Future Poltergeist

Micah is doing this and I'm going to give it a shot too: The first five people to respond to this post will get something made by me! My choice – For you. This offer does have some restrictions and limitations: 1. I make no guarantees that you will like what I make! 2. What I create will be just for you. 3. It’ll be done within a year. {might be a little while} 4. You will have no clue what it’s going to be. It may be a story. It may be poetry or maybe even some creation I haven’t even invented yet. I may draw or paint something. I may bake you something and mail it to you. I may even sew something for you. Who knows? Not you, that’s for sure! 5. I reserve the right to do something extremely strange. The catch? Oh, the catch is that you must re-post this on YOUR blog and offer the same to the first 5 people who do the same on your blog.

Apparently this is the 30th anniversary of the Walkman. (Hans, correct me on this but I think we got ours about 1984 or so...). Anyway, the BBC asked a modern kid to swap his I-pod for a Walkman and the results are kind of interesting . [Warning this brought home the generation gap to me in a way that almost nothing else really has.] When I saw it for the first time, its colour also struck me. Nowadays gadgets come in a rainbow of colours but this was only one shade - a bland grey. It took me three days to figure out that there was another side to the tape. That was not the only naive mistake that I made; I mistook the metal/normal switch on the Walkman for a genre-specific equaliser, but later I discovered that it was in fact used to switch between two different types of cassette. He was also bugged by the lack of a 'shuffle' option. Man, that takes me back though. Combined with all of the Michael Jackson nostalgia it's like a mid 80's revival! Throw in some stra...

Let's see what we've got tonight... We have an old fashioned box shaped TV. We plan to have this TV for awhile, until it breaks or an absolutely great deal on flat screens. Probably. We've noticed that more and more shows are formatted for the wide angle and that means that the ends are cut off. I'm kind of afraid for what football games will look at this fall. It's been about four months since we reduced our cable. Obviously we've gotten by somehow. I do miss some of the other channels. The sports and the movies. And especially the music channels. Speaking of music, I-Tunes has added to their library. I complained that I couldn't get this or this . Now I have them. And this one gets stuck in the FP Gal's head. BTW, this is my new favorite video of Relia. Last night's dinner featured plenty of tongue wagging. That's it!

Yesterday we went for a trip up north. We left in the morning, first stopping at the gas station for gas and munchies. The FP Gal got some milk to share with Relia. She let her take a sip and then took it from her while I got on the interstate and needed to accelerate. There were protests and I told her she needed to be patient. She waited one beat and with perfect timing screamed, "No!". It was very funny. Up we went and she didn't sleep at all on the drive. We stopped at the rest area just outside of Duluth and were treated to thick, thick fog. I love that cool moist deliciousness. It turned out that the clouds were at that exact level, once we drove down the hill it was open space. We had a quick spot of lunch and then drove further north to a beach that the FP Gal loves. There is a small turnout and then a short walk to the rocks. The whole thing is largish surf rounded rocks and stones. We tried to teach her how to skip rocks and ended up giving her a lo...

I enjoyed this .

There are some people who insist on driving in the left lane even though they aren't passing anyone. Often these people will drive right at the speed limit. Sometimes they will speed up a notch if you try and pass them on the right. These people are jerks.

(Yes, the one that came out last month.) We finally got a chance to go out and see it today. It was fun! And very well done. We're glad that we went. Not a good enough review? Ok, so this movie goes back to tell the story before the original series starts. There are introductions of all the old favorites, all well done. The storyline worked and the special effects were quite well done. I hope the same crew makes more Star Trek movies. (One small thing, they don't really show a 'cliff' in Iowa. I think it's some kind of quarry.)

Santorini, Greece

For today, let's try and forget the complete weirdo that he became. Here is a video from back in his happy days. At least he looked happy. Happiness and celebrity don't really mix well.

The new Transformers movie has been roundly panned and I don't plan on seeing it. Did see something interesting today though. The full title is Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen. (Why do movie studios do this? Just call the dern thing Transformers 2 and be done with it. You're not adding any value by giving it a subtitle. You just aren't.) Anyway, I'm seeing the title abbreviated as Transformers: ROTF. In modern textspeak 'ROTF' means 'rolling on the floor' and it usually means 'I'm laughing so hard that I'm rolling on the floor'. I don't know how deliberate the chosen title was but 'Transformers: Rolling on the Floor' is a great title. (For some reason I can picture Kevin Bacon in it.) It made me wonder about other possible good movie subtitles for Transformers 2: When Teamates Fall Optimus Makes Good Living on Love Keeping The Halo X-ray Beyond All Interns In My Hellish Others

The Oscar people are expanding the Best Picture nominees to 10 starting next year. That's twice as many as they've had for the past sixty some years. Coincidentally, that's how long the award broadcast will now last. Does that mean that they'll follow my advice and split the award between dramas and comedies? Mr. Ganis said that no changes had been made to other Oscar categories. He also emphasized that the nominees would not be subdivided, as with the Golden Globes, which are awarded for best drama as well as best comedy or musical. All 10 nominees will compete for one best-picture award. Nope. Still, if this means that 'Up' can move out of the Animated category and compete with the big boys, that makes me happy. Also found this interesting from the article: In all about 300 films were eligible for awards in 2008. Were that to hold going forward, roughly one of every 30 films would become a best-picture nominee. That makes it sound like overkill. And it a...

The FP Gal brought Relia into my office today. It's my short day so they timed it to match my finish time. She walked around and said 'hi' to everyone. Well, she did the cute little toddler wave mostly. Yep, she's into the shy phase. I'm torn about it. In some ways I wish that she was as active and funny as she is at home with us. On the other hand, I like that she wants to stay right with us. It's better than her trusting strangers too much. We did coax some animal noises out of her. And she was very happy to see a picture of an airplane. It's one of the words that she knows well. She even pointed out a triangle in the carpet. I didn't even know that she knew triangles yet! All very cute of course.

The only way to defeat the big sandwich is to stop, confront and eat it before it eats you. I'm glad that Micah is blogging again!

The ISS had a favorable viewing or the Sarychev volcanic eruption. Pretty amazing shot.

I have some sympathy for Jon, none for Kate .

It's been some time since I've done one of these: This is one of the funnier things I've seen lately. I'd like to get half a dozen of these for my car. Numbers 2, 4, 7, 9, 10, 12 and 16. Especially number 10. The ice cream turned out mostly ok. It froze more solidly than past batches and I blame that on the unmixed heavy cream. Still much better than any other blueberry ice cream out there. I love this idea . I could contribute some concepts myself. My writing notebook is already more full than it will ever be emptied. This was easily the funniest thing I saw today (via Althouse).

Let me start this post by saying that I know I have an unusual name. Well, unusual form of a common name. (And actually that isn't as true anymore. According to this it's the 183rd most popular for boys and falling. It's less common than it has been in the past 130 years.) Anyway, I've long thought that people with unusual names need to be forgiving of misspellings. It isn't done on purpose. So when someone calls me 'Pete' or writes my name as 'Peter' it doesn't bother me. But I do run into a misspelling that I don't understand. People often write my name as 'Pedor'. I'm not sure where the 'o' comes from. I asked a longtime coworker about this and she told me that she has trouble not spelling it with an 'o'. And she couldn't tell me why. My current theory is that they get so freaked out by the 'd' that they completely biff the second vowel. But that doesn't explain why it isn't an ...

Let me tell you about my day: It started well with a nice long stay in bed. Then downstairs and a big hug from Relia. She really has become a top notch hugger. Just flies right at you and picks up her feet at the end. The the FP gal had her bring me a package and a card. The package featured peanut butter cups and the card was signed by both of them. When Relia took her morning nap I had some breakfast and then up to read (and a brief nap of my own). Very nice and practically my favorite morning routine. Then we met the FP Gal's family at Outback for lunch. Good conversation and possibly the tenderest cheeseburger I've ever eaten. Relia was especially cute and after she ate we sat next to each other and played. Back home and I watched my White Sox beat the Reds 4-1. The FP Gal watched the last inning with me and that's always fun. Some people are bothered when questions are asked during a game but I kind of thrive on it. More reading and then the dinner for Relia....

We tried very hard to plan a vacation this summer. We had hoped on a week in Washington so I could further my plan to get the FP Gal to fall in love with a town out there so we could move. No go. Partly because of money, probably more because Relia is just not easy to travel with right now. Instead we are going to stay around here and enjoy a little stay-cation. We did this back in 2006 and had lots of fun. We planned for something each day and had a very good time. We hope to do the same this year but we need help. That's where you come in. 1) We need advice. We're looking at things to do either in the Cities or just a day trip away from here. Keep in mind that we'll have an almost two year old with us. It'll happen over the last week of July. What should we do? 2) We could also use some volunteers for babysitters. If anyone out there wants to take Relia overnight that would help us greatly. It might let us expand to something a little further away or at l...