Let it snow over the phone

It started snowing at about 12:25 today. I called home to see how the weather was and my son answered the phone. I did not get a "Hello" but instead got an "Oh my gosh look at all the snow!". I guess grabbing the phone had put his eyes looking out the back door of the house and seeing the snowfallf or the first time. Now, this would not have been a big deal, except the boy has NEVER answered the phone himself that I know of.

So, I ask him "Where is Mommy?". "She's taking a shower", he responds. We spent the rest of the call talking about his plans to get dressed up and go out to play in the white stuff he described as accumulating in the back yard.

I am hopping on a train to go home early today. Thank my boss for that one. But, I am not looking forward to scraping snow off my car at the parking lot and driving home among the "first time driving on snow" (this year?) morons who will never let me get home at a reasonable pace. Wish me well...

Thai Spice restaurant

Our whole family, yes including the kids, went to a little storefront Thai place about 10 miles from our house for dinner last night. The wife got a great deal on a $15 certificate from the radio shopping show and it was going to expire soon. So, we decided to use it.

When we walked in the door the older 2 kids were immediately drawn to the big fish tank. They spent most of the visit there except when they were eating or going potty. We grabbed a booth and had our choice as there were only about 4 tables in use. We ordered a fried shrimp and vege appetizer for the kids to split as thier dinner and satay chicken for ourselves. The wife got Thai iced tea to drink.

The theme of our food for the night was definitely chicken with peanut sauce. The appetizer had 5 skewers of chicken, a bowl of peanut sauce for dipping and a small bowl of cucumber salad. The flavors were great, not too spicy and the salad was a nice finish to the flavors. The wife mentioned she liked the sauce not quite so thick and I agreed.

The dinners came out. The kids munched on tempura shrimp, pineapple and mushrooms leaving the onion rings for us. They were happy. The wife had a dish that came with rice and had brocoli and chicken with the same peanut sauce along with some other veges. She picked out the pickled baby corn and gave it to me. I had what was basically an iceberg salad with the ingredients of our appetizer tossed on top, chicken, peanut sauce, cucumber salad and all. While it wasn't new flavors it was a hearty portion and a tasty salad.

While we both liked the change of pace we were underwhelmed by the food and decided we probably would not go back.

Oh no, she found it

Actually it's not bad at all. No need to be alarmist. My wife found links to this Blog and read the whole thing. A'course I have nothing to hide* or be ashamed about in what I write and she was pleasantly suprised. We talked quite about about what I write here and why I write stuff down at all. It was definitely enlightening for her and actually relaxing for me. Kinda talk therapy, you know?


* With the usual "no personally identifying information or anyone's names" rule I post under.

Putting up those pictures

I've finally gotten around to getting Gallery running on my web server. It means I can put up pictures taken with my digital camera as well as older ones I have archived in inaccessible places. The current stuff has been going up first and I've started on the older stuff. It's fun to do, even though it's a bit time consuming, because I get to look through all the old pictures.

My mother has been browsing the pictures as I put them up and I think she's enjoying it too. I did a gallery of the baby pictures of my older daughter last night. She was such a cute baby. I noticed her brother was in nearly all the pictures. He is definitely an attention hog.

There are no links to the pages because it's hosted behind my wimpy ISP connection. If you know me and my email address and would like the URL send me an email. I'd be happy to let friends have a peek.

Got stuff and got stuff done

This was a great weekend. I didn't have any school as they screwed up my schedule and I decided not to play any games.

Saturday morning I took the older 2 kids to their ballet/tap and acting classes. It was my son's 5th birthday as well as his acting teacher's birthday. So, he brought her a card, some vanilla candles and a cupcake he had frosted and topped with a Scooby Doo candy himself. We left a bit early to drive too friggin far to a bowling alley for his party.

The wife got a fabulous deal on a bowling party for 10 kids on the radio shopping show, so I guess the longish drive was worth it. With 4 large pizzas, 4 pitchers of soda, 10 games of bowling with shoes and his own bowling pin for everyone to sign and him to take home; it was under $65. All the kids had a great time.

On the way home the wife let me stop at Fry's and try to find a deal on a DVD burner and firewire case for it. I got a Sony 530A 8X DVD+-R and some generic external firewire case for $125. Everything seems to work with my PC and my Mac, though I need to get a copy of Toast 6 for the Mac to properly burn movies out of iMovie as Dragon Burn makes me convert everything to MPEG and make my own VIDEO_TS folders without a TOC. The VCDs and SVCDs I've burned so far work OK, but they won't play in our crappy old GE DVD set-top player. I'm going to buy a 25 pack of Maxell DVD-R blanks on the way home tonight and burn my first real DVD tonight. I need to install the drive internally to the PC some time soon so I can flash the firmware up to the 8X DVD-R speed though.

I think now that my set-up is complete I'll stop playing games with my free time and start making home movies on DVD. I have the camera, the DV encoder, the software and the burner. It should be quite a bit of fun. Maybe I can help my Dad get his old Super8 film onto a digital medium for preservation.

Got suckered

I got roped into one of those "Sign up for a few free offers and get [INSERT BIG GIFT HERE] for free!" websites. By the time I had gone through a few free offers I realized that it was never going to end. I would simply get page after page of these and never get to the "Ok you get your gift" page.

Looks like I'll only have to cancel a single blockbuster.com DVD by mail account though. The rest used a throw-away email address and got my mailing address. No biggy if I get some extra junk postal mail. I've already redirected the throw-away email to the bit bucket.

Live and learn, eh?
-R