Last night, as we were getting ready for dinner, Libby overheard Norah in the other room. She was hanging dinosaur magnets on the fridge and every once in awhile one of them would fall on the floor. When it did she said, "Dammit." It was pretty hilarious, but we explained to her that it was a bad word with the requisite caveat that only adults could use that word (because, after all, that was how she learned it in the first place, as saying"dammit" is one of my unfortunate verbal habits when something damnable happens to me--which is just about everything).
After she was finished with the fridge, though, Libby quizzed her on what she'd said, and the result was GOLD.
Sadly, you'll just have to ignore the last thirty seconds or minute of the video as it's just Libby trying to pester something else funny out of Norah. But up to that point, GOLD.
Friday, December 30, 2011
Monday, December 19, 2011
Gabe's Christmas Program
So I still haven't gotten around to loading up the video from the Santa call to youtube, but I do have some video of Gabe in his Christmas "program" at preschool. And another one of the kids jumping on the couch (which I totally didn't let them do, Libby, I suspect one of our ghosts shot the video instead of me).
And jumping on the couch.
Wednesday, December 14, 2011
The Kids Receive a Call from Santa
Last night, the kids got a call from Santa. It went interestingly. Hopefully it's not too long for Blogger to accept.
Monday, December 5, 2011
An Uncomfortable Retirement
Almost fifteen years ago, shortly after Libby and I got married, I took a part time job at Ritz Camera in the Town East Mall. The store was only opened five years, and I started working there within a month of it opening (it was opened as part of an agreement with Simon, the mall's parent company--Ritz had to open many stores in small markets to get a space in the Mall of America, as I understand it). Ritz had to sign a five year lease on the space, and as soon as it was up, they closed our store.
Now, there is some debate as to whether it was OUR fault (besides me, my friends Brian and Kris worked there for most of those five years and my brother Jon was there for much of it as well--in other words, there really wasn't anyone to blame for the store doing badly except me and my friends, but we still found plenty of other excuses for why the store didn't do so well). But that is neither here nor there. All I know is that I was able to tape the two day marathon of Twilight Zones on the SciFi channel on New Years and watch it, in its entirety, while being paid at Ritz. Does that mean we were neglecting our job and making the business fail? Who cares, it was awesome (we also caught up on something like 10 seasons of Law and Order at the time).
By the process of elimination, and in no way reflecting my aptitude for selling cameras, I rose in the ranks at the store--becoming full time, then the assistant manager, and finally becoming the store manager for about a year and a half. Then, 4 years and eleven months after the store opened, we received a pallet-load of empty boxes with no warning and no explanations for what we were supposed to do with them. A call to our district manager informed us that the store would need to be packed into those boxes and we would be closing in a month. And then I became a college English teacher because I wasn't qualified to do anything else (and still am not qualified to do anything else).
While I was the manager, I received a piece of mail notifying me that the company was starting a 401K for me with a $100 initial deposit that I could continue to put funds into if I chose. At the time, we had zero disposable income, so I passed, but the account continued to exist and for the past decade I've been receiving quarterly notifications of how the account was doing. And, to this day, it is the only retirement that I have accrued because I have never had a real full-time job with benefits of any sort since. At one point, it had risen in value to about $175! But the market crash of 2008 cost me about 30% of my retirement, and for that I will never forgive Wall Street.
A couple months ago, I received another piece of mail letting me know that, since I wasn't doing anything with my account, it was going to be closed. I could roll it over into another account or receive a check. Since, as I said, I have no other accounts, I decided just to roll the dice and hope they would send me a check instead of just embezzling the money because, let's face it, I wasn't going to go out of my way to keep track of a little over $100. But, lo and behold, two weeks ago, I received a check for $122.57.
What would I do with this windfall? Pay a bill? Buy 2/3 of a cartload of groceries? Change the oil on BOTH of our cars? The possibilities weren't endless. And I decided to say screw it and take advantage of a Black Friday weekend sale Gamestop was running and bought a Kinect for my X-Box.
And I think it will pay off. I see decades of happy return on my retirement. At least as long as it's not me playing it because, I've found out, that most of the games that require jumping and actual exercisy movement aren't tailored to my sedentary body type. One day of messing around on there ended up with me sore and achy for a week. And I might have broken a hip.
But Gabe loves it. He especially loves Fruit Ninja. The game's concept is simple. You are a ninja, and someone below and in front of you throws fruit in the air, and you cut it with your sword--presumably to use in those fruit plates they sell at grocery stores or for the fruit juice industry, because I can't see many other practical uses for that much chopped up fruit.
But any opportunity to swing his arms around like they are swords is an opportunity that Gabe won't pass up on. He's gotten pretty good at the game, too (though he's still a bit short for the Kinect to properly read him standing in front of the TV, which poses some problems from time to time).
Gabe Ninjaing. He ALWAYS makes the sound effect of slicing his sword while playing. And he tends to roam all around the room while playing, which poses further problems for the Kinect to keep up with him. But he doesn't seem to mind that it often doesn't do what it's supposed to do. He just keeps blissfully swinging his arms and jumping around. And, even better, we've found something that he wants to do badly enough that we can use it as blackmail to get him to nap. He's already opted out of playing in favor of not napping once--which makes it an imperfect draw--but it's kept him in bed at least twice now, which I'll call a success.
Norah gave it a go, too--with me doing the actual slicing behind her because she was too short for the sensor to see. In the game, little bombs occasionally fly up and if you chop them something bad happens. What you can't see on this video, because it happens shortly after, is Norah getting a complex about the bomb that I exploded to end our game. For the past few days, she has thrown fits whenever Gabe starts playing the game, insisting that she needs to be upstairs so the bombs don't hurt her. For a day after this happened, she couldn't talk about anything but the bombs exploding--"Don't make the bomb explode, Daddy!" she would insist as we were driving in the car and there were no bombs in sight. Kids are weird.
Now, there is some debate as to whether it was OUR fault (besides me, my friends Brian and Kris worked there for most of those five years and my brother Jon was there for much of it as well--in other words, there really wasn't anyone to blame for the store doing badly except me and my friends, but we still found plenty of other excuses for why the store didn't do so well). But that is neither here nor there. All I know is that I was able to tape the two day marathon of Twilight Zones on the SciFi channel on New Years and watch it, in its entirety, while being paid at Ritz. Does that mean we were neglecting our job and making the business fail? Who cares, it was awesome (we also caught up on something like 10 seasons of Law and Order at the time).
By the process of elimination, and in no way reflecting my aptitude for selling cameras, I rose in the ranks at the store--becoming full time, then the assistant manager, and finally becoming the store manager for about a year and a half. Then, 4 years and eleven months after the store opened, we received a pallet-load of empty boxes with no warning and no explanations for what we were supposed to do with them. A call to our district manager informed us that the store would need to be packed into those boxes and we would be closing in a month. And then I became a college English teacher because I wasn't qualified to do anything else (and still am not qualified to do anything else).
While I was the manager, I received a piece of mail notifying me that the company was starting a 401K for me with a $100 initial deposit that I could continue to put funds into if I chose. At the time, we had zero disposable income, so I passed, but the account continued to exist and for the past decade I've been receiving quarterly notifications of how the account was doing. And, to this day, it is the only retirement that I have accrued because I have never had a real full-time job with benefits of any sort since. At one point, it had risen in value to about $175! But the market crash of 2008 cost me about 30% of my retirement, and for that I will never forgive Wall Street.
A couple months ago, I received another piece of mail letting me know that, since I wasn't doing anything with my account, it was going to be closed. I could roll it over into another account or receive a check. Since, as I said, I have no other accounts, I decided just to roll the dice and hope they would send me a check instead of just embezzling the money because, let's face it, I wasn't going to go out of my way to keep track of a little over $100. But, lo and behold, two weeks ago, I received a check for $122.57.
What would I do with this windfall? Pay a bill? Buy 2/3 of a cartload of groceries? Change the oil on BOTH of our cars? The possibilities weren't endless. And I decided to say screw it and take advantage of a Black Friday weekend sale Gamestop was running and bought a Kinect for my X-Box.
And I think it will pay off. I see decades of happy return on my retirement. At least as long as it's not me playing it because, I've found out, that most of the games that require jumping and actual exercisy movement aren't tailored to my sedentary body type. One day of messing around on there ended up with me sore and achy for a week. And I might have broken a hip.
But Gabe loves it. He especially loves Fruit Ninja. The game's concept is simple. You are a ninja, and someone below and in front of you throws fruit in the air, and you cut it with your sword--presumably to use in those fruit plates they sell at grocery stores or for the fruit juice industry, because I can't see many other practical uses for that much chopped up fruit.
But any opportunity to swing his arms around like they are swords is an opportunity that Gabe won't pass up on. He's gotten pretty good at the game, too (though he's still a bit short for the Kinect to properly read him standing in front of the TV, which poses some problems from time to time).
Gabe Ninjaing. He ALWAYS makes the sound effect of slicing his sword while playing. And he tends to roam all around the room while playing, which poses further problems for the Kinect to keep up with him. But he doesn't seem to mind that it often doesn't do what it's supposed to do. He just keeps blissfully swinging his arms and jumping around. And, even better, we've found something that he wants to do badly enough that we can use it as blackmail to get him to nap. He's already opted out of playing in favor of not napping once--which makes it an imperfect draw--but it's kept him in bed at least twice now, which I'll call a success.
Norah gave it a go, too--with me doing the actual slicing behind her because she was too short for the sensor to see. In the game, little bombs occasionally fly up and if you chop them something bad happens. What you can't see on this video, because it happens shortly after, is Norah getting a complex about the bomb that I exploded to end our game. For the past few days, she has thrown fits whenever Gabe starts playing the game, insisting that she needs to be upstairs so the bombs don't hurt her. For a day after this happened, she couldn't talk about anything but the bombs exploding--"Don't make the bomb explode, Daddy!" she would insist as we were driving in the car and there were no bombs in sight. Kids are weird.
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