Category: Kids

Today I hacked my first soda machines! Emily and I tried to do one at the laundry mat over the weekend but it wouldn’t work. Today we were walking along the street and spotted a couple soda machines inside some office building. So we went inside and managed to get into the menus on both of them. We didn’t know what half the stuff meant since I hadn’t completely read through the instructions the other day, but it was fun.

Stopped by Pizza King, hoping to win a Crash Bandicoot plush thing that was in the claw machine over the weekend, but it was gone. I spent $2 on the claw and won nothing. And I did so good over the weekend, winning 2 things, each on the first tries. Stopped for ice cream, went by the park, then home to watch some Dead Like Me season 2.

On the way to the park yesterday, the kids and I notice water running alongside the curb and into a drain. Quite a bit of it too. Figured it was just somebody watering their lawn too much or washing their car or whatever. A couple hours later, on the way back home, we notice it’s still pouring in there pretty strongly. Looking up the street, it appears to be coming from nowhere. So we walk up the block to investigate.

Apparently an underground pipe burst and the water was seeping through tiny cracks all over a large part of the street. You couldn’t actually see the water coming out, but it was. Walking across the wet spot on the road was like walking on thin ice. The road visibly cracked more as I went across and made neat crunching noises. You could see the water coming out of all the cracks on the parts that you stepped on. Luckily it didn’t all collapse and kill us.

This morning we were walking in that area again and decided to see if it had been fixed yet. It hadn’t. Some old lady and her cat was sitting by her back door so I went over to talk to her while the kids continued to watch water leak from the street. Eventually the kids came over too. The old lady seemed extremely happy that anyone bothered to come over and say hello to her. I think I made her week. She thanked us for coming by and said to stop by again.

Today we did laundry. And I made my best batch of waffles ever. Yesterday we ate at Pizza King while listening to bad karaoke. We walked there and back which was about 20 minutes each way. At lunch we had BTH and we walked through a giant antiques market thing they had going on in the streets. I think other stuff happened this weekend but I can’t remember any of it. I bought a TV this evening. $119 for 23″ is just too good to pass up. So far I’ve used it to listen to about 2 hours of podcasts. Money well spent.

Kids and I walked to Henderson Park again today. I read Blacklisted 411 while they played. Afterwards we walked to Hasty Freeze for ice cream. Stopped by a fountain to hang out for awhile and learned we could really screw up the fountain by stopping the flow of water to the drain. Colleen drove by, noticed us and stopped by to hang out for awhile. She left and we went to get our ice cream, then walked home.

Vacuumed the hell out of the house today. I just bought a vaccum cleaner last week after living here for 10 months. 10 months of hair, dirt and whatever else in the carpets.

My Ipod rules. Having my entire music collection in one tiny device is still amazing to me. I’m sure it’ll wear off soon. Especially if I don’t get to keep it. I’ve been updating my ID3 tags all day so that the music is organized better in the Ipod. I’d be nice if it would just organize it all into folders, like I have on my hard drive. But it won’t do that. Organizing by ID3 tags will be nice, though, once I get them all updated. Itunes makes that fairly easy.

Yesterday I put the 12 CDs I own on Ebay. So far they’re up to $3.05 total. Those have been sitting in my car, unused, for over a year now.

Luvox Phreak might be visiting me this weekend. She’ll know for sure tomorrow, so I get a day’s notice if she’s gonna show or not. If not, I’ve got a lot of shit I need to get done around here. And work is suddenly really busy.

Kids and I built a giant lego tower this week. From the table it stands 68 inches tall and comes just a millimeter from touching the ceiling. From the ground it stands 96 inches. It includes a working motorized windmill (cause you see those on real skyscrapers all the time) and an observation deck. This one should make quite a mess when it gets knocked down.

A week or 2 ago an atomic bomb, combined with giant killer robots, exploded the Lego town we’d had for at least 6 months. So last week we started rebuilding. I did most of the exterior of the buildings and Emily did most of their furnishings. Below are pictures that I took this evening.

It’s been in the 70’s for weeks now. We haven’t really had any hot weather at all this year. Until yesterday – it finally got in the 90’s. Today it’s 100 out which is the forecast for most of this week. Kids & I went to the Corvallis pool yesterday. Had to stand in line to get in for 30 minutes. Their pool kicked ass and was cheap. Only $10.25 for all of us. But they closed at 4pm. WTF is up with that?

Not a whole lot else going on this week. Got the kids hooked on Daria since I downloaded 5 seasons of that. Stayed inside all day today except for a quick lunch at Wendy’s. Thank God for central air. When I was looking for a place to live 8 or 9 months ago I couldn’t decide between washer and dryer hookups, a free outdoor pool or central air. I’m very happy I picked this one.

Yesterday as I was outside checking the mail, something made me decide that turning the big lamp post outside our door into a giant sun dial would be a great idea! I don’t know why. So I explained to Emily how a sun dial works and she immediately began marking the hours for most of yesterday. Then today we filled in all the blanks that we missed from swimming and this morning. Here’s a couple pictures of the completed timepiece:

It’s hard to see in my shrunken pictures, but the numbers go all the way out onto the curb and into the street a little. Luckily the dirt side of the clock is all night time so that part doesn’t matter. There is no rain in the forecast for at least 5 days. So people walking down our heavily trafficked sidewalk will be able to enjoy our work for at least the next week.

Today Emily showed me a cell phone eraser that she got for getting a perfect score in spelling. The eraser opened up just like a real clamshell cell phone and even had writing on the screen. And there was even a phone number on the screen to simulate calling someone. Emily said her friends recommended calling the number to see what it was. Figuring it was just a standard “555” number, I took the phone and looked. It wasn’t a 555 number but it was a number that I immediately recognized. It was the number to the White House switchboard! I used to prank that number in the early 90’s, trying to get them to transfer me to Willy.

Why the hell would they put that on a kid’s toy eraser? Emily was all ready to call the number when she got home. And I would have let her if I didn’t recognize the number. How weird…