Daughter wrote me a poem last night.
When the clouds become dark,
And when the dog doesn’t bark,
I become very, very sad.
The only way
For me to be gay
is sunshine, a treat, and Dad.
🙂
Note: this poem comes from the innocent and loving heart of my Little Girl. Don’t twist it around (e.g. “gay”).
Just when I thought I’d be getting back in the swing…. 2 are down.
Youngest was ill with something last week but seems to be over it now. Around 3 AM his morning Daughter wakes me up.
“Daddy?”
“Huh… Yes?”
“Tummy….”
and proceeds to throw up on the side of my bed.
Joy.
And now Wife seems to have it.
Oldest and I remain on the hitlist….
Thankfully it just seems to be annoying for a few days, worst at the onset then once you throw up you’re on the road to recovery.
I can’t wait for my turn! 🙂
Today has been bittersweet for me.
I took Oldest to the dentist to get braces installed on his teeth. Braces: a rite of passage in modern teenager-life. This milestone has been achieved! Now it will be what? two or so years before they’re removed. I took a picture just before he sat down in the chair. I know when I next see him with clean teeth he’s going to look really different from this picture.
First we had to get a cleaning done. Originally he was to get that done last week but some jackass flew a plane into a building and so the roads were closed and we’d never get through. (Aside: we drove by the building today… that was crazy to see). So we got the cleaning done, then had a couple hour break, then back for the braces. During the break we had lunch then had time to kill. Some weeks ago Wife uncovered a Toys R Us gift card Oldest had received as a gift a couple years ago and still had a fair balance on it. During the break we headed over to a Toys R Us and Oldest bought some LEGO.
While walking through the store I passed the infant section. It brought back memories of infant-times and little inside jokes Wife and I share. And there I was… with Oldest. I don’t feel my age; I feel like a kid in so many ways. I still find it hard to believe I’m a father, that I have 3 kids, and that the first one of those kids came along oh so long ago. It was just yesterday I brought him home from the hospital; cliché to say, I know, but the feeling is genuine. And here I am… with a teenager… my teenager, progressing through one of those teenager milestones by getting braces.
I’m happy to see him grow up. In fact, seeing how he handled himself today? I’m quite proud of him. I can see the man this boy is growing into. But seeing him grow up also makes me sad. Not that I want him to be an infant again, but knowing the day is coming when he’s going to leave the house… and damn, I’m going to miss him something awful.
Cirque du Soleil’s Alegría came to Austin for a 5 night run at the Cedar Park Center.
Last night I took the family to see opening night.
I’ve seen many Cirque shows on TV; Bravo or A&E, I forget which would play the shows and many times run marathons. Wife and I always enjoyed watching them. Of the shows, Alegría was always a favorite. So that it came to town and we could see it live? Awesome.
The kids have never been to any sort of circus, or experienced anything quite like this. We played some promo videos we found online. Daughter of course was excited about it. Youngest wasn’t too sure but did think it’d be neat. Oldest? He made up his mind that he was going to hate it, of course. 🙂 In the weeks since the ticket purchase and leading up to last night, everyone’s respective sentiments towards the show only strengthened. I just encouraged Oldest to go in with an open mind and let it be what it will be; even if he ends up not liking it, he’ll have the experience. I was taken to many events as a child that didn’t appeal to me at the onset and afterwards I knew I’d never do again. However I know my life is a bit richer for the experience. Besides, I’d remind him of all the times he knew he’d hate something and ended up liking it in the end.
And so we went. We decided to have dinner out, and since it was Ash Wednesday seafood was on the menu. I found this little place in Cedar Park called CR Surf & Turf (Yelp listing). Seemed to be decently reviewed and sure enough, the place lived up to the review. It’s a little place, but business was steady and the place was generally 75-90% full the entire time we were there. Service wasn’t horrible, but wasn’t great (e.g. no one ever refilled Wife’s water, or even came by after the food was delivered to ask how things were). Still, the folks were friendly and if you needed anything it was easy enough to ask. The place isn’t too fancy either, but who cares. What’s important is the food and my my my my my…. it was good. We started with a fried calamari. We expected it to be like everyone else does it: little bits of squid, battered and deep fried to a brown, served up in a mound on a plate with cocktail sauce. It was far from that. A light golden batter, meaty cuts of squid, and a fantastic addition of sautéed onions and other things including some sliced fresh jalapeno (sorry, I can’t remember it all). But my my it was delicious, and so different from the norm. Just fantastic. Everyone had their different plates of food and it was all done very well. The fish was delicious, cooked just right. Even scallops, which are so easy to screw up, were done right. Anything fried (e.g. Oldest had a plate of fried stuff) was a very light batter, crunchy, and didn’t feel heavy. I had grilled asparagus as a side, and it was cooked just right… nothing overdone or underdone. And everything came to our table hot… like freshly cooked hot. Just awesome. I’m telling you folks… this was some really good stuff. If the place wasn’t so far of a drive away I think it’d be a regular place for us. Highly recommended. But anyway…. this isn’t a food blog, but the place was so good I had to give them some credit.
So we get to the Cedar Park Center, find our seats. I always try to get good seats for things and this was no exception. Section 122, row C. It gave us a great view of the entire stage, and comfortable viewing as well (no craning your neck to see everything). One thing I’ll repeat about the Cedar Park Center is the place is tiny and the seats are cramped, but there really aren’t any “bad seats”… even the cheap nosebleeds aren’t going to be terrible. I’d say the only “bad seats” would be the ones directly to the left and right of the stage, since you’d be obscured at times (e.g. the large net at the end for the Aerial High Bar performance).
What can I say about the show other than it was well-executed. I’ve seen the show numerous times on TV, but seeing it live was wonderful. The talent, the skill, the ability of the performers is amazing to watch. The kids were certainly wow’d by a lot of things. Of course, I think for them the best part was watching the clowns. I can’t say I blame them… the clown act was updated a bit and was hilarious, especially the use of some running gags. I know Oldest liked the Fire-Knife Dance too.
Speaking of Oldest… at intermission he comes up to me:
“Dad… I’m going to have to eat my words.” And he gives a slight smile.
Yeah I know, Son. I heard you laughing. I saw you hold your breath during some of those death-defying feats. I saw your attention totally captured. It’s all good. 🙂
Returning from the mailbox yesterday I started flipping through the latest Cabela’s flyer.
Tactical Turkey shotgun.
What the fuck is a TACTICAL turkey shotgun? To help you take out those Ninja turkeys? Has Al-Qaeda started recruiting gobblers? Or is this perhaps to help prepare for great turkey uprising, because they’re tired of the mass slaughter of their feathered brethren every November?
*sigh*
So Youngest overhears me spouting off about “tactical” and he asks what the word means. I explain what the word really means, then I explain how it’s become bastardized by marketing departments. How is making the barrel of a gun a particular length, tactical? How is making something out of black plastic, tactical? Giving it a pistol grip is tactical (so all handguns must be tactical by definition). We can’t forget needing a shoulder thing that goes up. Hell, you can make a pen tactical! Of course, CMMG understands how silly this all is, thus we have tactical bacon, black can of course.
Hrm. Does anyone make tactical toilet paper yet? It’d have to be black (natch), the tube would be made of plastic (not cardboard) and come with an ergonomic grip for ease of deployment. I’m sure if we could put a fart silencer on it that’d jack up the tacticalness.
Oldest and Daughter wandered over as I was explaining all of this to Youngest. My kids agree, it’s silly.
Updated: of course, earlier this morning I posted on the “tactical reload”. What makes it so tactical? Using the proper definition of the term, aren’t all reloads ultimately tactical? Bitch bitch bitch… 🙂
I’m working on an effort where every day I teach my kids something useful. Doesn’t really matter the topic, just a little something every day.
I only just started a few days ago and so far we covered things like stopping bleeding, RICE, different hammers and how to use them, and today we started on knots. I’ll probably stick with the knot thing for a while, because hey… I like knots. All that Boy Scouts growing up.
I wanted to share an excellent website that teaches knots, called Animated Knots by Grog. Covers all your major knots from things like rescue knots, household knots (including tying a tie), Scouting knots, fishing knots, whipping and coiling, and even fun stuff like the monkey fist. Yes, we’re going to tie one of those eventually.
Via referral from foo.c, I purchased about 600 used .38 Special cases off a guy. They arrived today. Threw half in the tumbler and by the time I was done with dinner so too was the brass clean enough.
I spot-checked my Lock-n-Load. Looks like it started throwing 3.7 grains of Titegroup instead of 3.5. That might explain why the last batch felt a bit snappier. I readjusted back to 3.5 grains and it seemed to hold steady there. I’ll try this load out vs. the previous load next time I’m at the range and see what differences I can perceive.
Oldest helped me out. Something about the factory-nature of it all appeals to him. It’s cool. Got to spend time together. Let him run the press for a bit. He’s coming to understand “the feel” of it all.
As mentioned previously, there’s one slot in the shell plate that refuses to come in line at the priming station. Actually that’s not the correct way to describe it, but it’s the way I’m able to keep track of it. The guy at Hornady told me to adjust the right pawl. So I adjusted it… I kept adjusting it…. good grief how much to adjust it before I’ll see a difference? And then I saw a difference. Every time the ram went up, things would jam. You see, the right pawl affects the advancing of the shell plate at the top of the ram (bottom of the stroke). It’s the left pawl that advances the plate when the ram comes down (the handle comes up). So…. I put the right pawl back where I started and started to adjust the left pawl.
Lo and behold, things seem to be working.
Unfortunately I didn’t have enough primers left (only brought so many into the garage) so I didn’t get to go through a lot of cycles. But I do think things are better now. Or at least, now I know the correct one. I’ll chalk it up to the Hornady guy not fully understanding what I was saying or that I didn’t explain it to him well enough (i.e. gonna blame myself before I blame him). Oh well. Learned from it. 🙂
Got about 165 more .38 Special rounds loaded. Hopefully that will be enough for the Claude Werner class next month.
Not too long ago, Jay G was lamenting the state of parenting. Chris Byrne was then motivated to write about 5 rules for good behavior.
In that vein, yesterday I read a friend’s Facebook status that linked to this, 12 steps to raise a juvenile delinquent. It’s all in the same vein, just a different approach in the writing. Reprinting:
Credit says: “Taken from a pamphlet entitled Twelve Rules for Raising Delinquent Children distributed by the Houston Police Department.”
Remember: you are (supposed to be) the parent; act like it.
There is no begging, no pleading, no bargaining with your kids. Limits are essential. Saying “no” is good for them.
This is a tale of customer service that I think went above and beyond, thus it is a tale that must be told.
Christmas wish lists.
Children all wanting Nerf blasters from Santa.
I turn to Amazon.com because they’re the only ones that appear to have the particular models in stock.
One model, the Nerf Raider Rapid Fire CS-35 seems to have 3 flavors for sale: the regular version, a version with 100 bonus darts, and a version that comes with a second drum magazine. I think the second magazine is where it’s at, so that’s what I… err… Santa puts in the order for.
UPS man delivers very close to Christmas Eve. When the box arrives we just put it into the closet and don’t look at it until Elf-time late at night on Christmas Eve.
Ugh. They sent me the wrong model. They sent the 100-dart bonus pack, not the extra drum version. I’m bummed, but what can I do? These are from Santa, something must be delivered from The Fat Man® by morning time, so I have to run with what I was given. Ultimately that’s OK as the kids won’t know one way or the other, but there was the principle of it. Furthermore, when I went to the computer to double-check the order and invoice to ensure I didn’t mess it up (because all 3 flavors were in my shopping cart at one point, maybe I removed the wrong ones?), I realized that 1. I did correctly submit the order, 2. the price difference between what I ordered and what I received was $22!! Yikes. If it was a simple product flub that’d be one thing, but that’s a fair chunk of money.
I contacted the seller, The Toy Giant (they were selling via Amazon). I explained the situation, provided copies of the invoices, pictures of everything. In the end, it was their mistake, but I won’t be hard on that. It’s a rushed time of year, I’m sure one of their busiest, and given the similarities in the product ordered vs. delivered I can certainly understand the mistake. No hard feelings, no big deal. All I asked for was for them to refund the $22 difference to my credit card, since that’s about all that could be done given the Christmas circumstances.
Their reply?
First, it was prompt, which was great.
Second, they offered to send me the correct product. I quote from the email:
I don’t mind shipping the version with the extra drum and you can keep both.
I was certainly caught off-guard by that. They admit their mistake, and not only do they correct it but they expect nothing in return.
I don’t know what brought that on, if it’s their normal course of action or was brought on by the Christmas circumstance. But it doesn’t matter. They didn’t have to do what they did, but they did it.
That’s some great customer service. They didn’t just make things right, they went beyond. Or who knows… maybe to their bottom line it’s not beyond, maybe it was cheaper and easier for them to do what they did. Who knows. Doesn’t really matter. The perception to the customer is certainly a great one. I’m left with a very positive impression.
Ah…. Christmas morning.
The sounds of children tearing into wrapping paper as they open their gifts.
That’s the easy part.
The hard part is Dad having to tear through all the packaging to actually extract the toy. 🙂
I am so thankful for my Leatherman Wave. Knives for cutting out packaging. Pliers and wire cutters for removing those !*%@ing twist tie-downs. Screwdrivers to open and close battery compartments.
For my Leatherman Wave, I am thankful. 🙂
Merry Christmas, y’all.
Stuff From Hsoi 