March 30, 2009 at 1:35 pm · Filed under Home, Random
While I was outside babying my little sweetpea starts, XM decorated the gargoyle that lives in our tree with dandelions. I love this gargoyle. Years ago D gave me a cool gargoyle magnet. I managed to knock it off the fridge pretty much immediately and its wing broke off. So bummed! Strangely, it has been knocked off many times since then (what can I say, I’m a spaz) and nothing else has ever broken off. I knew this had to be the house for us when I saw the little one-winged gargoyle stuck in the tree out by the street.
March 29, 2009 at 5:09 pm · Filed under Home, Random
I’m a little bit tired of blogging. Every day is a lot! So I’m just going to ramble today. I’m also not going to proofread it. I’m living on the edge!
Ants - The stupid little things are still getting in to the house. There are just too many cracks and crevices in the air intake hole for me to plug them all up. They stopped for a few days and then came on strong a couple days ago during a heavy rain. ARGH! I’ve now mixed borax and powdered sugar and placed it down in the intake hole for them to dine on…and die! Sorry ants, but you really need to take a hint. I also lined the edge of the intake with a mix of cinnamon, white pepper and cayenne pepper. Hopefully this is something the dog won’t lick up.
Supernews - This is where I got the funny twitter video from. Recorded it, watched it, enjoyed it not so much.
O’s ears - His left ear is still messed up with his eardrum being sucked in pressure-wise. I get to keep an eye on it. We were worried going over the coast range the other day, but it didn’t seem to hurt him. Now the dog has ear issues and I have to coerce him in the bathroom every day now so I can clean it out. Yay.
Sweetpeas - My sweetpeas have adapted to outside temperatures and are waiting for me to plant them. I still have to make some sort of crazy string contraption for them to climb up. Hopefully tomorrow.
Backyard - After much debate and many bids we have decided on a landscaper. He has reasonable rates and got really good reviews on Angie’s List. We are going to put in sod, but also create a large area of cedar chips rather than grass in the area the dog runs a lot (which is also under and around the slide, so the kids won’t mess up the grass when they slide). We are going to have some stepping stones of gray basalt in another high traffic area. Hopefully this will be a good solution for us.
That’s about it. Today is the last day of Spring Break, and D has to go back to work tomorrow. We got in a bunch of gaming today, and my brain is feeling mushy now.
We decided to treat ourselves to a homemade vegetarian sushi dinner tonight. D sliced up the ingredients while I made the rice. We found an interesting sushi idea using tempeh in Isa Chandra’s Veganomicon cookbook that was a huge hit and it was so simple - steamed tempeh mashed with vegan mayo (we had regular - sorry Isa!) and chili-sesame oil (we had chili oil and toasted sesame oil so I used about half and half). We rolled that up with some avocado.
In the past we used to buy a ton of veggies and tofu and make a variety of random rolls. Some were good, some were okay, none were the same so if you really enjoyed the carrot-smoked tofu-scallion there might only be a few pieces of it. Pretty soon all the rolls started to taste the same. Recently we’ve been coming up with 3 or 4 rolls and sticking with those combos. Tonight, aside from the tempeh roll, we had carrot-fried tofu rolls and cucumber-cream cheese-toasted sesame seed rolls.
While searching the web for some sushi ideas D ran across someone that made nigiri with vegetables. We bought an orange bell pepper and he roasted it outside on the burner he uses for brewing and sliced it up for our own nigiri. It was delicious! Roasted and sweet with a little crunch. They made up for the fact that we couldn’t find any inari wrappers.
We always fret that we don’t have enough rice or nori (somehow we always cut up way too much for the filling) and as always we ended up having the perfect amount of food. The kids were really into helping, so they got to take turns putting carrots and cukes on the rice before I rolled them up. They both devoured their dinners and they couldn’t get enough of the tempeh roll. It was awesome (except for the part where they almost ate all the tempeh roll pieces).
I’m so happy to have a dog and cat that get along. Gordon and Enid never got along with cats (Enid especially) and I always wanted a house with those animals you see that love each other, like when a cat naps with the rats, or a dog nurses a turtle. Or something. We got Sophie the cat as a wee ickle kitten and trained her to be the Alpha animal of the house. When we were hunting for a dog we had to find one that was good with cats, and we couldn’t have made a better match than with Ziggy (aka Mr. Omega).
They play together all the time and it is hilarious. Ziggy is always smacking her with his huge paw because she smacks him. When she comes in from the yard he always greets her. They chase each other all over the back yard. Sophie recently realized that if Ziggy nips at her back and neck its like getting scratched. Tonight she was goading him into it, and while he thought he had the upper hand Sophie was really just laying there enjoying the attention.
I tried to snap pictures of them…mostly they just turned out like this:
Note Sophie’s foot on the the right hand side as they had just dashed out of the shot. Hmmm, I wonder what that is lost under the couch…
We decided that today was a day where we needed to get out of our pajamas and leave the house for a while. We got up at 6am and headed west, hoping to get to the beach by low tide. We arrived at Indian Beach at Ecola State Park about a half hour after low tide, which was still a little too late for a great tide pooling expedition. We did see a lot of mussels and anemones and the kids liked discovering the various sizes and shapes of seaweed that was strewn about the beach. There were some nifty spots in the cliffs that were actively being eroded by water, and there was a lot of neon green moss growing on the rocks.
XM was determined to build a sand castle. Despite being bundled we couldn’t stave off the 35 degree temperatures (feels like 33!) with cold wet hands, so she only got one bucket filled before abandoning her project.
Otherwise we did regular cold Oregon beach things - wrote in the sand, watched the surfers, hunted for shells and things. O found a rope that was buried deep in the sand. XM wouldn’t dig it out for him, so he tried to pull it out.
We finished up with the time honored tradition of beat the waves up the beach before your shoes get soaked, and then headed back to the car to warm up.
We stopped at Seaside for a bit and browsed a nice little bookstore with a big fat cat and a toy store with a nice collection of board games. The kids rode the carousel and then we hit the road again for lunch in Astoria. We ate at the Fort George Brewery and had a really nice lunch and some great beer.
I had their Vortex IPA, a super hoppy beer that made good on its delivery of putting my palate and taste buds in a “lupulin-ecstasy of pleasure”. D got a taster of 12 beers and enjoyed its bevy of deliciousness (my tag line, which I’m sure they will now want to steal).
Food was good, kids were happy, so I’d give Ft. George a big thumbs up. We walked the neighborhood a little then headed on home down Hwy. 30. O is about half way through Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban and he read the entire two hours home (and some more after he got home, pausing only to stuff some pizza in and only stopping for bedtime). Unfortunately XM slept the whole way home, and is still up past her bedtime and forcing us to find kid friendly tv to watch. Overall though, the day was loads of fun. We’ll have to go back when the weather is warmer. At least it didn’t rain!
The main problem with our board game addiction is that so many games can take a lot of time to play - and by a lot I mean two plus hours - and need three or more people to play. This prevents D and I from playing after the kids go to bed. Many of the games O can participate in, which leaves XM out in the cold. Sometimes she’ll watch a movie while we play, other times she really wants to be involved so we will try to put her with an adult as part of a team. Most games can’t hold her interest or require too much thought for her to simply move or play a random game piece (I mean geez, she is only four).
We recently purchased the game The Downfall of Pompeii. The game is based around the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius in 79 AD and has two distinct phases to the game play: repopulate the city, and run for your lives! In 63 AD an earthquake damaged much of Pompeii, and many residents left the city. Others moved in and rebuilt the city (probably not on rock and roll) and this is your first task of the game. Each player plays cards that correspond to buildings on the board, allowing you to add people to the city. If a player draws the first of the two volcano cards then two things begin to happen: you can repopulate the city at a higher rate and omen cards start to appear. If you draw an omen card then you get to choose any resident of one of your opponents and throw them in the volcano. This is most fun if you make them scream in terror as you drop them into the crater.
Once the second volcano card appears, the game shifts into the run for your lives phase. Each player takes turns placing lava tiles and trying to get their residents out of the city. You can place a lava tile on a square with your opponents residents in it and throw them in the volcano. The player with the most residents to escape the city wins.
The best thing about this game is that XM loves it. The second best thing is that she never actually cares if she wins or not. With Pompeii she is able to choose a card, and we show her the correct building so she can place her residents. She squeals with delight when she gets an omen card and can throw one of us in the volcano. When she draws the lava tiles we just need to point out the available places to go and she lays it down, burning her opponents in the process. She doesn’t have the skills yet to strategically place her residents or see who she needs to get out of harms way, but she has a lot of fun anyway. Death and destruction, fun for the whole family!
Baby Sweetpea has arrived! Our niece Sara (born to D’s brother and his wife) was born on the 20th, ushering in the Spring. O and XM were very excited to have a new cousin, and Grandma and Grandpa are over the moon about their new granddaughter. I’d never seen the kids around a newborn before, and they were very sweet and gentle. When we walked out of the room, XM said “I love her”. Looking forward to more baby time once the new parents get settled in.
March 21, 2009 at 8:07 pm · Filed under Funny, Tech
I absolutely love The IT Crowd, a brilliant sitcom from Britain that just wrapped its third season. A recent episode had the gang (two awkward IT guys and their tech clueless boss) dealing with the social pressures of “Friendface”, a social networking site akin to Facebook. Whether you are a fan or hater of Facebook this is a pretty great take on mocking everyone and their brother for joining, joining up anyway for some pretty cool things, and then the social horror of sharing a space where family and old friends let it all hang out. Thankfully I’ll never have my mom on Facebook reminding me to eat my apple.
More on our terrifying entry into the world of Facebook in a future post.
March 20, 2009 at 1:24 pm · Filed under Home, Whining
My friend stopped by today and said “it smells like cinnamon in here, did you bake something?”. I had to point out the pound of cinnamon I’d spread along the (in my opinion) quite oversized air intake grate for the heater. We tend to have ant problems every spring, when they decide that our living room might be a nice place to take up residence. In the past I have stymied them with a carefully placed line of cinnamon. Unfortunately this batch is a bunch of tenacious little bastards who laugh in the face of my defenses. After much research I decided to add some Vaseline to the mix. I’ve successfully plugged up some of their little holes with it, but only the holes out of reach of the dog’s tongue (who knew petroleum was so tasty?).
A few are still getting in, but so far (knocking so very hard on the desk) not in the numbers of the initial wave. Yesterday the sight of the carpenter ants outside enjoying the sun was stressful, as they are usually the next to sneak in the house. I even had a nightmare last night about a room filled with lines and lines of ants going everywhere, and it was my job to get rid of them. Ick. I try and be live and let live with them, but seriously, can’t they take a hint? I sing Adam and the Ants songs in my head every time I end up squishing one…
