BunkBlog

The Festival on the Concho has replaced the five years gone Fiesta del Concho, and it is a good replacement. For some reason, it was scheduled on the same weekend as the Fort Concho Frontier Day (formerly Days – go figure). Even with sharing crowds with the fort, though, the Festival was very well attended; I predict a return next year.

Alex and I went Friday night and Saturday. He got to spend a lot of time playing with squirt guns, bouncing in the infaltable houses, and we even hit the paddle boats for a while. Sausages in tortillas, fresh lemonade, all the usual carnival fare.

Now, a few days to recover.  Well, and work, but get real.

What is with little kids thinking they must be missing out on something amazing when they go to bed but the adults (or in my case, adult) stay up?  The Boy used every delaying tactic in his arsenal tonight, after a really full day. He had to poop, he had to call mom, he had just five more minutes of the “Ed Edd and Eddy” episode to watch, he was starving and would perish in mere moments without more sustenance… Finally get him to bed 90 minutes past bed time, and he says, “I’m not even a little bit sleepy you know.”  Three minutes later – zzzzzzzzz.  Yeah, right, not even a little bit sleepy.

Built one of Yamaha’s papercraft animals this weekend: a macaw. Now to let my hand uncramp from the knife-clenching. Of course, Alex now wants me to build a motorcycle. The macaw took three pieces of card stock; the motorcycles are over a dozen sheets each. Ouch.

I can quit any time I want. It’s a good thing most of the programs on my MythTV box are set for “autoexpire when the drive gets full.” Here’s the latest status line.

297 programs, using 242 GB (246 hrs 31 mins) out of 345 GB.

Now, to be fair, I have a truly stupendous number of cartoons for the Boy, as well as a significant number of DVDs ripped to the hard drive (no need to mess with the disks, which is good if you’re six years old).

Rachael Ray is my friend. I’ve been going through the recipes in her book “365 No Repeats” for the past several months, and Alex is loving most of them.

A couple weeks ago, I made a three-onion soup with cheesy bread – twice in a row, by request. Tonight was a creamy broccoli soup (with cheesy bread again, go figure), made with pureed broccoli and onions, cream, and chicken stock. Again, a big hit.

I love that my boy tries new things without complaint – some kids are supposedly quite evil about eating. I guess years of, “if you don’t eat it, you get nothing until breakfast” work, so long as you actually stick to your guns. I can’t imagine making two meals, one for me and one for him. Shoot, when I am not feeling well I have a hard time convincing myself to cook for the boy at all.

Alex has finished his second week with the “Kid’s Karate” program, and he’s starting to figure out his left from his right. All in good time, I suppose.

He’s very cute in his little white uniform, jumping around like a tiny kangaroo.

And so ends another week. Back to hanging out with my main girl, the cat.

Someone (phbt!) recently pointed out that it has been more than two weeks since I posted, which is some sort of rare event. Gee, sorry I haven’t had any particularly stellar blinding insights lately that I had to share.

I’m still happy with the MythTV box, which now has about 180 programs stored on it. I’m planning to get another drive to use just for storing movies, which I have been acquiring from late-night TV regularly now. I also had to stop feeling so packrat-like. I was recording shows that I remember from my childhood, as if I suddenly acquired the ability and desire to watch 45 hours of television each day while still going to work and caring for the Boy.

I’ve added limits to most of my recordings, to make them stop recording more than X number of shows (X can vary from 3 to 10). Exceptions are, of course, the SciFi channel shows, which don’t auto-expire and don’t have storage limits. Yes, I am predictable.

I’m still slowly converting my VHS tapes to DVD. Unless I buy a different piece of furniture for my television, I won’t have room for a separate DVD player or VHS player again, anyway.

Work remains fun and exciting. The two women I work next to need slapping on a daily basis, but it beats being in the Army.

It was 85 on Thursday, and 35 on Friday. Just in time for the big Rodeo Parade.

Three weeks until Game Night.

I’ve got chocolate.

As promised, I’ve posted about 30 photos from the cruise. One example:

After five days of cruising, the last one in some fairly choppy seas, it now feels like my house is swaying.

We’re back, safe and sound; photos and videos and all that are awaiting my attention. Feel free to talk amongst yourselves.

OK, you little deviants. I’m taking off for a week, cruising with my son and assorted family members to the Yucatan. It was supposed to be Cozumel, but I’m told that island is kind of hosed right now, so it sounds like we’ll be hitting Progreso and Veracruz. I promise to take a bajillion photos and videos – gotta justify the new memory cards and batteries, after all. 🙂

Try not to blow anything up while I’m away, k?

Seriously, is Veteran’s Day really a good time to attack your political rivals? I know, every day is campaign day in modern politics, but give it a rest already! I spent twelve years in the Army, and I’m proud of that service. I’m also happy to live in a country where I can disagree with a policy decision or pretty much anything else, and do so in public without fear of arrest or other bad things.

Here in San Angelo, the local school district finally decided to recognize Veteran’s Day. This is something which has been a long time coming, and is really bizarre considering how much the local population actually likes the military (not something I was used to at other postings in the Army). So, the Boy and I went to the parade again. Last year, it was cold and we had hot cocoa while sitting on a bench beside the Federal Building, watching the relatively small parade go by. This year, it was nice out, we stood in the street near the Federal Building (until he got tired and needed to take a break on the lawn), and the parade was much larger. It’s not quite as large as the parade for Rodeo Day, but you take what you can get in West Texas. I’m sure if we had a High School Football Day, the parade would be astounding in its scope. Anyway, a few new pictures up at the gallery of the Boy and the Cat. We built a gingerbread house that looks less impressive now than it did while we were decorating it. The Cat didn’t help.

Alex got a good haul of candy at the mall, and another bucketload tonight.

Why would someone be bringing little kids to my door at 9 pm? Geez, folks, get them to bed already!

Alex decided to be a white ninja for Halloween this year. Isn’t he adorable?

BTW, I installed Gallery2 this weekend, so any old URLs you had to my photo gallery don’t work.

Alex turned six yesterday. Seems like just last week that he could only say things like “gup” and “joosh” – now he talks nonstop about just about any topic that pops into his head.

His mom got him a Spiderman game for Xbox, and a really cool model airplane. The plane has interchangeable bombs and drop fuel tanks and the cockpit opens to put the little pilot in his chair. He really digs the plane, which he insists is a “Model” not an airplane. heh

My mom sent him a check (much more than I remember any of my grandparents sending me when I was six, that’s for sure) and we had to go spend it. He ended up with a giant swamp-creature racetrack for his Hot Wheels cars.

He wanted to get up at 5:30 on his birthday, to open his presents as early as possible. At the usual wakeup time, he ran to the living room and ripped the paper off his two Hot Wheels toys, and then looked at the 1000-piece tub of Legos. This morning, he doesn’t even want to watch cartoons, he’s so intent on building stuff with his new blocks. He’s done a sword and a firetruck so far. I’m glad he likes building toys – it always seems more healthy to construct than to destroy, although there is always a component of destruction when the blocks have to go back in the tub. 🙂

Tonight, we go over to his grandfather’s house for more presents (I presume) and some dinner and apple pie. Yeah, he doesn’t really get into cake too much, and besides – he had some of that chocolate cake on Monday.

Overall, it seems like a pretty good week-long birthday, eh?

Tonight’s new meal attempt was teriyaki chicken, stirfried veggies and edamame rice. Everything was a hit, except for the edamame rice. Not only did Alex not particularly appreciate the soybeans, the rice vinegar-laced rice was also not loved. Ah, well. At least the teriyaki went over well. Tomorrow is an old favorite – cheese-stuffed manicotti. Mmmm…

After a few years of absence, there is once again an air show in San Angelo. Alex and I spent about four hours there today; I wanted to stay and watch the F-15, but Alex was getting cranky and hot, so off to the house we went. Or maybe he just couldn’t wait to play with his new airplanes that he conned me into getting at the show (yeah, gotta have souvenirs, right?)

The jet-powered pickup truck was probably the thing that most wowed the Boy, but the six-plane aerobatics team was pretty cool too. I got some good footage, so look for a video posting some time in the near future.

Time for a nap.

As I was putting his lunch together Thursday morning, I noticed that the head of lettuce from Monday’s dinner was a tiny spike-like stump in the crisper.

What other five year-old sneaks lettuce to snack on? What a kid.

Although my previous Korean meal experiment, galbi, didn’t work out so well, I decided to give in to the begging and make Bulgogi tonight. Much better reception. Now I’ve got to keep him from making me put it on the menu every week. He likey. Like a little piggie.

Alex began kindergarten this week. On the first day, his teacher told us about the Gifted and Talented screening in the spring, and how he’d probably go to the GT program next year. See? I told you all he was the smartest boy in the world!

Since I’ve got like 180 megs free in my hosting account, I figured I’d fill it up with a little something interesting. From my home movie DVD, titled “Vacation 2005,” here’s the Monterey clip. This is, of course, shrunk to one-quarter television size. If you’re one of the lucky few to be on the receiving end of the DVD mailing I’m doing this weekend, you’ll get a much better version. If you’re not, well, enjoy this one. 🙂 It’s about 47 megs.

It starts in the Monterey Bay Aquarium, and then we move to Carmel Beach (home of the world’s most aggressive panhandling squirrels), followed by a few minutes of Dennis the Menace Park.