Wednesday, August 29, 2007

You might be an adult if...

I was just thinking to myself today of the things that I never would have imagined doing as a kid. Here are a few of my thoughts defining adulthood.

You can walk into a department store and not immediately ride the escalator three times.

You have ever overheard a conversation such as "I was watching XYZ channel last night and there was a great documentary on..." and did not immediately stop listening after the word documentary.

You have ever paid money for anything related to a toilet. (Plunger, tissue, seat, parts, etc)

The fact that TUMS has calcium makes you more likely to buy it.

Life is not a competition (to be the Biggest, Best, Strongest, Richest, Poorest, Busiest, etc..) to you.

In response to being asked, "Do you want to Mucho size your drink? It's twice the alcohol!" you have said, "No thank you, I don't care about the amount of alcohol."

You have ever decided to replace the ground beef or sausage in a recipe with ground turkey.

You've attended a class reunion without getting drunk.



I may add more later as I think of them.

-The Krunchy Krab

Sunday, August 26, 2007

The encyclopedia of me

It's come to my attention that a popular blogging er.. theme right now is going through the alphabet, picking things for each letter that describe yourself. Since I myself once even subscribed to the theory that real men can wear pink, I will go ahead and do this. I won't however take 26 days to do it... the thought of that is depressing to me. I will instead take approximately 26 minutes.


A is for Allergic


My allergies, past and present: Nuts, Milk, Pork, Egg whites, Peanuts, Pollens, Dust, Cheese, Animal Dander, and various other foods and things too plentiful to mention. Case in point: I reacted to everything on the allergy test, including the saline injected for a control.


B is for Balding


The follicular branch of my armed forces has been in a steady retreat since 1994. From what, I am not sure. Probably from my sister who used to lock me in the bathroom and shove bread under the door so I wouldn't die. Later in life, I look back on these times and wish that we had stripped the carpet in my parents' house earlier in life because the bread wouldn't have gotten shag hair all over it with the current hardwood floors.


C is for Chainsaw


I like my chainsaw... someday maybe I'll spluge and get myself a 36" Husqvarna beast, but for now my 18" Craftsman serves me well. Show me a log, and I'll show you a pile of sawdust.


D is for Driving


I spend a good portion of my life driving. My commute is much shorter now than it used to be... but I still spend more than an hour a day driving too/from work. I wish I had a Ferrari...


E is for Elise


Elise is my daughter... there were about 24 other things that would have worked for E, it being a popular letter and all, but she wins. If you want to see why, just browse through some of my other posts.


F if for Fire


I would be disappointed in any guy who didn't use fire for F. Fire is cool. I've almost burned down many houses with fire. Also many ants. That was one of the times I almost burned down a house.


G is for Generator


The power had better go out this winter, let me tell you. Washington had several power outages this last winter, one lasting several days... weeks for some people. After the second major outage, I went out and bought a generator, and then spent the better part of the next few months (with long gaps) installing a transfer switch so we can run pretty much our whole house off of it. Of course we never had another power outage again. Figures.


H is for Holly


My wife Holly always used to complain that I didn't have a link to her on my blog, but I have a link to the subservient chicken. Since then, I take every opportunity to link to her. Again, I thought of many things for H, but she wins.


I is for Integrated Circuits


Being an electrical engineer, I spend much of my life working, thinking, and dreaming of integrated circuits. I've even designed a few. They were real dope. Anyone who's studied CMOS design is now laughing, the rest of you think I'm a dork, and you're right.


J is for Jose


Whenever my wife and I (did you see how I threw that link in there?) go on a trip, we purchase purchase something unique from where we went. On our honeymoon, we bought a Mexican marionette doll with maraccas, who we named Jose. He hangs on the wall in our daughter's play room.


K is for Kicker


Like many guys in high school, I used to be way into audio systems. At the time, the speaker of choice was the Kicker Solo Baric - I dreamed of building a system around them. While I never owned a Kicker, I did retrofit my parents' Chevrolet Celebrity with a nice custom pair of speakers that just about blew the rear window out. When a friend of mine from high school years later rode in that car with me, he said all he remembered about that car was driving really fast listening to really loud music.


L is for Lincoln Head Cents


A couple of years ago, I took up coin collecting. Collecting old money takes quite a bit of money however, so that hobby is on hold until I win the lottery. Before I came to that conclusion I managed to build a fairly respectable collection of, among other things, Lincoln Head Cents.


M is for Mom's Rolls


My mother's rolls are famous... I will drive 2500 miles through tweed to eat them. My brother in law will opt out of conflicting Thanksgiving/Christmas dinners with his family to eat them. Yep, they're that good.


N is for Numismatics


I have a couple of books on coin collecting, and in one of them it tells you to tell people you are a numismatist because it will impress them. I know I've already covered coin collecting with L, but the book told me to drop this title to impress you.


O is for Old Stuff


I like to collect old stuff. Old publications, cameras, tools, coins, books, etc. I've even got an old desktop seismograph. Again, a hobby that takes a fair amount of money, so it's kind of on hold for awhile.


P is for Php


I do a lot of web programming, both for work and personal use. Most web programmers are loyal to a language, mine is Php. It was originally meant to stand for "Personal Home Page" - it's a pretty simple server side language that can add a lot of power to your webpage.


Q is for Quotes


My website in college evolved a lot over the years, culminating in my quotes webpage. For all four years of college plus three years of grad school, I collected quotes from my professors which, when taken out of context were humorous. A very small collection of them can be seen at http://www.moedaddy.com I still do hope to someday put them all back up again. My department hired an intern from SPU this summer, and he had heard of my website (I graduated 6 years ago) so now I feel it's my duty to resurrect it.


R is for Ranger


My old faithful truck, my 89 Ford Ranger. I've had it for almost 12 years now, and it's just about got 200,000 miles on it. I'm hoping it makes it - I'm adding miles quickly, since I commute in it just about every day. It will be a sad day when I retire that truck.


S is for Squirrels


A family of squirrels dedicated to the destruction of my plants lives near my house. My wife's tulips were reduced to stems, my five marionberries dejuiced, and our herbs and vegetables dug up. I have tried fences and quickly moving projectiles (bb-gun) but have yet to win a battle. I have an ally though - our neighbor has a small yappy dog who chases them up and down our cul-de-sac and up trees. I love that dog.


T is for Tippmann


Back when I was in college and thought I was poor but really didn't know the meaning of the word expenses, I bought a paintball gun. I love it... I can go to a field, pay just the field fees and then waste all the poor suckers with rental guns. While they paint the trees behind me, I pick them off one by one. I was horrified though to see while walking through Walmart the other day, that they now carry the Tippman Custom 98. It just seems wrong.


U is for Uff Da


Being from a Norwegian family, I enjoy a good Uff Da every now and then. 'Nuff said.


V is for Variegated


It used to be I could drop this word into a conversation with my wife and she was impressed. Now I have to compete with guys who know the technical terms for various pieces of bedding. I wonder if Bryan Adams had this problem...


W is for Window Air Conditioner


Remember the generator? Yeah, this summer we had a massive heat wave for a couple of days. Steve Pool (author of Somewhere, I was Right) promised more hot weather coming up. What did I do? On a record setting hot day, I went to Lowe's and bought an air conditioner. I couldn't wait to fire it up. What happened? The next day the temperature dropped 30 degrees. That is not an exaggeration - We set a record of 95, the next day it was 65. My life never changes.


X is for X? What the heck do you put for X?


Yeah.


Y is for Yeast


I like to bake... not so much pastries, etc, mostly breads. Yeast is my friend.

Can you tell I'm getting tired?


Z is for Zelda


Probably my favorite series of video games of all time. The only problem is keeping up with the gaming systems I need to play them all. My wife got me a Gamecube for my birthday, so now I'm catching up on Windwaker and Twilight Princess. Enjoyable games, all.

Well, that concludes the encyclopedia of me. Ok, it took longer than 26 minutes, but you wouldn't have known that for sure until I told you. I hope you enjoy it, I'm going to bed.

-The Krunchy Krab

Saturday, August 25, 2007

"I notice you because you stick out like a... like a big yellow thing stickin' out."

After reading this blog of my wife's I felt compelled to go take the quiz myself. Results are below:


You're The Catcher in the Rye!
by J.D. Salinger
You are surrounded by phonies, and boy are you sick of them! In an ongoing struggle to search for a land without phonies, you end up running away from everything, from school to consequences. In this process, you reveal that many people in your life have suffered torments and all you really want to do is catch them as they fall. Perhaps using a baseball mitt. Your biggest fans are infamous psychotics.
Take the Book Quizat the Blue Pyramid.



The Catcher in the Rye? Hmm... Maybe some of you know me better than I know myself if that's true. Then again, I'm apparently surrounded by phonies, so I can't take anything you say seriously. I'm a man without a castle.

Draft time!

The draft for my first fantasy football team this year was this morning. It went MUCH better than last year... last year I had the 11th pick, which means my primary RB was Chicago's Jones. Yeah, not a great year on that front. I woke up just before 8:30AM, thinking I had a few hours to finish getting my players ranked. When I logged on, it said my draft was starting in 1 minute... oh yeah, that was 11:30 Eastern Time that the draft started! Glad I got up when I did!

Anyway, this year I had the 3rd pick, which is just about perfect, in my opinion. Finally, I was able to grab one of the top three RBs, which happened to be Shaun Alexander. Definitely an upgrade to my offense. By the time I got to pick again, I was able to grab Matt Hasselbeck. Last year I had Peyton Manning. Oh well, I think he'll have a better year than last.

Let's see... at WR I have Reggie Wayne, Deion Branch, and DJ Hackett, which is definitely an upgrade from last year... I think I had Darrell Jackson, Bobby Engram, and someone else who didn't score me any points.

My second RB is Marion Barber, not great, but still way better than my second RB last year.

Jeremy Shockey is my TE, and Josh Brown is my K... I expect Shockey will greatly outperform my TE last year - Jerramy Stevens.

Oh yeah, and my surprise pick - I managed to pick up the Bears defense in the third round... no one else had even thought about picking a defense at that point.

As you can probably see, I'm screwed in week 8 - my QB, both RBs, 2WRs, and my K are all on byes. Sadly, my only coverage is Rex Grossman, Dominic Rhodes, and Dwayne Jarrett. I'll have to pick someone up on waivers later on. The rest of my byes are covered pretty well.

I suppose I'll have to pick up at least one more team - this time on foxsports. I hate the java interface for fox though - it requires a refresh of the page for the stats to update, while CBS updates live and very quickly.

Hopefully I'll be able to keep all my fantasy action straight - with the Mariners picking things up now, I'm back in the playoffs in fantasy baseball. In fact, I'm crushing the top team in my division this week - he has no division losses yet this season. Bwah hahahaha

-The Krunchy Krab

Wednesday, August 22, 2007

A day in the life of two ladies...

It's time for another picture post.

My daughter had a friend over today. We ended up going outside to enjoy the great weather. Thus began the great adventure...

The meeting was called to order by my daughter's friend. The picnic table proved a good place to plan out a busy day.

Being avid rock collectors, they decided to peruse the fine selection of gravel adjacent to the house. Being purists, they naturally left their finds here in order that future enthusiasts might enjoy them as well. Also because daddy gets mad when he has to re-grind his lawn mower blade.

Their rock collecting finished, they decided to play rock-paper-scissors to see who would choose the next activity.

Having won the contest, my daughter led her friend on a bold adventure to the far reaches of the backyard... otherwise known as the forest area. Despite the appearance, her father is winning the war against the weeds, but there have been many long battles.

After their long trek, it was time to play tennis. Warmups took place on the grass court near the wood pile.

The actual match soon commenced about 10 feet away on the world's shortest tennis court with the invisible net. They were fairly evenly matched, although my daughter's friend was able to actually swing the racket, so I can only assume that had my daughter been able to serve a ball in the general vicinity of the swinging racket, her friend would have likely won.

Playing catch proved to be an activity they could both participate in equally. They started a little far apart though...

Yes, that's much better.

Having completed the feats of strength, they climbed into the car to go shopping. Apparently, they were planning on visiting the fruit market. They never did bring me the broccoli I asked for though. In case you're wondering, that car is really only about 2 inches wider on each side than my daughter, so her friend is actually sitting on her, but somehow my daughter managed to get her arms around so she was the one steering.

They had some car trouble on the way...

But being master mechanics, they were soon on their way again.

After my daughter parked the car, my neighbor started chainsawing (yes I was envious) something in his backyard. My daughter's friend went bonkers - "A man is sawing in the bushes! Yay!" They both had to go investigate.

All in all, it was a productive day between two good friends. Refreshments in hand, they settled down at the table to reminisce about times gone by when they were young.

-The Krunchy Krab

Thursday, August 16, 2007

I need to write another book...

After reading this blog I am compelled to write a book about a boy who makes a welcome mat, but decides to rebel and write, "We're so glad you came"

-The Krunchy Krab

Sunday, August 12, 2007

A hardcore blogger I am not

Well, I tried the daily blogging, and it burned me out. So, rather than make any promises about how often I'll blog, I'll just say that I'll try to do it twice a week or so, which I think is often enough to keep my wife happy, and not often enough to burn me out so I have to take a sabbatical.

That being said, I'll move on to my actual blog for today.
Yesterday was my daughter's second birthday party. It was a hoot. A lot of work, but still fun. We had 32 people total, including ourselves, with 11 children under the age of 6. I'm sure my wife will correct those numbers, but I think they're close. Maybe she'll humor me ;)
Anyway, we tried to keep it simple - it was a Curious George theme, which seemed to go over well. I went to Costco and bought a thousand bananas and used them as weights to hold all the balloons. Ok, maybe not a thousand, but any more than 4 bananas might as well be a thousand to someone who hates bananas. My sister apparently didn't get the theme, because she couldn't figure out why we were using bananas to weigh the balloons down. In the end, she just decided we must have just had too many bananas and they were convenient.
We barbecued, which worked great. Hamburgers, and my soon to be infamous teriyaki chicken. I can't really take credit for the teriyaki chicken yet, the sauce is a recipe I stole from Canlis, which, if you're going to steal a recipe from anywhere, steal one from Canlis. They know what they're doing.
The weather cooperated, which meant that the somewhat-less-than-a-dozen kids were able to burn off their energy outside, which I think was appreciated by everyone over 4 feet tall. After lunch, we brought the presents outside. Now, my daughter appreciates presents mostly because she knows they lead to cake. So, it was a constant struggle to keep her involved in the present opening. Fortunately, there were approximately 10 other children there who were more than happy to help open presents. Below is a shot of my daughter receiving a helping hand from her cousin:

Eventually, it became more of a group effort...

The wind started to blow, and the tissue paper was everywhere. With every new toy, my daughter's arms would wave: "Other toys! Yay!"

We decided to move inside for cake and ice cream. This proved to be a big mistake, as I think leaving the presents outside was just too traumatic. My daughter began to cry and whine.

Cake makes everything better.

A mouthful of cake makes an excellent cry muffler. See? No cries escaping that mouth. Of course there are now chocolate crumbs all over my house, but that just means the house smells like chocolate.

So far, my daughter has spent time playing with pretty much all the toys she received, but she has of course latched onto a few key ones. The first is a cool drawing book from Aunt G and Uncle B. It's a handmade fabric covered folder that holds a drawing pad and several erasable crayons. I was worried yesterday when my daughter disappeared into her bedroom for several minutes without making any noise, and when I went into her room, she was sitting quietly in her rocking chair, drawing in her new book.

The other favorite has been the doll sized baby stroller. She walks all over our house, pushing the stroller:

It was the first thing she grabbed this morning... she wouldn't eat anything or do anything until she had pushed her stroller all over the house, crashing into the walls, waking her mother up. Yesterday during her nap, I strapped her bunny into it as a joke. Now she won't put anything else in it - we tried to put a doll in, she removed it and put the bunny back.

Also - she "parks" the stroller for the night on top of the toilet in our hallway bathroom. When I took her in to brush her teeth last night, she came down the hall pushing her stroller down the hall, into the bathroom, then she picked it up and set it on the toilet and said "Stoller parked. There."

She's napping now, and I'm watching the Mariners crush the White Sox as I blog. It's a good Sunday.

-The Krunchy Krab