not why I no longer associate with that organization, but that is a topic for another time.

I am sure I will have something lighter to post about tomorrow; this has just been eating at me for some time now. Something to do with how funny looking penguins are. Something like that.

Back in the swing of things

So today I am going to try and get into full-tilt, all cylinders firing, no holds barred rant mode. Not sure what I will be ranting about, but oh you just wait and see the rant that is Tuesday the 12th of April 2005. It will knock your socks off. I am sure of it. Once I know what I will be writing about, you will be utterly amazed.

Ah here it is.... Fresh from the news sites on this here interweb...

UAE may replace camel jockeys with robots

Well it is about freaking time. Robots have been a completely under utilized resource for camel races for far too long. How long have robots existed? How long has camel racing existed? Why haven't these 2 vastly different sectors of the economy intersected before now? Ever since I saw that robotic arm pick up an unfinished car door and attach it to the car frame in a Ford Motors commercial in 1980, I have wondered when little robots would be riding camels. I was a young and impressionable 6 year old at the time, I thought it would be mere months before Twiki from Buck Rogers in the 25th Century was controlling the hump backed ship of the desert around oval raceways in the UAE. I was sooooo naive. 25 long years later, I had all but given up the dream of knowing this truth in my life time.

Just as I had given up on hope, it turns out that the UAE camel racing commission has been keeping illegally purchased Indian children under-fed, under-weight, and under-age as camel jockeys. Now under pressure from human rights groups, they have decided to not go with under-sized adult males like our horse racing industry here in the states. My dream of robot directed camel racing has finally come to fruition. It is a joy to be me today. If you were to see me today, you would see me smiling from ear to ear. One reason: robot camel jockeys.

Monday mornings

Firstly, here is the update on the little one's surrogate grandparents who watch him 3 days of the week. Grandma has been in the hospital since Thursday March 31st with some, as yet, un-diagnosed illness. It is quite frustrating for those of us on the sidelines wanting her to get diagnosed and eventually get better. Grandpa has been by her side most of the entire time, and those hospital rooms are absolutely horridly tiny. That being said, it has been a logistical nightmare for us and childcare. We are currently scrambling to figure out who and how and where etc... for the little man's days. The problem with using an individual as you primary childcare, no matter how competent, how compassionate, how loving, and how wonderful that person is, if something happens to that person your childcare is sent into a tail-spin.

There are many contributing factors to the difficulty of finding new childcare situations. Ooh a list, a list my day is complete, a list...

Number 1: Food allergies: Daycares are not properly staffed and/or equipped to effectively deal with children with moderate to severe food allergies. My boy is allergic to dairy, egg, soy, potato, tree nuts, and peanuts. It is difficult enough for his parents to keep track of all those allergens, much less someone working at a daycare. You have to control what food is given directly to him, as well as how much interaction he has with other kids during their snack times. We have a hard enough time getting his biological and surrogate grandparents to adhere to food protocols; we cannot expect a daycare staff to do the same.

Number 2: Asthma: His asthma is an issue mainly due to the breathing treatments. When to administer a rescue treatment and how to administer maintenance treatments.

Childcare, is a scary thing for us.


Oh well, on to a topic for the day.....

I just do not have it in me to rant today. I am sure that something will come up that will require a mildly amusing rant for tomorrow's post, but I am too tired and, frankly, apathetic today to rant about anything. Don't get me wrong, I am clearly pathetic enough to rant today, just too apathetic enough. I guess childcare woes just knock the "rant" out of me. By the way... silent frikking letters, what the hell are these about? Especially letters at the beginning of words that have no business being at the beginning of words. Knock, Know, Knot, Knife, Gnu, Gnat, etc... What vestige of what archaic language are lese left over from? That is all I could muster up for the day. Isn't that pathetic?

The daily grind

It does not seem to get any easier. It truly is a grind. I have a good job, I supervise good people, I work with good people (mostly), it is still a grind though. Why?

The only things that I can come up with is my lack of professional creative outlet and/or autonomy. I am supposedly the company's alpha geek for mapping and GIS, but I rarely have the final say in how my products or the products of my people finally end up.

I am constantly battling with people about color-schemes, font type etc.... I appreciate that they have opinions, because that means that they are engaged in the process, but sometimes, they want me to produce something that is just fundamentally flawed.

For example:

One of the things my company does with our transportation studies are Level of Service maps. "Level of Service" (LOS) is a measure of traffic congestion. They range from A to F, A being the lightest amount of traffic, to F being gridlock. These values are determined using traffic simulation models and fancy-schmancy equations. The people in charge of the modeling and the client typically want us to display the LOS in 3 categories. These categories are A-D (acceptable LOS), E (near failing and unacceptable), and F (failed).

The powers that be (who will remain nameless) always, and I stress ALWAYS, want us to use a very specific color scheme for showing the 3 categories. They always want A-D to be green, E to be yellow, and F to be red. Their justification for this is that "It is just like a traffic signal, everyone knows 'Green means "go,"' 'Yellow means "caution,"' and 'Red means "stop."'" This assertation is intrinsically correct... most people do understand traffic signals and the relative meaning of their colored lights.

The problem arises when one starts to think about people with some kind of visual color deficiency. The primary color deficiency is red-green color blindness, the secondary is red-blue, and the tertiary is yellow-green. So 2 of the top 3 forms of "color-blindness" are represented in their recommended color scheme. Roughly 10% of the male population in the US has some sort of color deficiency and the male population is roughly about 50% of the total US population. That equates into about 5% of the total US population not being able to tell red from green. The reason that they understand traffic signals is position of lights. Top light = red, bottom light = green. When red and green are jumbled all around a page shown on lines that are different lengths and in different orientations (not gay or bi-sexual lines, that would be lines of different "sexual orientation") confusion of the color arises.

This knowledge is something that was stressed to me in my cartographic classes. I do not know how to design an interstate exit, I do not know how long a left turn bay should be, I cannot design a safe structure traveling over rivers, I cannot model future traffic trends.... what I can do and what I have spent an inordinate amount of time studying and training to do is coalesce that information into a map that is understandable by most of the public at large.

Oh well, I guess I am just whiney this morning, and I need more sleep.

The weather out there

Okay, I know it is my own damn fault for living in Central Ohio, but good God almighty I hate how the weather changes here min the spring. On Wednesday of last week it was 68, on Saturday it was snowing, and today it is getting up to 75. My sinuses cannot handle this kind of strain. I have a brick in my forehead and I am sure there is cement in my nostrils. Breathing is a luxury I cannot afford to give up. Luckily with strong medication I can pass as a typical human. I think the greenies that are gibbering about global warming should change tack and start talking about how erratic the weather is getting as we destabilize the climate with greenhouse gasses. No one can say that the seasons are not getting more and more wonky. They are all over the place. Snow, rain, sleet, sunshine, wind (lots of wind), and 75 degrees all in the span of 3 days. If that is not wonky weather, I am a mule with a spinning wheel.

I am only staying marginally functional as a human being due to my overzealous use of nasal spray and Advil Cold and Sinus. Nasal spray is truly a gift of the gods. It takes sinus passages that are clogged with rocks, sticks, and other flotsam and jetsam and makes then artificially clear of anything. It gives them a disturbingly clean feeling. A clean feeling that constantly reminds you that you are only breathing due to the wonders of modern science. I hate this time of year. The weather finally starts to be nice and I cannot breathe through my nose to save my life except for the aforementioned power of the nasal spray. Ah, Zicam, you are well loved.

But enough about the weather and my sinusitis... I have found that whenever talk strays to the weather in a conversation, that conversation is nearly done. Unless a participant in the conversation makes some Herculean effort to come up with a better topic, that conversation will be dead within 5 minutes. This, of course, did not hold true when I was at The Ohio State University's Geography and Atmospheric Sciences department. When chats took the turn to weather, people were just getting warmed up, but that is a different story all together. Anyway... what I was saying is that weather ends conversations (except in extreme situations), and I wonder why my Dad always starts off with weather. Do I have so little in common with this man now that the only way we can relate is by chatting about the weather? Then again Dad puts brown sugar on rice, so I should probably not use his as a barometer.... Get it? Barometer. Oh, I slay me!!!

April Fool's Day come and gone and the little one starts to speak

So Friday was April Fool's Day. This is the day of the year where people who are asses feel it is necessary for them to be the complete asses that they are never really able to be. Did that make sense? Let's see... blah blah blah April Fool's blah blah asses.... blah blah blah complete asses blah blah blah. Yep, makes sense to me. Anyway... this year I came through the day unscathed. On a side note, I have never heard of anyone saying that they have been "scathed." "Jim, they scathed me, they scathed me good." Nope, just does not sound right at all. Turns out that I did not really hear of anyone who was "scathed" this year. I almost think there should be a day like this for every month, then people could get their jackassiness out of their system more frequently. June Idiot's Day, September Buffoon's Day, December Nincompoop's Day, etc...

On to the meat of the matter... The little one has started speaking. Not very much, and not very often, and usually not very useful. So he has started stringing together 2 and 3 word phrases. Things like "Where Mom?" when she went upstairs. "I go, Mom" when he has his shoes on and is waiting on us to take him somewhere. "There Mim" when he sees his Mimma (Grandma). Unfortunately, he has never said anything useful. I would love it if he said, "I Hungry," or "I thirsty." But, no he tells us after we have put his shoes on him and gotten his jacket zipped up that he will be leaving with us. Thanks kid. That is very very helpful. How about you let us know why you are crying? Are you hungry? Are you thirsty? Do you need changed? That would be nice to know. I am happy that he is progressing in his verbal communication, but I just wish he were helping us out with this new verbal communication. I am fairly sure that he will say, "The sky is cerulean blue due to the sun's light refracting off of the water molecules suspended in the atmosphere," before we get a "I thirsty." out of him. He is an obstinate little fellow.