Worries...

No. 1 Son left last Friday for a week trip to Orlando, Florida with the high school band. I was extremely proud of his efforts to earn his own spending money. He left with about $200 for spending. They left Friday morning, and arrived in Orlando around noon on Saturday. The 5/8 and I had given him another $40 to buy his siblings some T-shirts, not thinking it fair that he spend his own hard-earned money on stuff we wanted him to buy.

He thought he had a bundle of money. I explained to him that it really wasn't all that much. $250 works out to about $35 a day. He seemed to understand that. At least I thought he did, until he called this morning to let the 5/8 know he had blown through his entire stash of cash. In less than 36 hours, he managed to burn through all of his money. He is now 1/2 a continent away, and penniless.

He'll get $20 when they get back on the bus for the trip home so he can buy meals and what-not on the trip. They have meal tickets (I think about $15/day worth) for meals at the parks. But still....still it is hard. Knowing how easy it would be to pick up the phone, call the hotel and arrange to wire some money to him. But I can't. I have to let him learn and have this lesson indelibly burned into his psyche.

But I wonder. Am I being too harsh? Shouldn't I just wire 20 bucks to the kid? I haven't felt this kind of worry about any of my kids to date. That knot of tension in the back, just below the neck and between the shoulder blades. It isn't going away. He really only has two days left now. Tuesday and Wednesday. They leave Wednesday night for the ride back to T-town. So he'll be ok. He has the meal tickets, and the hotel supplies a large breakfast buffet.

So there he is 1/2 a country away, without money. If I do nothing, I feel callous and cruel. But if I give in and send money, he doesn't learn this valuable lesson. This is a lesson that cannot be taught any other way, period.

 

*sigh*

Whoa Nellie...

The wind was blowing with a good gale, and the air was cool to begin with. Which all added together made for a fairly cold day. The temperature hovered in the mid-thirties throughout the day Saturday. Saturday was one of those days where the stuff you have to do just doesn't seem to end.

My niece was having a birthday party in the morning. One just for the kids. I took Little Sister and dropped her off. I would have liked to stay, but had other things that required my attention. The party was rather unique, a candle making party held at a candle shop downtown. Then I had to run out to the east side of town to meet Sandy. Sandy has a daughter who used to be in girl scouts, but quit. She ended up though, with more than a few people who wanted girl scout cookies. So the 5/8 took her orders and Little Sister ended up selling some 250 boxes of cookies.

I met Sandy at the Sonic Drive-In on the east side of town. While I was waiting for her to show up, I idly wondered what the folks at the Sonic were thinking about the guy in the little red car who didn't order anything and didn't get out of his car. Then she pulled up in her big white Dodge Ram pickup and I got out and walked over to the truck. She handed me the envelope full of cash from the cookie sales. I thanked her, stuck in the inside pocket of my coat and returned to my car. After pulling out of the Sonic parking lot, I started wondering how long it was going to be before the fuzz pulled me over. I mean, how did that exchange really look? Some guy pulls up in a car, sits in the parking lot, then a truck pulls in. The guy gets out of his car, walks to the truck. The wind blowing the tails of his coat around his legs, takes an envelope full of money from the driver of the truck, gets back in his car and drives off. To me, that would look pretty suspicious. But I suppose the folks at the Sonic are either oblivious to their surroundings, or they see that kind of thing every day since the fuzz never did pull me over to see what the transaction was all about.

After the party, Little Sister's brownie troop were scheduled to meet at some stables south of town where the girls would get to ride horses and earn some horse badge thing. It was cold, and wet but thankfully the stables had an indoor arena so we didn't have to be outside. The lady running the show was nice enough, but she did have to go and talk about how much fun horse birthday parties are, and that she just happens to host them, right there at the stables. With that announcement she pretty much got on the dark side of every parent in attendance. I know for the last two days I've been hearing about how Little Sister just has to have a horse party or she will positively just die. *Sigh*

During our family movie (Mr. Magorium's Wonder Emporium - fab movie BTW) No. 1 Son called from Florida. He was all excited they had driven through Atlanta just after that massive tornado that tore up the city. He was telling me all about it when I heard some girl giggle in the background. Putting on my ultra-authoritative fatherly voice I asked "are you in a hotel room with a girl?" "No, dad, they just barged in...sorry dad, I gotta go" - click...buzzzz. Sounds like he's having fun anyway.

...And they're off...

Last Friday I went in late to work. I wanted to see No. 1 Son off. Make sure he got on the bus along with his trumpet and clothes and what not. The high school band had been invited to perform in the parade at Disney World and Epcot Center down in Orlando.

No. 1 Son worked his bum off earning money. Money to help may the 600 clams for the trip as well as earning some spending money. I was proud of the work he did. The savings he accumulated for spending money. We gave him about 40 bucks and instructed him to use that to purchase t-shirts for his younger sister and brother. I didn't think it would be fair for him to have to spend his own money on curios for his siblings. He would have, without hesitation, don't get me wrong. That's the kind of guy he is. He'd give you the shirt right off his back if you asked him for it, and he thought it would help you out.

I realized, as I was escorting him to the buses, then waiting for them to board, and the buses to pull away, how little I know if his school persona. I know some of his friends. Friends he had while attending Mater Dei school, and there is the kid from across the alley. Good kid, and No. 1 Son's best friend. But when we arrived, there were two girls, cute ones mind you, who were all jumpy and squealing when No. 1 Son arrived. One I know somewhat and I know they are just friends. The other, I don't know anything about. She's the one in the pic with the 'Home Alone' expression. No. 1 Son is on the left, the kid from across the alley is the other 'joe cool' with his sunglasses in a cloudy day. I don't know the Jayhawk fan, never seen him before.

I'm certain they're going to have a great time. And I trust No 1 Son completely. I have no fears at this time in his life that he would do anything inappropriate. Now, in the next year or so I fully expect that to change, but for now, I have complete faith in his  gentleman-ness and chivalry.

Determination

Browsing through the Google Analytics for this blog, I ran across an interesting keyword used to find it. The keyword was "nadine cross". While I know I've talked about Stephen King and The Stand at least once, I don't recall ever mentioning the wacked out woman who shares the devil's bed in the story, Nadine Cross.

Curious, I went to Google and entered the keywords. Whoever found this place by using that keyword must have been much more determined to find information regarding Nadine Cross than I was in finding where this place falls in the Google hierarchy concerning this character. I gave up after looking at 20 pages on Google.

News from fly-over country

It's been a weather induced roller coaster here in fly-over country. First we have 50+ degrees for a few days, then it hits near rock-bottom temps with even more snow and rain. Last week the weather man - who is affectionately known as Mr. Rogers because of his delivery style - informed us that we have had the coldest, wettest winter since sometime around 1895 or so. I sent Al Gore an email, asking him when we could expect our share of that global warming, but so far haven't heard back from him. Maybe he's out buying carbon credits or something.

Two weeks ago the 5/8 had one of her tonsils out, and some work done on the inside of her nose to free up something or other to make her breath easier. I couldn't understand 3 words the doctor said. He is Asian. A great doctor, but certainly has not mastered the English language, at least pronunciation-wise. I was expecting a few days of peace and quiet. If you ever know someone to get their tonsils out in this day and age, don't expect them to not be able to talk. It seems there is some new procedure whereby they freeze the things off instead of cutting them. Speeds up the healing and all that jazz. The downside to that is the patient is able to nag talk straight away.

Over the weekend Little Sister has been feeling down. I think she had a light case of that flu thing going around.  She missed a couple of days of school and pretty much felt miserable over the weekend. She is the only one of us that didn't get a flu shot this year. I'm not sure if I mentioned it, but No. 1 Son made high honors at school. A great feat. As a reward I got him "Burnout Paradise" an XBox 360 driving game. Near as I can tell the whole purpose of the game is to drive fast, do jumps, and run into things seeing how dramatic of a wreck you can have. The 5/8 started playing with it over the weekend, and now we can't seem to pry her away. I think the kids just lost their game console.

In local news, the premier local television station, WIBW is in a bitter fight with the local cable carrier Cox Communications, over money (natch!). WIBW wants Cox to pay them a penny a day per subscriber in order to carry their regular and High-Def content. Cox doesn't want to pay them anything. The contract between the two expires at midnight on 28 February. WIBW hasn't been the best of sportsmen in the quite a while. WIBW is the CBS affiliate for this burg. And there is a CBS affiliate over in Kansas City. Cox carries both, but most of the time if you were to tune into to the KC station, you would see a black screen with white scrolling letters informing you that due to some FCC regulation, the channel is blacked out at the request of the local affiliate. Fox, NBC and ABC - all with local and KC affiliates, never had this problem. I don't know what will happen, but I'm pretty certain that Cox would rather pay the KC station for HD content, than pay WIBW anything at all. I dropped Cox over a year ago, and glad I did.

Really though, that whole situation is crap. Nobody wins. WIBW will undoubtedly lose advertisers because their market share will dwindle. Cox will lose some customers as they switch to satellite. And those that stick with Cox will lose their local CBS affiliate.

Movie Thoughts: Across The Universe

I thought this was going to be a real chick flick. I picked it up because I know the 5/8 like those kind of films. I figured it would be some sappy love story set with the turbulent 60's as the backdrop, with a killer soundtrack by The Beatles. That's what the previews let onto anyway.

Now, to be fair, it is a sappy love story, but it isn't a story so much as a musical, with a killer soundtrack of songs by The Beatles. To be honest, the imagery was engaging, and it is a lot of fun to watch a musical where you know the words to all the songs.

It is rated PG-13, and while there was inference of some drug use, it wasn't blatant, and it wasn't all "hey let's get stoned because it's good". The 5/8 and I understood when they took drugs, and the kids figured it out when it went into the drug-induced imagery; including a great segment where Eddie Izzard belts out "For the Benefit of Mr. Kite" which, if you can believe it, was last performed on the big screen by - get this - George Burns.

There was one scene where a woman's nipple was shown, but it was not in anyway obscene or vulgar. And another scene the bums of several guys were shown as they were swimming. All in all, it was not a movie that I had any problem with any of the kids watching - including Little Sister. And it made me want to listen to more Beatles tunes, and even possibly rent that 1970's hit rock-opera"Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" (you remember, with Peter Frampton and the Bee-Gees).

And, I have to add, that the drug-induced imagery did not hold a candle to the wild and wacked out imagery we get when viewing "Yellow Submarine". That is some crazy stuff man.

One size fits none

In our house, we have this large built-in cupboard. It covers and entire wall. A small wall, grant you, but still reaches from floor to ceiling and one end to the other. This is where we keep our plates and glasses and bowls and jars and pretty much everything we use for cooking save for utensils and pots & pans.

We have a enormous section of this cupboard wall dedicated to those little plastic containers that you never seem to be able to bring yourself to throw out. Butter cups, sour cream tubs, large yogurt containers, those rectangular plastic containers that a lot of sandwich meat comes in now.

In this cupboard wall, we have 132 round plastic containers. In addition, we have 178 round plastic lids.

Now, can someone PLEASE explain to me why none of the lids fit on any of the containers?

Lessons Learned

You have to remove the gunk from the bottom of your oven before you use the self-cleaning feature.

Movie Thoughts: Planet Terror

If you're old enough (like me) you'll remember the drive-ins. No, not drive throughs (sheesh, kids) but drive-ins. These were outdoor movie theaters where you'd pull up in your car, grab a tinny sounding staticy speaker from a post and hang it on your partially rolled up car window. Then look around (to make sure the manager couldn't see you) and pop open the trunk, letting out the three or four friends who managed to fit in there.

The movies at the drive-in weren't all that good. In reality, I don't know that people really went to the drive-in to watch the movie. Mostly it was to do other things. Make out, drink, cause general havoc and mayhem for the other patrons. The movies were mostly those "B" type monster films. Evil Dead, Night of the Living Dead, Dawn of the Dead. Corning writing, corny characters and completely predictable. Mostly they were older movies too, and not not such good shape. Scratches and dust marks all over the film, the sound would warble at times. But like I said, you really didn't go to the drive-in to actually view the film.

All this comes back to me now because I recently watched Robert Rodriquez's "Planet Terror". I don't know why I rented it. Probably because on the cover, Rose McGowan was sporting a MACHINE GUN FOR A LEG!!! How crazy is that? Rodriquez was one of the directors behind one of my favorite films of recent years, "Sin City", so that, along with the chick having a machine gun for a leg, made up my mind for me. The movie was a bit more than I expected. I kind of expected that whole "B" movie experience, but really, it is more like a "A" movie, masquerading as a "B" movie - complete with the dust marks and scratches and warbley audio and everything. At one point, the film melts - just like the old days. I can't remember the last time I was in a theater and the film melted. It was awesome.

The movie is utterly and completely over the top in everything it does. It starts out with a faux "Coming Attractions" trailer for a movie called "Machete" during which the announcer declares "If you hire Machete to kill the bad guy, you better make sure the bad guy isn't you." Basic storyline is thus: Bad chemical escapes, people are being turned into zombies, a rag-tag group of people are immune, end up banding together to fight their way to safety.

This isn't a movie where you are going to be surprised, just thoroughly entertained (if you like that over-the-top campy kind of stuff).

Did I mention the lady with the machine gun for a leg?