Category: Home Base

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Critters Home Base

Coffee table book? No. Cat table cat.

A glimpse of our new carpet-less reality.

Cat table cat

I laid my bathrobe on the coffee table for some reason that I forget (probably something to do with taking naps on that couch since it’s under a window that allows a lovely breeze into the house), and that table (and the robe) have now become a favorite vacation destination for the fearsome five. The only cat I haven’t seen take up temporary residence on the robe/table is Puck, but he’s a black cat, and it’s a black robe, so it’s possible that he was there, unseen, like a little furry ninja. A slightly fat little furry ninja.

We won’t be able to put in flooring for a while, and I need to duct tape the edges of the entryway tile and the kitchen/dining room tile so they don’t get chipped, but so far… I’m loving sweeping instead of vacuuming. It ain’t pretty, but it’s a hell of a lot cleaner, even if all of my decorating ideas (painting parking spaces for each cat, painting aircraft carrier stripes leading to the rest of the house) have been shot down.… Read more

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Home Base ToyBox

The stash, 2011 edition

Allow me to introduce you to my very Trekkie 2011 Christmas stash. Charles and Mr. Flibble threw a Hastings gift card my way, and John hurled an Amazon gift card at me with all of his might, taking off a couple of limbs* in the process. (Oddly enough, I turned around and spent the majority of both on the wife and kid, who don’t have folks from the internets buying stuff for them. Call it redistribution of wealth if you like.) Okay, here’s the Trek trove:

2011 Christmas stash

The big box is, of course, the first Star Trek Micro Machines box set that came out in the ’90s. I had one of these at one point… and took them out of the box, which meant that some of them went AWOL by the time I did a piece on my site about them. Now the set is complete once more – though given the little hands (and mischevious little paws) roaming through my house and getting into stuff, this one might be staying in the box. On a high shelf. Thanks, Dustin!

On top of that are Star Trek lotto cards from New Mexico, thanks to Paul and Charles. I haven’t scratched them yet. But I probably will soon (like I can claim them from Arkansas anyway – watch them all be worth $10,000 as a result – c’mon, Deep Space Nine, daddy needs a new pair of anti-grav boots).

Not shown are the new underwear (trust me, you don’t wanna see a picture of that, or at least not a customer action shot), a new dish towel and an oven mitt. What’s really funny is how happy I was to have any and all of it. I needed another oven mitt, and man, did I ever need some new underwear. Throw in some cash from the in-laws (already assimilated into the Borg-like household-bill-paying collective, just to keep the Star Trek theme going), and there ya go.

Not bad at all, considering that I’d told everyone in the family to spend their money on the kiddo. (And boy, did he make out like a bandit. Woody and Buzz and WALL-E and Artoo and the Mario Brothers have a red R/C Mustang convertible to drive around in. Now that’s a sight.)

I’m truly grateful to… well, anyone who sends anything my way, really. It’s not something I solicit or ask for, and under present circumstances it’s not something I can afford to reciprocate either, as much as I’d like to**. Thank you.

* from the tree outside my window – that man has deadly hurling accuracy

** things will be different after I win the New Mexico lottery, I promise

… Read more
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...And Little E Makes 3 Home Base

Toy Opening Story

Gizmo ClausChristmas Eve was pretty jam-packed here at ye olde Greenhaus. As expected, my wife had to work all day, but this didn’t mean the boys were sitting around the house all day. After eating (and watching The Polar Express), it was time to make one last pre-Christmas run to the PO box, and then swing by the store to pick up a few necessities that couldn’t wait for the stores to open up again on Monday or Tuesday, namely kitty litter. As it turned out, we also had to visit the tire center at Wal-Mart because I had a tire that was almost completely flat when we set foot outside the house this morning. Sheesh. Nothing like relaxing on Christmas Eve, is there? And trust me, this was nothing like relaxing on Christmas Eve. … Read more

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Home Base

Merry Geekmas 2011

Geekmas 2011It’s that most wonderful time of the year!… if you want to ogle my Christmas tree’s worth of Starfleet, that is. The tree went up on Saturday night, much to the boy’s delight, and thanks to Portia knocking the artificial tree off of its high storage shelf in the utility room (she’s a little climber) and chewing through some of its wiring (she’s a little menace to society), we had to get a new tree this year. The Mrs. insisted on getting a real one. It’s pretty, and it’s nice, but it was a huge pain in the butt to set up, and it’s shedding twigs and needles everywhere. Furthermore, the cats love it… with a little bit of seasoning. They’re biting small branches off the bottom of it. Obviously our cats have an anti-Christmas-tree jihad going on here.

The new lights that were purchased along with the tree are incompatible with the connectors for my box full of Hallmark Star Trek ornaments, so sadly, unless they’ve got stuff that works under its own power, they’re all “dark” this year, making the traditional picture-taking a challenge. The Christmas Starfleet is on silent running. … Read more

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Funny Stuff Home Base

CAGED SUGAR!

CAGED SUGARSo see if you can follow me on this one.

My wife grabbed a bag of sugar out of the pantry, something about needing to mix it with some kind of exfoliant stuff she’s been using. Rather than put the sugar back in the pantry, she’s been storing it… in Maria’s old cat carrier. Which is plenty clean, but it’s just an awfully strange place to park a sack of sugar, y’know?

After walking by this strange sight numerous times, I finally asked her “What’s up with the caged sugar?” And she told me.

So help me, I still think it’s a weird thing to do. So I’ve taken to walking past it and saying “CAGED SUGAR!” in a deep, Blaxploitation-movie-trailer voice, followed by bow-chicka-wow music, because it sounds for all the world like a freakin’ women’s prison-break flick from the ’70s.

We’re weird.… Read more

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Home Base

Also available in Craigslist flavor

As the first round of eBay stuff is boxed up to head out the door, I’m also hawking my wares on Craigslist, in the following “for sale” areas:

Musical Instruments (I figured this was the best place for studio gear)
Baby & Kid Stuff
Photo & Video
Farm & Garden

The eBay auctions – the buyers of which I’m very grateful to – gave us a little bit of breathing room; these listings are very much in the decluttering category, with just a hint of “I’d rather you came and picked it up than have me ship it.”

The Kick arcade machine will probably be going on Craigslist fairly soon unless anyone else wishes to claim it. I’d like that stand-up refrigerator worth of space back. There’ll also be another round of eBay pretty soon, and so help me, I got word that someone actually bought a “Sizz” T-shirt, an oddity I designed back in my game-collecting days. A surreal coda to my day.… Read more

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...And Little E Makes 3 Home Base

A written record of interactions with human beings

WTF?Two conversations I had with humans today, with some context.

In response to my mentioning, during a phone interview for a job at a business that has “Fayetteville” in its name but has relocated to Bentonville, that my previous job ended when I wouldn’t move to Rogers on my own dime: “Bentonville is pretty much the capitol of the state now. If you’re not willing to move or work up here, you might as well get in the soup line.” (My response was to politely suggest that we terminate the interview since there was an obvious misunderstanding about the location of the business; his response was to hang up on me. I’m going to assume that this will be another employer who won’t be gracing me with a letter or a phone call telling me I didn’t get the job.)

In response to me telling him we needed to go to the grocery store, and what we were going to get there, when I picked him up today: “HEY EVERYBODY! MY DADDY AND I HAVE TO GO TO THE STORE! WE ARE OUT OF APPLES AND GREEN BEANS! OH! MY! GOSH! WE HAVE TO GO!” (For a minute I thought he was going to raise a stampede of preschoolers to cram into my car to go Occupy The Grocery Store.)

These were my major interactions with humans today. I prefer the small ones to the big ones. If I interact with any more humans, I’ll let you know how it went, and how much ranch dressing they needed before they were palatable.… Read more

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Home Base

Fun conversations with college academic advisors

“So… you’ve had a 20+ year career in a field that you didn’t study for at any point?”
“Yes. Don’t get me wrong, the journalism major I originally started out with helped.”
“They’re not called majors anymore. They’re called specializations.”
“Humor me, I’m old.”
“So you didn’t study computers in high school or college.”
“I had a semester of introduction to the internet in college. I was already using a computer daily before high school.”
“You didn’t study art or design in high school or college?”
“I’ve never taken a formal class in either one.”
“You said you were looking at a fast track to getting a degree, when you had at most 25 credit hours from a school you went to 20 years ago.”
“Yes.”
“And the school has closed?”
“No, the school has joined the University of Arkansas system. They’ll still have me on file.”
“And you want to ‘test out’ of some courses even though you’re not following the same academic track?”
“Yes.”
“How?”
“Work experience.”
“This is a very technical field you’re talking about.”
“This is 20 years of work experience I’m talking about.”
“Why aren’t you still working there now?”
“The company moved my job over an hour’s drive to the north and didn’t offer relocation.”
“And what are you doing now?”
“Sitting here talking about going back to school.” (I wanted to add “So do you want to start helping me with that?”, but I was trying to be nice.)

The first day of doing serious digging into the possibility of going back to college. A mixture of encouragement, discouragement, the feeling that nobody groks why I’m looking into this, and the feeling that – at least at the recruiting/admissions stage – I’m a product on an assembly line. But it’s early days. As a wise man named Tom Petty once said, in the absence of his retinue of Heartbreakers, I won’t back down.

But I also won’t put my son in the position of still paying for my student loan by the time he needs to be worrying about his higher education.

The above was one only-semi-helpful conversation. I had another one which lasted nearly two hours, but at some point I’ve gotta get some other stuff done around the house, and the $70,000 price tag quoted to me (GAH!) kinda let a little air out of the balloon. That was for an online school. Ouch.… Read more