Eh… Monday was fine. Work is fine - nothing special to report.
The boys are over their cold and feeling much better. Chloe lost a tooth. Buckaroo is 10.5lbs and growing like a weed! He and Peterman chase each other all over the yard and the house.
Last night I figured out how much popcorn the cub scouts sold and it was weak. Very weak. I hauled 600lbs of popcorn down there and retrieved about 590lbs of popcorn. For a very weak showing. I hesitate to get in to the details — just understand that it was a VERY disappointing performance and it made me regret all the effort I put in to it. I’ve told the boys that I would take them down to the MBTA stop during rush hour and help them sell a phenomenal amount of popcorn.
Why? Its petty and I shouldn’t admit it, but I want to show everyone else how its done. They let me go to all this trouble and they dropped the ball when it came time to sell. So, I plan on showing them up.
I’m also trying not to let it eat at me. You can’t let these things fester or they only make you a bitter petty person.
I sat outside last night in the cool air and changed a tire on Grace’s bicycle. The inner tube was only 12.5″ in diameter. Its the tiniest little inner tube I’ve ever seen. Chloe’s bike also needs a new tire - its worn clean through from all the miles Ben put on it. But I couldn’t find an inner tube at 18″. I think I still have the training wheels for Gabe’s old bike, which doesn’t need a new tire. It also has 16″ tires which I can find at REI. No, Chloe doesn’t really need training wheels but at this point I will do whatever I can to get her on a bike. I think she’ll get tired of the training wheels in short order, but she’s too afraid to move on to a regular bike. *sigh* I tried to get her to ride a bike but she wouldn’t do it.
We have a democratic state primary today. I have to stop on the way home and cast my ballot for the best candidate.
Sphere: Related ContentThe weekend was surprising. Not because anything remarkable happened but because we seemed to fail on both tasks in which we regularly succeed. We got almost nothing productive done AND we had very little fun doing it. Most weekends we can get some productive tasks completed one day and then have fun on the other day. Or maybe we will steal from peter to pay Paul and we’ll have a whole weekend of fun or a whole weekend of work.
But this weekend we crapped out on both. The boys are still recuperating from being sick last week so we didn’t want them running around too much – they have a nasty cough. On Sunday I spent about 30 minutes loading the van full of popcorn to get sold at the Victorian Fair. The idea was that with all those people milling around downtown Cub Scout pack 615 could finish off a big chunk of our fundraising goals for the season. So there was a lot of hauling boxes up and down stairs and loading the van to get it downtown to where everyone else would sell it.
Naturally we also unloaded it.
At the end of the day they called me to come get the left over popcorn and I swear to god it looked like they hadn’t bothered to sell a flippin’ thing! Actually I was able to discern that they had sold a few tins of caramel corn. But I brought down case after case of different kinds of popcorn and I think I brought home nine-tenths of it! I was pretty angry last night that I went to all this trouble and so little got sold.
When I brought it back in the house I wanted to put it somewhere out of the way so I stowed it in the guest room – the room that’s the farthest away from the van and entail more stairs than anywhere else. They’re kind of bulky so I could only carry two cases at a time and it took me forever to get everything neatly put away.
While I was doing that Liz was setting up a new bike rack we got for the kids to organize their bikes and get them out of the way. Turns out we just BARELY have enough room – like within three or four inches.
We also went to REI and got some more camping/cooking supplies. My favorite purchase was a simple metal grill to go over a campfire. It will be good for grilling food as well as for providing a flat place to put a pot of water, a camp coffee maker or a frying pan. The alternative is to kind of balance it on the burning wood, which is a little hit-or-miss.
We saw a movie called “Everybody’s Hero” on Sunday. It’s a kids’ movie that I guess Christopher and Dana Reeve were working on before they died. They should have buried the film with Chris and Dana so it never saw the light of day. The kids said they liked it, but I can’t believe they liked it. I think they like going to the movies – not this particular film. By now, I can tell you that I know a little bit about kid-shows and this one reeked.
I didn’t even get to watch the Patriots game on Sunday.
On Saturday we went to the new LL Bean store in Burlington, MA. Nice store. Then we went to Penzy’s spice store over in Arlington. By then Liz was feeling stressed by how cramped the driving was over there. I can’t remember anything else of what we did on Saturday.
I didn’t mow the lawn. I didn’t make any cobbler in the dutch oven. I’m also planning making doughnuts in the dutch oven. And at least now I have all the ingredients I need for it so there’s nothing standing in my way. I didn’t grill anything. I didn’t ride my bicycle. Boy howdy, am I behind on the whole riding-the-bike thing!
That’s about it for now. Let’s hope this week goes better than the weekend!
Sphere: Related ContentQ: Why did the blonde get fired from the M&M’s factory?
A: She was throwing away all the W’s
Some cats are very graceful.
“The remarkable thing about television is that it permits several million people to laugh at the same joke and still feel lonely.”
-T.S. Eliot
SCIFI.COM | Battlestar Galactica
So the last new Battlestar Galactica episode was back in, what? January? February? If you’ve been suffering from withdrawal like I have there are some very very very very short episdodes available at SciFi.com. They are literally not more than three minutes (unless you count the thirty second commercial at the end). Right now there are three “webisodes” with a total of 10 to be released before the October 6th start of the third season.
They take place on New Caprica after the Cylons have landed and focuses on the resistance set up by Commander Tigh.
Sphere: Related ContentI’m still playing chess over at RedHotPawn.com. I went ahead and signed up for a monthly subscription. Its $6 a month and the main reason was I wanted to join some of the tournaments they have. I have started one tournament and beat the tar out of one opponent twice - that gets me six points. I am playing four other games against two opponents. That is, everyone is broken in to groups and you play everyone as white and black. Everyone seems to have played so many games! Its kind of intimidating even though they have lower scores than me. For instance, they guy who stunk was rated about a hundred points below me but has played several hundred games more than me on this site. I’m playing another person who has played several hundred games more than me and is rated about the same (50 points higher) and I’m playing one guy who is rated two hundred points higher than me and has played thousands of games at this site.
I’m not optimistic about my chances in this tournament, but its fun competing anyway.
On one hand I don’t want to tip my hand that I’m a little bit of a geek on the inside, but on the other hand I would like to see if there ar eany “real life” chess clubs in the area. I saw there was one that met in Malden at a bar once a week but the last message from that group was several years old.
I guess I could do worse than go to the bar at their appointed time and see if anyone else shows up.
(yes, on the “inside” - I’m still as cool as they come on the outside)
(shutup)
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