No. He'll be an engineer.

Conversation of the century

· 11/29/2008 03:36 PM by Steve Gigl

“There he is, making his new funny face . And dripping drool all over the place.”

“Want to rhyme some more?”

“I ran out of ’-aces.’” [Pause as child does his scream thingy again.] “Ok, here’s one: can you discipline a child with mace?”

“Not if you spray them in the face.”

Category: Home-Family-and-Kids
Scope: Personal

Rantback

The third row of doom

· 09/20/2008 02:30 PM by Steve Gigl

So today we heroically attempted to stave off the minivan scourge by trading our Chevy Trailblazer for a one-year-older (but much-lower-mileage) Honda Pilot.

The Pilot is very nice and has a lot of bells and whistles the Trailblazer (allegedly considered new when we bought it, but as it turns out very much not new, which is a long annoying story…) didn’t have, and we also have a reasonable expectation of it lasting quite a few more years, while the Chevy made us nervous sometimes. Hopefully the quality and reliability reputation was well-earned by Honda, but we did go ahead and spend money on a warranty, because I’m just that paranoid.

The main feature, though, is that it has a third row of seats, which means we’ll be able to visit the grandparents with a lot less hassle from here on out. Well, theoretically, at least. Yeah, it’s smaller than a minivan, but we’re willing to buy a cargo carrier for the top, and we already have a hitch-mounted one. And the poor dog finally doesn’t have to sit on the rear bench between two car seats for 5-7 hours on trips.

Hopefully it all works out well!

[And yes, John, we’ll keep up with the maintenance! Now on to replacing my car with a cheap high-mileage Honda/Subaru/whatever.]

Category: Home-Family-and-Kids
Scope: Personal

Rantback

Relaxing at work

· 07/16/2008 01:02 PM by Steve Gigl

You know what makes a reasonably-pressurized job seem calm, laid back, even relaxing? Spending the morning at various doctors’ offices for a bunch of (planned, so don’t worry) tests on a 2-year old and on a 5-month-old. (And then spending most of that time chasing the 2-year-old around trying to keep him from getting run over by stretchers in the hospital hallways.)

Yeah, I’ll play it up as much as I can—“Guess how late I worked last night?”—but really, since I already feel like I ran a marathon, how rough could this be? [Famous last words…]

Category: Home-Family-and-Kids
Scope: Personal

Rantback [2]

CSA Adventures, Week 2

· 06/22/2008 08:19 AM by Steve Gigl

Well this is a bit late, but I have a good excuse; we spent the latter part of the week scrambling to recover from having something stolen from us (in a particularly disturbing way). So, better late than never, here’s this week’s haul:

• Garlic Scapes
  This is a new one on us, but I’ve found a couple of good recipes for them, I think.
• Bok Choi or Napa Cabbage
  Still haven’t found a stir fry I want to do, but I better get cracking.
• Potato Onions
  Another one we haven’t used before, but shouldn’t be too tough to either include as a replacement or find a use for.
• Kohlrabi
  I like these raw, but MLW isn’t a fan, so last night we had a side dish of cooked kohlrabi with carrots in a honey-butter-lemon-chive sauce. Pretty good.
• Strawberries
  Got plenty of uses for these.
• Boston Lettuce
• Red Leaf Lettuce
  Salads galore!
• Broccoli
  Since MLW hates broccoli with a passion, this will probably be going raw in my lunch to work.
• Red Komatsuna
  Not the slightest clue yet, and I haven’t done any research so far.

  Category: CSA-Adventures
  Scope: Home-Family-and-Kids

  Rantback

  

Put away that meat tenderizer

· 05/29/2008 09:12 PM by Steve Gigl

Geez, I wake up with a scratchy throat, and 12 hours later I’m sitting there feeling like somebody went after me with a hammer. The only thing that doesn’t hurt is my head, which appears to be swimming in its own heated pool.

Time for bed, I’d say. Rereading The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy ought to take on a particularly surreal note tonight.

Category: Home-Family-and-Kids
Scope: Personal

Rantback

Conversation of the century

· 11/29/2008 03:36 PM by Steve Gigl

“There he is, making his new funny face . And dripping drool all over the place.”

“Want to rhyme some more?”

“I ran out of ’-aces.’” [Pause as child does his scream thingy again.] “Ok, here’s one: can you discipline a child with mace?”

“Not if you spray them in the face.”

Category: Home-Family-and-Kids
Scope: Personal

Rantback

The third row of doom

· 09/20/2008 02:30 PM by Steve Gigl

So today we heroically attempted to stave off the minivan scourge by trading our Chevy Trailblazer for a one-year-older (but much-lower-mileage) Honda Pilot.

The Pilot is very nice and has a lot of bells and whistles the Trailblazer (allegedly considered new when we bought it, but as it turns out very much not new, which is a long annoying story…) didn’t have, and we also have a reasonable expectation of it lasting quite a few more years, while the Chevy made us nervous sometimes. Hopefully the quality and reliability reputation was well-earned by Honda, but we did go ahead and spend money on a warranty, because I’m just that paranoid.

The main feature, though, is that it has a third row of seats, which means we’ll be able to visit the grandparents with a lot less hassle from here on out. Well, theoretically, at least. Yeah, it’s smaller than a minivan, but we’re willing to buy a cargo carrier for the top, and we already have a hitch-mounted one. And the poor dog finally doesn’t have to sit on the rear bench between two car seats for 5-7 hours on trips.

Hopefully it all works out well!

[And yes, John, we’ll keep up with the maintenance! Now on to replacing my car with a cheap high-mileage Honda/Subaru/whatever.]

Category: Home-Family-and-Kids
Scope: Personal

Rantback

Relaxing at work

· 07/16/2008 01:02 PM by Steve Gigl

You know what makes a reasonably-pressurized job seem calm, laid back, even relaxing? Spending the morning at various doctors’ offices for a bunch of (planned, so don’t worry) tests on a 2-year old and on a 5-month-old. (And then spending most of that time chasing the 2-year-old around trying to keep him from getting run over by stretchers in the hospital hallways.)

Yeah, I’ll play it up as much as I can—“Guess how late I worked last night?”—but really, since I already feel like I ran a marathon, how rough could this be? [Famous last words…]

Category: Home-Family-and-Kids
Scope: Personal

Rantback [2]

CSA Adventures, Week 2

· 06/22/2008 08:19 AM by Steve Gigl

Well this is a bit late, but I have a good excuse; we spent the latter part of the week scrambling to recover from having something stolen from us (in a particularly disturbing way). So, better late than never, here’s this week’s haul:

• Garlic Scapes
  This is a new one on us, but I’ve found a couple of good recipes for them, I think.
• Bok Choi or Napa Cabbage
  Still haven’t found a stir fry I want to do, but I better get cracking.
• Potato Onions
  Another one we haven’t used before, but shouldn’t be too tough to either include as a replacement or find a use for.
• Kohlrabi
  I like these raw, but MLW isn’t a fan, so last night we had a side dish of cooked kohlrabi with carrots in a honey-butter-lemon-chive sauce. Pretty good.
• Strawberries
  Got plenty of uses for these.
• Boston Lettuce
• Red Leaf Lettuce
  Salads galore!
• Broccoli
  Since MLW hates broccoli with a passion, this will probably be going raw in my lunch to work.
• Red Komatsuna
  Not the slightest clue yet, and I haven’t done any research so far.

  Category: CSA-Adventures
  Scope: Home-Family-and-Kids

  Rantback

  

Put away that meat tenderizer

· 05/29/2008 09:12 PM by Steve Gigl

Geez, I wake up with a scratchy throat, and 12 hours later I’m sitting there feeling like somebody went after me with a hammer. The only thing that doesn’t hurt is my head, which appears to be swimming in its own heated pool.

Time for bed, I’d say. Rereading The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy ought to take on a particularly surreal note tonight.

Category: Home-Family-and-Kids
Scope: Personal

Rantback

Fat weekend report

· 05/27/2008 12:12 PM by Steve Gigl

No pictures this time, but I smoked a small brisket yesterday to open up the barbecue season.

I still have problems keeping the heat up in the smoker cabinet, even with the electric hot plate assisting. I’m thinking that insulation is in order. Of course, I’ve been thinking that for a while, but this time I’m really going to act on it! (Rrrrright…)

(BTW, to the FIL I should apologize: the smoker is, in fact, a Brinkmann vertical smoker. For some reason I had it in my head that it was a different brand. Hope your ribs turned out!)

Along with that, we had the leftover Texas Caviar from Sunday’s party (with chips), some “frog eye salad,” a slightly hot barbecue sauce that OWS didn’t appreciate, and a couple of non-alcoholic Mexican lime drinks I wanted to try. Dessert was grilled pineapple dipped in coconut milk and cinnamon & sugar with vanilla ice cream.

Verdicts:

Brisket: good flavor even though I had to finish it in the oven, no crust because of the low heat, and I really didn’t have to use tons and tons of wood chunks to get there.

Dessert: Never had grilled pineapples before, and I liked them more than I expected. The cinnamon taste really didn’t come through much (most of it dripped off). Great with vanilla ice cream.

Lime drinks: better mixed together than separate. Worth playing with, though, because most limeades just aren’t very good.

Barbecue sauce: Good, but not great. The heat was OK for me, but it was missing a “deepness” in flavor. MLW thought it had an odd carrot-like sweetness to its aftertaste.

Category: Home-Family-and-Kids
Scope: Personal

Rantback

And many happy returns

· 05/20/2008 09:59 PM by Steve Gigl

Happy birthday, Dad!

Category: Personal
Scope: Home-Family-and-Kids

Rantback

A(nother) new normal

· 05/19/2008 09:02 AM by Steve Gigl

Today begins the great experiment, with two boys in day care—a private home, not a center—3 days of the week, and MLW home with them the other two days. (That means we finally have the majority of days with our kids, not just hours!) And the only burp was that I left my wallet in the truck yesterday while we were running errands, so there had to be a post-daycare-meeting to transfer the wallet back to me. Sheesh.

Category: Personal
Scope: Home-Family-and-Kids

Rantback [1]

Hang up the BB gun, Granny Oakley

· 04/27/2008 09:10 PM by Steve Gigl

While MLW was taking a well-earned nap and I was staining a closet door in the basement this afternoon, someone took a shot at our house. [No, this isn’t a Murderapolis story…]

Not that anyone knew what happened at the time; MLW heard glass breaking, but didn’t find the broken window (in a screen door facing our deck) until a few minutes later. She came and talked to me, and I went up to take a look at it. There was an obvious impact point (hole, actually) in the window.

In other words, if it was a bird, the beak hit the glass.

Nope. After a few seconds, I found 2 BBs on the deck in front of the door. Oh, goodie.

So we called the police to report it, not because I was worried about my safety, but because there are several dogs, even more little kids, and plenty of windows that can be damaged pretty badly (even by BBs) around us. And we figured it was some dumb kid shooting at squirrels that didn’t realize what could happen. I wasn’t even too mad at that point, we just wanted the police to put a little scare into somebody.

But after the nice policeman dropped by and took his pictures, we talked to our neighbors, and it turns out there is an old lady in a house behind us who likes to shoot squirrels. And the neighbors have the dented and holed siding to prove it.

And suddenly I went from annoyance to white-hot-anger, because someone who should have known better was intentionally endangering my family and damaging my property.

I understand the impulse to get rid of pests. But this is a tightly spaced neighborhood, and she has a 45-degree downward angle from her deck to our yard (she’s on a big hill), and that is incredibly unsafe for all of the aforementioned dogs and kids. BBs are not the safe ammo you’d like them to be in weird circumstances like that.

If she hurts someone, or the recurring pain our dog has been having in her hind leg over the last year turns out to be a BB lodged in her leg… I am going to have my temper tested rather harshly. [As if it hasn’t been already today.]

The people in this neighborhood might not have been a-holes enough to get this stopped for good earlier, but I am just the right kind of jerk to get an old lady’s BB-gun privileges revoked.

Category: Home-Family-and-Kids
Scope: Personal

Rantback

Bite me, Ma Nature

· 04/07/2008 11:57 AM by Steve Gigl

This means something…

I feel happy, because this is back in our driveway:

I don’t know when we’ll get to use it, but for right now I just don’t care.

Category: Home-Family-and-Kids
Scope: Personal

Rantback