Family

Unexpected support

/ hsoi

Got a call from my Mom this evening. Told her how I had just finished eating dinner. What was for dinner? Why pork ribs. But not just any pork ribs, but pork ribs I obtained myself! BTW, they were damn good… dry rub of my own creation, mopped in apple cider vinegar, let it sit for about a hour, then into the smoker at about 300-325º for 90 minutes or so, oak wood for smoke. Damn fine. But I digress.

I just said that I had ribs from the pig I shot on my hunt, and Mom didn’t flinch. You see, Mom isn’t exactly thrilled with my love of firearms… safety factor, guns in the home leads to kids being hurt, and all those other things that is understandable to think but data demonstrates otherwise. But Mom actually thought it was pretty cool. I was surprised, but welcomed her support.

After hanging up with Mom, I opted to call Dad just to say hello. Told him the same. Dad’s a little more on the gun-friendly side of things. Told him about the night hunt and the deer lease. He thought that was all pretty cool, and inquired if I was going to take the kids hunting. I said Oldest and Daughter, yes, but Youngest hasn’t shown much interest in guns period (no need to push it). Dad had to get going to dinner with some friends, but it was still a good chat.

It was welcoming to hear such support from my folks. Not that they’re unsupportive of me, but like in Mom’s case she wasn’t too hot on the guns so this was a surprise. And then for Dad to ensure I take the kids out was cool. See, Dad never took me hunting. I did have my first actual firearms experience with him (took me to shoot skeet once), but not a whole lot. So, all of these things were just welcome things to my ears. 🙂

Of course, what it means to me now is I need to have a lot of game in the freezer for when they come to visit. Gotta feed the folks well. 🙂

New Kitteh

/ hsoi

How did this happen?

We now have a new cat in the house. Well, kitten.

If I remember the story correctly, my in-laws were driving and saw this little kitten lying on the road. They stopped to check it out (they rescue many animals; seems to have become an informal hobby), thinking it was dead. Turns out, it was only stunned (pining for the fjords no doubt), but was covered in fire ants and was probably going to die. They took it to the vet, got her checked out, shots, all that. Kitty seems to be OK. They were going to give her away, and being as small and young as she is (we estimate 2-3 months old) I know there’d be no problem with that because the cute is strong with this one.

And as a result…. we have a new cat.

We get to the in-laws yesterday and get told about the kitten (they kept it in the bathroom because some of the dogs would probably play too rough). Kids go to visit and of course, instant love and cries of “Oh Dad, can we keep it?”

“No.”

“Please?”

“No.”

So what do kids do when Dad denies them? Turn to Mom.

Wife sees kitty. Falls in love.

“Honey, please?”

“N…..” *begrudging groan* “Fine.”

Later Wife tells me she was having a talk with Daughter. “Mom, I know why Dad said we could have the cat. Because he can’t say no to you.” 🙂 Damnit… my secret is out.

I said we could bring home kitty on one condition: trial period. We have two other cats, which I shall refer to as Gordita and Twitchy. Gordita and Twitchy are very well bonded to each other. I wasn’t sure how a 3rd wheel would work into this, especially a little kitten that doesn’t know its place (yet). Furthermore, Gordita may be a little runty butterball, but I’ve never seen a cat that fights with such intensity or has such lightly quick reflexes and awareness — she’s amazing. I wasn’t sure if she might scrap, and if so if kitten might be honestly harmed. Twitchy is the wild card. She’s nicknamed Twitchy for a reason. I wasn’t sure if she might smack kitten around, or if Twitchy might go and hide under the bed never to be seen again… that’s not good either. So, I told Wife and kids that keeping the kitten required a trial period just in case there were integration issues. Honestly, I didn’t expect any real issues, but better safe than sorry.

So we get kitten home and start the integration. Little kitten is first introduced to the litter box (vital!). We kept her shut in the laundry room for a bit while we unpacked and said Hi to the other cats. Then we let kitten out and she started to meow. Immediately other 2 cats come slinking down the stairs in search of this new meow. Much curiosity ensues. Good thing is kitten isn’t totally inept and is old enough to scrap. There’s lot of sniffing, poking at each other, and kitten knows how to turn sideways and make herself big. But she also seems to know she’s a little thing by comparison.

Gordita follows her around trying to watch every moment. Twitchy was a little wary and freaked at first, but eventually just watched from a distance. Eventually, Gordita lost interest and Twitchy got to a point where as long as kitten didn’t invade personal space, she’d be fine else get a hiss, growl, and perhaps a smack. And that’s about where things are as of this morning. Kitten is running around learning where things are and playing with anything she finds on the floor. Oh, and the strange kitten she saw staring back at her from the reflection in the dishwasher… that one will be dealt with later. 😉  Other 2 cats are just going about their business, watching kitten, ignoring kitten, ensuring kitten stays out of their personal space.

I think we’re going to be keeping her. *sigh*

Oh, and Oldest named her. He said the first thing that came into his head and the other two kids liked it, so, it’s official.

Ritz Bitz

Ritzy for short.

🙂

TomTom – the aftermath

/ hsoi

So the TomTom finally got unpacked and set up, and we set off using it. Wife’s Granddaddy’s funeral was yesterday up in middle of nowhere Texas. It’s a joke to estimate how small a town is by the traffic control devices. Does it have a stop light? if so, how many? No stop light? Does it have just a flashing red or yellow light at some “major” intersection? How about a Stop sign? or maybe just a Yield sign? Or no signs at all… where everyone in town knows each other so you can just wave each other by?  Well, this town was so small I don’t think there were any traffic devices as you went down “main street”. Yeah, that small. So, since it was way up in north Texas and I had never been there before, might as well try out this navigation device and see what happens.

First, the geek part of me just got a silly giggle out of it. It’s just a new toy and it’s fun to play with. When we first left the house and I programmed in the way to get to my in-laws (first stop), I was totally a kid playing around. I’d play with the points of interest on the map. I got a kick out of how it could estimate your speed and how it would know the speed limit for the road you were on and then set off an alarm if you drove too fast (Wife was driving, so it was funny once the kids understood what the beeping was, how they would prod Mom about driving too fast). 🙂  I also had it set off an alarm when we’d pass schools. Wow, didn’t realize how many schools there were; everywhere we went.

I stuck the TomTom on the windshield so everyone could see it. I didn’t like how the speaker was so quiet. It’s loud enough if everything else is silent, but once you account for road noise, maybe a little bit of music playing, it’s tough to hear. I think a really geeky thing would be integrating it with the car stereo.

I was impressed with the maps being as complete as they were, tho they didn’t give me directions to my in-law’s house… just up to their main road. They live in the country, and while the maps knew about all the roads no problem, they couldn’t get the house number. Oh well.

Since we had it on a female voice, we kept personifying the device. Eventually Wife dubbed the device my new girlfriend, because she kept nagging “turn left, turn left, turn left”. 🙂

While I didn’t always find the device necessary to help us get around, what became the most useful part was the estimates. It could tell us how many more miles to go, how much time was remaining. This was the most useful part because it was a very long day of driving and inevitably you got the “how much longer?” questions from the kids. While it’s not a problem to estimate and figure it out yourself, being able to just glance at the screen and give an answer was very useful.

The device is nifty, and I do think on longer trips we’ll certainly bring it along as there’s no harm in doing so. Based off the one trip I don’t see massive amounts of gain in having such a device, so I am happy this was a gift and not my own money spent. Frankly, I think there might be more gain in a combined device. For instance, this TomTom ONE 130 isn’t “real GPS” but rather satellite triangulation (I believe). You get something like an iPhone 3GS, that’ll be “real GPS”, apparently TomTom is going to be bringing their software to iPhone, then you have all the additional things like Internet access and phone to more fully get around and get information and well… that I think could be more useful, or rather, a more cost-effective solution than a single dedicated device.

By the end of the day, I had pretty much ignored the device (tho the “girlfriend” ribbing from Wife remained) 🙂  The novelty had worn off pretty quickly. But there’s a place for such a device. Again, it’ll get brought along on trips. The true utility of the device still to be determined.

Goodbye, Granddaddy

/ hsoi / 7 Comments

Wife’s maternal grandfather just passed away (a couple hours ago). He was 80 years old. Survived by his wife of 50+ years, and his 3 children, and oodles of grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

He was a big, tough, strong man, but with a kind and gentle heart. His health just started to deteriorate over the past year, and finally it just went. Until recently he was always active, working with his hands, building things, fixing things, hunting, working fields, whatever. Wife always tells me of many fond memories of time with him while growing up. During our marriage, I always looked forward to seeing Granddaddy (he wasn’t my Granddaddy but I called him that), especially the annual Christmas gathering at their house.

Don’t know how Christmas will be this year, other than different.

He was a wonderful and loved man, he will be missed by many.

Ozzy Osbourne cheese

/ hsoi / 4 Comments

Daughter is nibbling on a foodstuff. Goes to share it with Wife/Mom:

Daughter: Here Mom. Have some Ozzy Osbourne cheese.

Wife: What?

Daughter: You know, the Ozzy Osbourne cheese!

Wife: Oh, you mean the asiago cheese!

🙂

What to do?

/ hsoi / 2 Comments

Here’s an interesting story.

Basically, petty crime occurring (someone grabs someone else’s duffel bag and runs off, victim shouts for help). A citizen with a concealed carry permit pulls over to help out, draws his gun on the criminal and says “Stop, Police.” and works to detail the thief. However, a second armed citizen sees what’s happening and thinks that is a crime going down so he too stops to intervene. Eventually the police show up and things get sorted out.

The intentions of both citizens are good. Frankly, having more people that are willing to be helpful and not stand for criminal behavior? That’s a good thing. But the first guy to identify himself as police? That’s not good. My hope there is the guy either gets let off or only lightly punished because he did not have criminal intent in what he was doing; it’s certainly not worthy of a felony charge.

It does demonstrate a real issue however: that things may not always be what they seem. There’s stories of a bad guy coming out of the store he just robbed and complaining to the by-standers in a manner to make those by-standers think he was the victim and thus they help the bad guy get away. Things aren’t always what they seem, and we have to be careful. I do have thoughts about what would happen if I was in a self-defense situation with many others around, and there were other “sheepdogs” in the mix as well. What could happen? Could signals get crossed? Could the chaos of the situation lead to unintended things happening? It’s a situation that I don’t have an answer to, but have wondered if there is something that could be done and thus taught in schools as a part of “training and tactics” to aid in such situations. I don’t know.

But me personally? I don’t think I would have gotten involved in such a situation. To me the question to answer is “is this worth dying for?”. Petty theft? I don’t think it’s worth dying for. Actually I should check that. I may have gotten involved (all depends upon the specifics of the situation), but to pull one’s gun… that has to answer affirmatively the “worth dying for” question.

My Story

I think about what happened to me just this past Saturday evening. The family and I had gone out to dinner, then over to the bookstore. We left the bookstore, heading across the parking lot to our car. I noticed a man and a woman walking through the parking lot on a path that would eventually intersect with us. They appeared to be having some sort of a fight, a little physical, a little heated verbal exchange, and they kept walking in our direction. They appeared intoxicated, and by their appearance possibly homeless. Wife saw them too and became concerned, I just looked at her and said to get herself and the kids to the car. I was certainly in code orange, but didn’t think this would be a problem… they appeared to just be a drunk couple having their own spat, but with that level of irrationality going on who knows. Better safe than sorry. I kept my eye on things while Wife got the kids and herself into the car. As I was going to get into the car, the woman crossed behind our car and shouted to me “Want to buy some DVD’s? Brand new!” I just gave a firm “no thank you”. She kept walking; in fact, she never stopped. My guess is the fight was over the DVD’s, or at least her saying that to us was no true offer of sale… just something to piss off her male companion. As we pulled out, we saw the man had sat himself down on the curb and looked sad and upset whereas the woman had kept on walking.

I don’t know what the story was, and frankly I don’t care. My concern was for the safety and well-being of my family. There was a brief moment where both Wife and I were concerned of a physical altercation as it looked like the man might have opted to hit or otherwise rough up the woman. If that had happened, I may have intervened but initially from a distance (e.g. verbal commands, getting Wife to dial 911). I couldn’t stand by to let someone get hurt like that, but on the same token I had to ensure I didn’t put myself or my wife and children in danger either. Exactly what I would have done, again, impossible to say… all depends upon the exact situation and how things would unfold. But my guiding principle is keeping my wife and children safe; all else is secondary. In the end the question remains: is it worth dying for?

Little things

/ hsoi

A few days ago we took the kids out for ice cream. Went to the Baskin Robbins near our house.

When we were walking in, a man was sitting outside on one of the benches. We’ve seen this man before inside the BK; we believe he is the owner of the store; at least the manager, but probably the owner given what we’ve seen. We nodded and smiled and said “hello” on our way in. He smiled and said “hello” back. And we continued into the store.

Each kiddo got a single scoop on a cone, then we all went outside to sit on one of the benches, enjoy the evening, and eat our ice cream.

Within 2 seconds of her starting to lick her ice cream, Daughter’s scoop departed the cone and landed on the ground. *DOH*

We just told her to pick it up, throw it in the trash, and we’d go inside and buy her another scoop.

As we were doing this, the gentleman (owner?) spoke up. He saw what happened and told us to go back inside, get another scoop, and to tell the girls behind the counter that he said to just give us the scoop. Free.

That was unnecessary, but kind and generous. We thanked him, and spent time with our kids talking about such generous acts. Sure you could say this was just good for business, and certainly it does make us regard him and his business more positively and makes us want to go back to his store. But the man did not have to do this. That he did was a little bit of kindness, and it shows that it takes almost no effort and no expense to be good to others.

Little things mean a lot.

Finally!

/ hsoi / 2 Comments

How serendipitous!

A bunch of things finally came together and today I introduced (at least my older 2) children to Magic: The Gathering.

I started playing M:TG in grad school. When I first arrived, I met a couple guys in the department and was immediately invited to an evening at their apartment where they introduced me to the game. This would have been when The Dark expansion pack was out. I remember that because I thought that expansion was really cool and I only wish I knew the game better at that point as I would have bought a lot more expansions of that set. 🙂  I played while I was in grad school through Revised Edition, Fourth Edition, The Dark, Fallen Empires, Homelands, Ice Age, Chronicles, and into Alliances. After leaving grad school however, I had no one to play with (Wife tried, just not her thing) and the cards ended up in the closet… hoping that one day I’d get to play them again. Or sell them and make a lot of money. 😉 And while most people kept wanting me to sell them, it was always my hope that I could actually play again because I did enjoy the game so much.

Just a few weeks ago, Linoge had a posting about the game, which brought back so many memories. As well, since M:TG’s explosion in popularity years ago, collectible card games became quite the thing. I’d say the most successful other has been Pokémon. While I tried to dodge that bullet for years, eventually my kids got into it (I think due to one Christmas with my nephews some years back). I never was that upset about it, as I always figured if they liked one collectible card game they might like another! Often our kids would get together with other kids and out would come the binders of Pokémon cards… sometimes tho I felt like they cared more about collecting than playing, but I eventually did see the kids play the game. Then one day, at the birthday part of one of Oldest’s friends and I see a lot of the other boys there with cards… and not just any, but M:TG cards! Certainly recent editions, but it was M:TG and it was cool to see kids were still into it. I think that sowed a seed back in Oldest’s head.

Then the serendipitous thing was last night. My good friend W is about to move out of Texas 😦 and in the midst of packing he and his wife are trying to get rid of things they don’t want to pack and/or move. One thing was a couple big boxes of W’s old Magic cards! He sold off all the cards worth money, but that’s OK as this is about playing, not money. He gave me a lot of cards, and his cards were heavy from Alliances and Ice Age, some Chronicles and other sets from around that time. My oldest 2 kids immediately were curious about “the cards” I was taking home, so last night when I got home I pulled out a rulebook, refreshed myself on it, and introduced older 2 kids to it today. Gave them a quick overview of the rules, then we played a game.

When I was introduced to the game, the way we played was the experienced players made some decks and let the newbies play with the new decks. We would play the games open-handed, so every player’s hand was face-up on the table. This allowed no surprises and many chances for instruction. We’d play games this way until the newbies felt comfortable, then we’d move to close-hand games and normal gameplay would commence. So this is what I did with my kiddos today, playing an open-hand game with some decks I had made… decks that I made probably 13-14 years ago, still in their boxes, waiting for the day when someone would play with them again.

I’m so happy that day finally came. 🙂

The kids enjoyed it, especially Daughter. I did my best to keep things moving and keep the action high, despite the slower nature of an instructional game (lots of pausing to explain things). I also did what I could to sow the seed in Oldest’s head that he’d want to check this out… before he went to bed last night I was flipping through the cards and came across Orcish Conscripts (click the link, see the card). I knew Oldest would enjoy the humor of the artwork, and even now he’s still asking me to see more Orc cards because well… Orc cards have a lot of humor in them. Whatever works, if it keeps them interested and wanting to play.

Of course, I’ve got tons of cards between mine and the ones W gave me, so I don’t expect we’ll be buying any time soon. Besides, after reading Linoge’s post all the new rules, other things to keep up with, bleah. I’ll worry about that later. I’m sure once the kids are well-versed I’ll want to do some sealed decks, and that will mean new cards, but that’s fine. I look forward to it.

Happy day for me.