Frenzied Daddy

Wow. The French President must be laughing his fanny off. He’s marrying Carla Bruni, a supermodel, next month ( according to cnn ). This woman has also dated Donald Trump and Mick Jagger.

It’s interesting because generally the French, like me, tend to value the privacy of their public figures, but on the other hand, news of his engagement to Carla Bruni seems to be affecting his … whatever approval ratings are called in France.

… Last night was terrific fun. A friend we play evercrack 2 with has flown into town (and leaves tomorrow, sadly ), and we got together at E and A’s house. You can see E here in this video playing the Guitar (in the middle). Our friend P is on the drums ( left side ), K is playing the bass ( on the right, in the chair ), and A is in the back singing. The song is a cute little song called “Maps.” No, I don’t know why; I don’t even recognize the song!

I took another video of one of my favorite Bon Jovi songs; in this song, S is playing the Bass and J is singing in the back. Unfortunately, the battery on my phone gave out during this one and I have only about half of the song. You can see the video over at youtube.

What have I learned?

First, my rhythm hasn’t gotten any better. I did ok singing ( doesn’t really grade on pitch, just voice moving up and down and trying to hit the words ) but my drums sucked. My rhythm is so bad that one girlfriend in my youth was moved to exclaim “Damn, you’re white!” The drums were awful. But awfully fun, too.

If you’ve played guitar hero, the layout is similar; you have a … moving road of what colors you’re supposed to hit and when, so you can estimate the times for smacking the keys. With the drums, you have a cute little drum set, and you smack, smack, smack, pause, smack, smack, … you get the idea.

It really is a fun game, and it was a great way to have fun last night. I still liked the apples to apples game more than trivial pursuit, but it was fun to play a trivial pursuit with questions from the nineties!

Oh, what else have I learned? Use the damn video recorder instead of the phone!

I’m sure the author of this book meant this seriously. But I found it over at Reddit, and a lot of people were laughing at it.

I had a new experience yesterday. I was driving heck bent for vinyl to Vancouver for a couple of reasons; a meeting and some benefits. I was in a hurry because I had an hour to get back and get ready for the DQ’s parent teacher conference. I zipped through the bank drive thru, barreled up the road to Marine Drive, turned the corner, and after the light, the Ford was running kind of slowly.

Perhaps I needed to give it more gas. I was doing 20 in a 45 MPH zone. I pressed the gas pedal to the metal … wait. It was already at the metal. I had the damn thing floored and it was going 20, no make that 15 miles … and then it sputtered and died. Imagine my surprise!

I guess the only “idiot light” for gas in the Ford is the match I light after I go through Taco Bell.

I pushed it into a handy parking lot and walked over to the security booth to explain my problem. They seemed to understand, but I was speaking into an answering machine, so maybe that’s wishful thinking.

Never had a car run out of gas before. A smart person would have flipped open his cell phone and dialed AAA. I, on the other hand, had left my phone at home to be charged. I told myself all the way home that I was smarter than this. Luckily it wasn’t raining or my mood would have been really damp when I got home. It’s only about 2 1/2 miles home, so I made it just as Ms B was pulling around the corner to take us to the appointment.

Ms B dropped me off with some gas and stuck around to make sure I got it running; no problem. We were only about five minutes late to the conference.

Or a trip back into the dark ages. There’s gasp no cd player!! Ohhh the horror! And there are no cup holders!AIEE!!

But it’s great. It probably gets 20-25 mph on the highway, we’ll see about around town. It’s clean, it drives well, and it does have a fm radio. So those are all strong points. But there is one thing that makes me ignore the lack of cd player and cup holders; those can be replaced, after all. But I can control the windows in the back seat from the front, and I can lock the kids out of them.

What’s that? Your hands are out the window? Guess you lose it. What’s that? You’re falling asleep on the way home from school? MUAHAHAHAHA how about a blast of cold air! Hurray!

So, aah yeah, we have the 93 explorer, and it’s pretty cool. There’s some minor damage but overall it will last us a year and then some.

And after driving it? I may just name it “Sherman.”

Miss K is working hard at getting potty trained. Yeah, it’s a lot later than Miss B did, but she’s been in disposables, so I expect her to be training late. That and I’m a slacker. So right now, she’s in a pullup overnight and she’s in regular big girl panties during the day.

Thursday, I was getting her ready to take to the sitter’s to play while I worked and I had to change her panties. I wrestled her out of the pullup and tossed her the big girl panties to put on while I walked the pullup to the garbage. ( Dogs. Don’t ask. ) I came back and, while she’s had lots of practice putting on her panties, she had both legs in one leg hole and they were stuck coming up her knees. I helped her out of them and explained them to her, and put them on and pulled them up to her knees ( so she had experience pulling them to her knees and past her knees, sort of an overall whole-experience thing ). I turned around to get her pants, and she started hollering at me —

“Daddy ! My bottom’s up here!”

Uh, ok, honey.

Miss B, playing Kingdom Hearts with Miss K watching on.

Miss K: “What’s his name?”
Miss B: “Bambi”
Miss K: “Why?”
Me: “Because his mother wanted him to have gender confusion issues.”
Miss K: “Why?”
Ms B: *glares at me daring me to come up with something the three year old will understand*

I was reading about Ian McKellen playing King Lear (one of my favorites of Shakespeare’s plays), and found myself flabbergasted. No, it wasn’t about him ( Sir McKellen ) dropping his trousers during the storm in Act 4. No, it wasn’t about the fan letter he got from the seven year old. No, it wasn’t reading that he only was offered Gandalf after Sean Connery, Peter O’Toole and Anthony Hopkins turned it down. No, it wasn’t that he “enjoys being a star” because he’s very shy and hates going into rooms with a bunch of strangers, so his stardom is a blessing because everyone knows who he is ( thus there are no more rooms with many strangers ).

What surprised me was that he’s gay. It’s funny; my moms are gay, I’ve got gay friends, I’ve been around gays and lesbians for as long as I remember — they’re part of my landscape like rivers, plants and republicans. So it’s kind of surprising to me to be … so surprised … about Sir Ian.

Not only is he gay, but he also was one of the founding members of Stonewall, named after the Stonewall Riots. And he regrets the years he spent lying to his parents and friends about himself. Reading some of the other interviews with him, he said that staying in the closet is itself a homophobic act and demonstrates self-hatred (I’m paraphrasing). But he likes himself, and so he’s out.

Generally, spiders don’t bug me. Sure, black, bulbous bodies with spindly legs that have sharply bent joints … they get squished. I don’t mind the little brown garden spiders though. Yeah, I practice racial profiling and prejudice against spiders. Sue me.

I’m not going out like this poor guy: German Man. Note to Chris: do not click. Note to others: the story is not believable for many reasons.

When I was younger, even when Ms B and I first got married (well, ok, up until about six years ago) I had a terrible phobia about flying bugs… I would run and jump around like a monkey if I thought a bee was in my hair. I was more in danger of scaring the poor thing than anything else. Miss B has been following in my footsteps, which has caused me to consciously “worry less” when there’s flying insects nearby. She claims she likes some common bugs but other ones disturb her. And flying ones, well, just give up.

I’m on call this week which means I go to bed early and I’m up early. This morning I came down to find a note on the basement door that read “there is a moth inside. please remove.” in Miss B’s best handwriting.