Fantastic (yet bizarre) kids19 August 06 9:35 pm

We are such bad parents…

Dyson hasn’t seen another kid his age since school broke for the summer. Today he was carrying around Kel’s bag of cotton balls saying they were his cotton ball friends. (The kids do "crafts" with the woman we have coming by between 10 a.m. and 2 p.m. during weekdays. On Friday, Kel gave them a bag of cotton balls and some other stuff and told them to make stuff with the specified "ingredients". Keira made a little bed out of paper and tape and put faces on a bunch of cotton balls and put them in the bed. Apparently that gave him the idea.) Tonight, Dyson cut a shape out of paper, drew a (somewhat recognizable) person on it and said it was his friend, Barney. Barney and Dyson had popcorn while watching TV. Barney really liked the book that Keira read to them, so I had to read it again.

Well, his school starts again after Labor Day, so he can get some real friends again…

Rants and pet peeves 6:39 pm

The Yahoo! Mail spam filter does a pretty good job, so I rarely see the actual contents of the spam I get. This one slipped through:

From: Citibank

Subject: Its time to get back in constraint

Dont be a fool and spare your hard earned dough, by compassionate it away to your area shop

We have supplies for the following

1antiDepresants 2antiInflamatory 3arthritis 4asprin 5bloodPressure 6Gout
7heartBurn 8migraine 9mentalDisorders 10muscleRelaxers 11sleepAids
12influenceLoss 13anxity 14bloodThineer 15diabetes 16digestion 17mensHealth
18womensHealth 19motionsickness 20ulcer & more.

Sports News

He was wounded trying to catch a pass from quarterback Matt Hasselbeck.
The pass was broken up by linebacker Leroy Hill and Stevens fell to the ground
with the force of his influence arrival on his knees.
He hobbled off the domain and was study by guide while deskbound on a cart.
He was far ahead occupied back to the hold room on the cart.

Wow! That’s convincing! The "Sports News" really makes me want to by prescription drugs from some unknown source on the internet! I’ve got to stop compassionate it away now! I’m glad Citibank is looking out for me, even though I don’t have any accounts with them! I am so back in constraint!!

Fantastic (yet bizarre) kids 6:12 pm

Yesterday we got Men In Black 2. Dyson has seen it a half dozen times since.

He IS Agent D*…

*The main characters in the Men In Black movies, played by Tommy Lee Jones and Will Smith, are Agent K and Agent J (respectively). So, of course, Dyson wanted to be Agent D. Ya know… D for Dyson….

I’m embarrassed to admit that I voluntarily wore that tie at one time. I have no idea why I kept it all of these years, but now it’s Dyson’s. (It was the closest thing I had to black…) Kel bought the sunglasses for him after taking Keira to her violin lessons. The rest of his outfit was from some kind of formal occasion more than a year ago. Obviously he’s grown some since…

 

Barley, despite her size, is a lap dog at heart. Even if the lap in question is pint-sized…

Keira keeps telling us that she wants a pet of her own. I’ve repeatedly told her that until she can consistently take care of our existing pets, she can’t get another. She’s finally showing some affection for Barley and the cats. If she can feed the dog and cats daily, we might consider a hamster or some such.

Actually, I think we need to take the responsibility of feeding Barley away from Kel’s dad. His mind is slipping a bit too far. This past year, there’s been many occasions where Barley only eats half her food, and yet she hasn’t lost any weight. The vet keeps telling us to put her on a diet. I’ve told Kel’s dad exactly how much to feed her and yet she doesn’t lose weight. We think we’ve found the reason. One day, Kel said that her dad mentioned three times that he had to go feed Barley. She gently reminded him that he had already done so. Perhaps this is a somewhat regular occurrence. Poor Barley - I take her back out to the garage and try to get her to finish her food, and she’s thinking, "C’mon, Doug, this is my third bowl! I can’t eat one more kibble!"

 

Homebrew 11:18 am

Keira asked me if she could help me make labels for my beer. Since I had just bottled the remainder of my mead, that seemed a good place to start. She asked me what mead was, and I explained that it is made from honey and that the Vikings used to drink it. She asked what Vikings looked like, so we did a Google image search and found a few stereotypical images. She took it from there….

Based on her drawing, the "brand name" seemed obvious…

I rarely put any of my beer in bottles, so my labels are limited to the tap handles on my draft system. In the past, I’ve been pretty inconsistent in creating labels. But, since Kel kept asking which beer was at which tap, and since I was printing the labels for the mead bottles, I went ahead and made some tap handle labels. (I guess it would show it better if I took pictures of the tap handles…)

I made an IPA using a single hop variety, Santiam, to get a real feel for the flavors and aromas of that hop. I got a bit carried away with the bittering hops, so I did a Google image search on "bitter beer face". I was actually looking for this very guy (or a guy in a similar "pose")…

I knew that the Aztecs used cocoa, so I did a search on "Aztec chocolate" and learned that they used to have a drink called xoco lall that used both cocoa and vanilla. Seemed perfect for a chocolate vanilla stout. And it might even be true….

Finally, the previously mentioned (All but the) Kitchen Sink pale ale…