I’m sure that Jean (ownedbytwins) will give us a much longer and detailed summary of our wonderful family weekend. But, before she does, I thought this article was apropos, considering that we visited the PA Renaissance Faire for our first time this year.

I ate a pickle on a sharpened stick. I still have my eyes.

CROWNSVILLE, Md. (AP) — An Anne Arundel County fire official says a 10-year-old boy seriously injured his eye at the Maryland Renaissance Festival when he accidentally stuck a skewer in his eye.

 

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= Sunday July 27, 2008 =

Me: *Yawn*

Alia: Dad, you yawn like a hippopotamus

Me: *blink*

She’s been able to say the word hippopotamus since very early. Who know why.. is it easy for kids to say? Does she like the hard syllables? I have no idea. She pretends she is one during her bath at night (sometimes she’s a seahorse or a mermaid). But that comment yesterday caught me totally off-guard. Couldn’t believe she made the comparison.

As an aside, you should be able to see the images now on LJ. It was brought to my attention by delbruc that my image links were always broken when it was cross-posted. This wasn’t a problem with the images, so much as the fact that I blocked all hotlinking from sites other than my own, as I was having bandwidth stolen. So I added LJ to my list of exceptions in my .htaccess file and now the images display as they should.

Surprised no one else mentioned it, but then it could be that no one actually reads this crap, figured I was incompetent and couldn’t post a picture correctly, or assumed the network was having trouble (but only, and always, when they read my posts). I’m guessing it was #3.

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If you’re going to raise geek children, it’s a good thing to have geek friends.

Saturday was the twins 3rd birthday party. The first present opened was an Imaginext  Pirate Ship by Fisher-Price

It has Pirates.

It has ZOMBIE Pirates.

I mean, come on.. how much geekier can you get than that? I’m sure it was easy for Mike and Sam to actually pick this item out, because, truth be told, Mike is a 3 year old himself. He was as excited about playing with it as they were.

Connor took one look at it, opened one of the accessory packs (a skeletal shark) and decided he didn’t want to open any more presents. He had the one he wanted.

The ship has ‘action points’ on it, allowing for things like raising the anchor, or firing the cannons. You put the pirate in the appropriate place and turn it, and then the magic happens. Very cool indeed.

He played with it all night Saturday, and all day Sunday (except for the time when Alia had the captain and they were fighting over it). I’m sure, even as I write this, he has his ‘Captain Hook’ fighting against the zombie pirates.

Last night, Alia wouldn’t eat her meatballs. But, when the two-headed dragon chariot decided to eat the ‘dragon food’, she was right behind him. Finished the whole plate. That didn’t give the dragon the strength needed to survive the onslaught of the zombie pirates though.. At this point, whatever toy Connor is holding is the one that wins.

I soon got mauled by two children snarling and growling at me, pretending to be the dragon. No sympathy from the wife, who sat there chuckling that I brought it on myself.

I did, of course, and that makes it all the better.

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I just brought these guys up at the Brooks’ party on Saturday, so it reminded me to go check out their site for new missions, and lo and behold!!

In honor of my father and uncle, I present the latest Improv Everywhere mission, Human Mirror.

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A few days ago, my wife had to deal with a nasty tick bite by going to the doctor and having the bugger extracted by a professional. It’s still swollen and irritated, and she’s been put on a preventative lyme’s disease medicine.

So, after getting the anesthesia shot and being poked and prodded, she decided that while she was at CVS getting her medicine, that the evening warranted some chocolate.

Unfortunately, what should have been a comfort food, was not. She opened her chocolate bar and found it all covered with white splotches and just generally stale and nasty.

That sucks.

When she got home and mentioned it to me, I told her that I had recently read an article on how to tell, by the secret codes on the candy, how old it was and when it would expire.

J: That would have been really useful to know about 30 minutes ago. You send me all the bullshit links by email all the time, and you didn’t think that information about chocolate should have been high on your list?

Um… I can’t say that I disagree with her.. I mean, I did file it away to be blogged about on a later date, I just hadn’t gotten around to it….. until now….

So here is the article from the Consumerist

I work at a small-volume store in the midwest, and the other day my supervisor asked us to check all of the candy in the checkout lanes to see if it had expired. M&M Mars and Hershey brand candy both had different, indecipherable codes on the back which tell the expiration date. After calling the 1-800 number and finding out what the codes meant, we discovered that most of our candy stock was expired by a year or more. We even found candy that went bad from 2004. I figured I should share the codes, so people won’t buy expired candy, because it’s out there.

I dunno.. Do you make a cheat sheet and keep it in your wallet? Should you take the candy back and get a refund?

And this article: How to Tell If It’s Good Chocolate

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For thousands of years, labyrinths have existed in a multitude of cultures. They have been used as ceremonial pathways, protective sigils, traps for unwelcome spirits and for games and dancing. They have been used for spiritual and artistic journeys. I’ve only recently started learning about them, and was surprised at the depth of their history. I was even more surprised to find the amount of labyrinths that still exist today. I’m thinking I’m going to have to visit the one in Longport, NJ now.

One of the themes of the ARG I am currently following is about parallel universes. Labyrinths are being used as a foundation to allow these worlds to communicate, synchronize and prevent their destruction. As fictional as that is, the factual information that is scattered through is what drew me into the labyrinth history.

Recently, we were instructed to create/walk a personal labyrinth, as well as document it. You were supposed to think of a life changing decision you made in the last 4 years, and consider how your life would be different had you chosen a different path — for in an alternate universe, someone had. How would their life continue on their own path, making further decisions.

By reflecting on this decision, it allows for that sense of meditation and synchronization with yourself, as I see it in a very spiritual way.

Only a few have been created so far. But the artistry of this one inspired me to to walk my own personal labyrinth Sunday night.

Let me just tell you what a pain it was though.. I had planned to do the night time candle thing from the beginning, but after setting it all up there was quite the wind. The ground was marked with flour, as I wanted something that was white and would reflect the candle light and be seen at night. Bad weather was in the forecast for the next two days, so my window of opportunity was small. Rather than wait, I pressed ahead. I wound up making aluminum foil ’shields’ to place around the candles and keep them from blowing out. This kept them from going out every 15 seconds as was the case before. Now, it was only every few minutes.

The new problem was that the shields also drastically reduced the light’s ability to pool. So instead of having a nicely illuminated labyrinth, I had one that was barely visible on the camera, in turn causing what little that could be seen to be out of focus.

Since the journey was planned and the destination in sight, I aimed to complete it. I worked with what I had, and hoped that the artistry outweighed the technical difficulties.
If you take the time to watch it, I want to thank you in advance.

Sometimes its good to reflect on the choices you’ve made, whatever it is that prompts you to do so in the first place.

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Sadness can be eaten via Waxy.org

Lies I’ve told my 3 year old recently

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So how do you learn how to apply deodorant properly? Obviously the instructions are less than stellar, and depending on whether you use a stick or spray, instructions will vary. You think that a wiki entry wasn’t necessary? Obviously it is, because obviously not all of us know how to do it properly.

We had a very heated discussion on this topic Tuesday evening after the funeral. The unknown BO smell was obviously a fault of failure to apply properly. I was chastised by my cousin Nick for suggesting that I might only do it 2 times per arm (up/down). In fact, I was told in no uncertain terms that I should be doing it 6-8+. Not if you are to believe the wiki entry above, where it says “one to four strokes should do it.

If you wanted to ask this woman, it’s more likely that 20-25 is a better answer, along with full arm swirling and complete coverage for 10-15 seconds.

Luckily, I didn’t ask her. (in retrospec, maybe I did, because Tuesday morning before the funeral I wanted to make double-triple sure because it was a long day, and I think I averaged 20 strokes per arm) But I was significantly annoyed enough not knowing the number of strokes I used to count this morning. I actually forgot on the first pit, and only counted on the second. This makes for a more accurate count, if you ask me. Because I wasn’t trying to fudge it for the camera. I actually did 8 strokes. 4 down and 4 up in rapid succession. That’s sufficient.

I’m happy with the results of my official investigation. Obviously, if I was the source of the stank, it wasn’t because I didn’t learn it properly from my father (who uses a spray by the way) and have for years been subjecting the public to my two-stroke inadequacies.

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