Ultranormal

Category: family

  • Max is too funny. We

    Max is too funny. We went to Strathmore Hall in Rockville yesterday for this silly radio station “Christmas in July” thing. They said it was “free” and there would be lots of “snow”. There was barely enough snow for their little sledding thing (with an hour wait). So, we went wandering the grounds, chasing Max. Max decided it was fun to run in a straight line as fast as his little legs would carry him laughing the whole way.

    The best part was the hill. We found this short but steep little hill covered in grass next to the path and decided that rolling down it would be a good idea. Boy, was it! Max loved it. He rolled and rolled and rolled until he finally got pooped. We got a great shot of him sitting at the bottom of the hill looking completely worn out.

    The only bad part of the day was coming home to find our A/C had died. Yuck!!! Now, we have to call some repair guy to come fix it and charge us a million dollars to do it just do we can be comfortable. Home ownership is sooooooooo nice.

  • Ok, this is only funny

    Ok, this is only funny because everyone was fine, and it turned out ok (and I got to come home early).

    Max locked Jen out of the house yesterday!!!! She went to get the mail and left him in the sun room watching Blue’s Clues. When she came back, he had locked the door and couldn’t unlock it (thankfully, we have the baby-guards on the door so he can’t open them. Jen only had the mail key, and had to go to the neighbor’s to call me to come home and open the door. I couldn’t stop laughing after everything calmed down. Poor Jen and Max were sitting there, with this giant door between them. Max was crying, and Jen was trying to to sing to him.

    So, to celebrate, we went to Pizzeria Uno… end of story.

  • 26 things about me

    26 things about me @ 26 (thanks to Jodi for the idea):

    1. I’ve been married to Jen since 1/23/98.
    2. I have a 20 month old son named Max who’s really really cute (and smart… really really smart).
    3. I work for AOL building search engines (now who else can say that?)
    4. I drive a ’97 Chevy Blazer with two stickers on the back, the Apple logo and a Linux sticker (since I couldn’t find a LinuxPPC or YellowDog sticker @ ThinkGeek).
    5. I think Linux is is fun. I think it’s the most fun I’ve had with an OS ever.
    6. I think MacOS 9 is stupid the more I have to use it. My PC crashed (video card fried) and I had to use my Powerbook to do actual work on for about 4 days. The more I used it, the more infuriated I got, hence, my love of Linux on the Mac.
    7. I think MacOS X sucks. I wish they’d finished it before they released it.
    8. I love HBO. I love Sex and the City, The Sopranos, Six Feet Under, Dennis Miller Live and Oz, not in that order, and all for different reasons.
    9. I miss my friends in Tucson.
    10. I like Morphine (the band, hence the M instead of an m).
    11. I like Massive Attack.
    12. I realized yesterday that I’m an adult because I’m grumpy and teenagers seem young and stupid to me (not cool and intimidating like they used).
    13. I remember times I consider “the good old days” of Pac-Man, saturday morning cartoons, GI Joe, Star Wars toys and our Coleco Adam computer, where I wrote my first Basic program, a super crappy game a lot like Robotron only with one robot and one guy.
    14. This is number 14. When I was fourteen, I earned my Eagle Scout, which I keep forgetting I’ve earned. I haven’t been to a scout meeting since my brother Steve got his Eagle almost 5 years ago.
    15. I think I’m smart. But, as I get older I realize the world is much more complicated, evil, good and beautiful than I ever imagined.
    16. I used to be a Republican, because my parents were, but they scare the crap out of me. I was going to be a Democrat, but they’re just as scary, just for different reasons. So, I’m a political wanderer at the moment.
    17. I really wish John McCain did have a necklace with human ears on it that he wore for every press conference. This is an old Joke between Jon Morris and me from our days in PrimeHost. Wouldn’t it be funny if for every news conference, John McCain came out wearing his ear necklace and then anytime someone asked him a tough question he’d start yelling incoherently about the War and how he was a prisoner of war. Ok, maybe it’s not so funny… but we laughed and laughed at the time.
    18. I used to do a public access TV show in Tucson called Tech X. It was all about computers and getting away with stuff. I was Otto the HED and wore a blue sheet so I was this fat floating head. It was a lot of fun.
    19. I learned how to write Tcl and build web pages because I worked for PrimeHost, a crappy web hosting company that used to be owned by AOL.
    20. I’ve been online since February 1995.
    21. My AOL account has been active since May of 1995.
    22. I used Netscape 2.0.
    23. My dad was in the Air Force and we moved around a lot. I’ve moved 19 times in my 26 years on this planet.
    24. I hate moving. My least favorite move was from Fairfax, Virginia to Vicksburg, Mississippi in the middle of my junior year of high school. Because of that one, I am an embarrassed graduate of Vicksburg High School, class of ’93.
    25. I love Dr. Pepper. My affair with the good doctor began when I worked nights doing tech support and couldn’t stay awake. It also goes well with Tucson’s bargain Mexican food.
    26. And Number 26: I am really really bad when it comes to video games. I’m chum when it comes to Unreal Tournament or any other shooter. I suck at puzzle games. You’d think I’d be better at it, but I’m not.

  • Max’s Page is new and

    Max’s Page is new and improved with a super-cute pic from our trip to the beach, and pics from Christmas and early 2001. It’s amazing how much he’s grown in the past 6 months. I’ll try to get the beach pics up soon…

  • Ahhhh, the smell of burnout.

    Ahhhh, the smell of burnout. It’s funny that I can smell it coming. I’m tired of working on a million different projects and dealing with a million different people who all think they get a say in everything. It would be nice if we all concentrated on what we were supposed to do and did it right. Instead, I have to work with groups and people who have decided that they can stick their hands into everything and make my life hell. People who deal with the backend and hardware shouldn’t care what color something is. People who deal with the design shouldn’t care what the backend looks like as long as things work. Maybe my problem is that I’m in the middle and have to deal with all of it… or at least am touched by all of it. Hopefully, my trip to Boston will help, and I’ll come back ready to deal with them some more. We’ll just have to wait and see.

  • Jen says I’m a stinker…

    Jen says I’m a stinker… and she’s right.

  • So, we were trying to

    So, we were trying to go to sleep last night, my wife and I. We were talking, as we normally do, when Jen let loose one of her famously mispronounced words (she doesn’t think they are… maybe she speaks her own dialect?). JenWords come in two varieties: the emphasis-on-the-wrong-syllable and the mixed-up-first-sound. I don’t even remember what it was last night that go me started… but it made me laugh. Now, I love JenWords. They keep me on my toes, and I think maybe she does it to make sure I’m paying attention, because to miss a JenWord is to miss something beautiful and original.

    I must also say that most of these happened while Jen was pregnant, and therefore must be attributed to hormones or something. Otherwise, it’s just an endearing quirk that I hope never goes away. Here are some of my favorites of both types:

    emphasis-on-the-wrong-syllable: (phonetically)

    • cement: SEE-mint, so it sounds like semen with a t.
    • drixoral: dricks-or-ALL, you know, the allergy medicine.
    • mercury: I don’t even know how to do this one, just be sure it’s funny.
    • syllable: sill-AAAAA-bull – makes me giggle every time.

    mixed-up-first-sound:

    The wonderful thing about these is that 1) they’re hilarious, and 2) you never know when she’ll do it. The emphasis words are pretty regular, but these are gems!

    • french onion: fred onchion – we went through this phase where chopped up potatos + some mix + 400 degree oven = yummy when we first got married. fred onchion potatos was Jen’s suggestion one day. We still bring up good ole Fred whenever we need a laugh.
    • great outdoors: bud ortdoseman – Sunday morning shortly after moving to Virginia, she asked if SportsCenter was coming on after that bud ortdoseman show… she meant The Great Outdoors… really, it was funny at the time. Now, Bud and Fred are friends.
    • Buddhist Monks: Moodist Bunks – This one was recent, so she can’t use pregnancy as an excuse… eating dinner at my mom’s. I don’t know why we were talking about Buddhism, but there you have it.\
      There are others, and I’ll add them if I remember them, but you get the idea.

  • I love Sunday afternoons. It’s

    I love Sunday afternoons. It’s this time, after church and lunch, and everyone’s come home and changed clothes that I feel like I have nothing to do and nowhere to be and I love it. Jen and Max are asleep; I keep listening for them, trying to decipher creaks and sounds from the baby monitor as the signs of waking. The TV is on, providing background noise to my surfing and goofing off. The laptop is on the dining room table, and I’m not working. All is quiet, and peaceful. I’m a husband, a father, a son, a brother, a friend – and right now I’m all alone doing nothing, all of those things that I am in the background to me being me to myself, doing nothing but sitting and taking a break. This is the best time…

  • So, where was I yesterday?

    So, where was I yesterday? I went to the Baltimore Museum of Art with my wife, son, mother-in-law and mother. Other than taking the looooooooooooooooo-oooong way there through downtown DC (all to avoid congestion on the beltway. reminder to self: never trust mom with a map), it was a great trip. Max was an angel the whole time. We saw some great art.

    If you haven’t been, and live in the area, I totally suggest it. It’s not as impressive as the old Getty or the LACMA, which are full of the paintings you see on postcards and calendars. It still has a very nice collection of Matisse, Picasso drawings (which I enjoyed more than the paintings), and some great abstracts by some of my favorite artists like Paul Klee and Kandinsky.

    It really got me in the mood to paint again. There’s something wonderful about seeing real paint on canvas. The texture of paint is so gorgeous. It’s never carried over in prints or even in reproductions. And it’s funny, it’s those details that make a work great. Looking at some Matisse in books or postcards makes it look hurried and childish. On closer inspection, the care taken in the brush strokes to bring out the knee and calf of a dancer, or a painter in a grove of olive trees make the painting beautiful and complex. I loved it. I need more…

    We also ate at the museum restaurant, which, in most cases is a baaa-aaad idea. But, this museum has Gertrude’s (which I hear is closing… so sad). The food was AMAZING and the place was packed. I had the salmon alla bella and almost died of seafood happiness. It was the best I’ve ever had – and I’m an expert on restaurant salmon. Everyone else got crab cakes, and they were a little too full of old bay spice for me, but they were still very good.

    My mother-in-law is headed back to Tucson today. It makes me sad. Yeah, really. I dig my in-laws. They’re fun, funny and caring. They’ve accepted me and my family and are always great to be around. I really wish they were closer or could visit more often. It also makes me feel guilty for dragging their daughter and grandson across the country. When we’re independantly wealthy, we’ll make it up to you Connie, I promise.

  • I’ve realized that I have

    I’ve realized that I have a gigantic set of blinders on. I can ignore stuff that doesn’t work or look good as long as I think it’s cool, or even worse, if I built it. It happens at work all the time, I’ve just been oblivious to it. This fabulous intranet I built for our group is cool. I built it. Therefore, I’ve reserved my biggest blinders for criticism of it. Now, I realize that the criticism is valid, and the site is really geeky (look at who built it) and not terribly easy to navigate.

    At least I’m being big about it and admitting it. I had to send mail asking for help, “I know it sucks, how can I fix it.” What fun! I should leave the design stuff to the experts and just stick to building stuff and then make it look like they want. But, will pride let me? Maybe, maybe not. We’ll just have to wait and see. Meanwhile, I’m wearing my humble little blinders and trying not to make much noise… let’s see how that works.