Frenzied Daddy

I learned me some gud lessons this morning.

1. The theat of “Hurry up and get ready to go or I’ll make you scrape the windows!” isn’t very useful against an eight year old used to a slightly warmer climate.
2. Eight year olds aren’t very … efficient … window-scrapers. Not even when they’re powerering the scraper and not being rubbed against the hoarfrost on the window

… but she had fun doing it— it was very reminiscent of me scraping Dad’s windows in Anchorage.

Like the Zeroboss, I don’t particularily care that Jennifer and Brad are splitting. What I did notice though, is the Internet rumor that they’re splitting over Brad’s phone conversations with Angelina Jolie. Sexy phone calls with Angelina Jolie whilst married to Jennifer Aniston. Brad, you’re both a hero and a dumbass. (labels courtesy of fark.com).

And yes, I did post this just to use the word ‘whilst’.

HAH

The trouble, as I’m sure I’ve told you before, with trying to raise daughters (or sons, I imagine) with brains and spines of their own is their willingness to sharpen these tools by using them as weapons against you. Consider: Daddy, don’t you want to play with me before I grow up?

We’ve instituted friday night ‘Family Meetings and Game Night’ where we put everything down, open up the discussion in a “safe” context, and try to handle the business of managing a family. I continually butt heads with the Miss B over silly stuff; when it’s time to go to bed, when it’s time to get up, what’s for dinner, you know, the little bits that keep the world whirling around. At the last meeting, it was asked; why does Miss B argue with me a lot more than she argues with her mom? Miss B freely admits it’s because I’m a pushover, and that when she argues with me, she might get her way. I guess the parenting gurus are right; I need to learn to be firm but fair.

These Friday night meetings are pretty good for us; a couple of weeks ago, we talked about cough an issue two people had with one person. And as a result, the two people pledged to play with the one person more often, in fact, at least some each evening. (gasp!) Lo and behold, the week afterwards, the one person pointed out that certain folks were not keeping up their ends of the bargain — so she (I mean, they) didn’t feel obligated to hold up hers theirs.

I tell ya, give them the powers of observation, negotiating skills and a feeling of right and wrong, and they turn on you.

Local boy Brad Fitzpatrick (he’s from Beaverton) has sold out. W00T him and his bank account.

A long time ago, in a galaxy far far away, Brad wrote a little bit of software to enable himself and his friends to share schedules and life events. Now, the userbase is up to about a hundred thousand, generally characterized as whiny angst-filled teen writers. Well, except for Gwenidh. Hiya Gwenidh.

The company that bought Live Journal is Six Apart; they make Movable Type and TypePad. That’s an interesting conjunction; LiveJournal and Movable Type. Of course, I’d be happiest if they moved all the LJ users to WordPress, but … hey, we can’t all be elite hedonists.

It’ll be interesting to see how this pans out for the whiny angst ridden folks. I see that they’re getting TrackBacks — I hope they get a more friendly non-LJ user commenting system. And I repeat my statement that I’d be happy to lower my consulting fee for anyone who wants to buy a domain and set up WordPress, and move from their LJ installation to WP. Keep in mind that WP uses PHP and MySQL, so your hosting provider (I love Domain Maniac, and their middle hosting tier is what you’d need) provides those as well.

$60 for an hour of Sea Otter therapy? Cool! You may have to scroll down to Jan 8 and look at ‘Behind the Scenes…’ - their name anchor tags weren’t working when I made this entry.

Otters are very popular in our house. They’re my inner mascot, because they remind me to keep the playful spirit alive. And the women like them because they’re so cute, and they like swimming and playing in the water. My three animal mascots are herons, badgers and otters. They each have their own special meaning for me. Otters symbolize fun, Herons spirituality and Badgers the active defense that life sometimes requires- the grouchy ‘leave me alone’ attitude that sometimes takes over and won’t let go.

Miss B gave the 90s edition of Trivial Pursuit to Ms B for Christmas; it was high on Ms B’s list. We found it for about thirty-five dollars at one store, but later found it at another for much cheaper. We played it (once). It felt like a few years ago when we got Ms B mindtrap, although this time we actually got to move around the board. Ms B soundly beat us into a pulp fiction.

Of course, I blame this on Ms B’s astounding intelligence and natural wit. How else could she beat me? (stop that snickering, I heard that). Miss B had a different idea however:

Of course she won. She’s been on this planet longer than any of us.

Hmm, don’t think I could have said it any better (without getting smacked). We all laughed.

Looks like elephants are good for more than ivory, umbrella stands, or good old fashioned brush and debris clearing- their plaintive cries helped warn tourists about the impending tsunami!

Happy New Year. I fear that I’ve been remiss in my blogging duties; all the other bloggers I know have been putting up their list of 25 things about the year 2004. I just can’t get up the energy to post about last year; since last year, I’ve gained a job, a daughter, about ten pounds, and my marriage is more solid than ever. As I was telling my brother (who wondered aloud if I was on drugs at Christmas Dinner) I can’t remember the last time I was so positive looking forward into the next year.

I’m still trying to Russell rustle up some extra cash, so off I go to eBay, home of the high rollers, and Craigs List, and even RentACoder. And, of course, the google links you see to the right of the page.