Classical Christmas

A belated Merry Christmas to you all!!! It's been a crazy 3 days for us, but all in all the Christmas holiday weekend went pretty well, the kids got a lot of good stuff. T got some boxing gloves and a bag from his uncle, aka my little brother. That was sort of unexpected and unneeded, but he loves his Pow Gloves so it's ok for the moment. My parents got us the best gift, a GPS unit. It's spectacular because when we go on these vacations, navigation isn't usually our strongest point.

We were heading up to Yosemite trying to go what we thought was a quicker route. We were heading up Hwy 4 towards Angel's Camp passing Copperopolis (great city name) and needed to turn right on O'Byrne's Ferry Road. I asked my lovely wife what road we were looking for, and she told me we were searching for O'Bryant Ferry Road. So when we passed O'Byrne's Ferry Road, we figured we must be getting close, as O'Byrne's Ferry seemed very similar to the O'Bryant Ferry we'd read about in our Mapquest directions. So after a 45ish minute detour, we found our way back to the road we were searching for, we ended up going all the way around three towns (which is a big trip when they're not next to each other) and finding the other side of O'Byrne's Ferry road. It probably would have taken about 15 minutes to take that, the correct, road.

So the GPS will be spectacular, we'll be able to just go where we want without worrying about our subpar navigational skillz. My plan now is just to fill up the tank with gas, then drive almost half of it out, and turn around, and tell it to get me home. That should be fun. I don't know where I'd end up or how it will bring me back, but I know it will find me the quickest route if I so desire.

E also got a mini-kitchen, which I'm sure has nothing to do with her being female and having a life in the kitchen ahead of her. It's probably more because my wife always wanted one for herself when she was little, and has talked her mom into buying this one for our daughter. It still hasn't been assembled because she's not sure where she wants it to go. I can't wait. She's also received a bunch of fake food, but some of the cans and boxes are name-brand. She has little cans of Green Giant green beans. She got a box of Hamburger Helper, some Duncan Hines cake mix, and some other stuff that I can't remember right now.

And so for a look of things to come, I took over 100 pictures of my in-laws crazy Disney fetish in their house, and will be posting some of these photos over the next few days at random. I know some of you have heard the tales of this house, but still don't understand just how nutty it is. Be prepared folks, be prepared.

Who Needs Pictures

Thanks to a friend I've never met, there is now a visual to go with the Corvette crash story from a few days ago. This one features a Ferrari and a lot more destruction, but the idea is there. It's amazing how difficult it is to find a picture of a similar crash. I suppose that shows how rare the sight was. Now that I've realized this, I wish I would have stopped and tried to get a shot with my phone. Oh well. So thanks, T!

Now imagine this without a garage, moped, and less garage door. The car was actually lined up perfectly with the front of the Corvette. Incredible. Looking at this picture, I wish I would have seen this one also. Maybe I need to watch some NASCAR to get my wreck watching urges down. Or I could just watch Cars again. I should probably just watch Cars again.

Present Tense

Every year my wife buys something for me for Christmas that makes me feel like a 6 year old who wants desperately to rip a small incision in the side of a wrapped present to get a glimpse of what lies within. It's always some ginormous box that somehow manages to get under the tree, or in this case rested against the wall beside the tree, and always makes the joy of getting stuff come rushing back.

I've become accustomed in my older years to receiving things that are mostly practical, useful or necessary. Gone are the days when I'd open a X-Wing fighter, go over my cousins house, where he just got the Falcon and we'd play all day out in the freezing winter weather. In are the days where a gift card to the local Safeway is a joy.

But my wife has always managed to get me some great stuff. A couple years ago for my birthday she got me an XBOX. Something that I wanted, but had no hopes of getting. This was a startling gift for me, as all other gaming systems that I'd owned throughout my life, I'd purchased. On another note, I did just hook up the old Nintendo 64 a couple weeks ago to play Blitz 2000. It's still pretty fun.

So now this giant box is staring at me as I wander through the living room, taunting me with its mystery. I know that it will be something good, or if nothing else, something big. I'm getting all jacked up just thinking about it. And just as when I was a kid, I can't wait for Christmas morning.

Santa Claus Is Comin' to Town

Fear not faithful few, for I found a feasible functional Car With Guns On It. It was located at Target and labeled as a Target exclusive Transformer. It will have to do the trick. View it's spectacularness below.
So Santa will have done his job and it's not nearly as violent as i had pictured. Plus, it's a Transformer, which makes two for him this year, so that's a nice bonus.

He has his preschool Christmas, er...Holiday party in a few hours, so that should be fun. Apparently, they're going to sing some tunes. I don't know which ones, but I'm guessing that one of them is Jingle Bells, because he's been repeating the chorus to that one for the past week or so. Over and over and over and over.

Race Car Driver

It's really hard to find a race car with guns. I don't know if this was common knowledge before I started my hunt, but it should be. All my son wants from Santa this year is a race car with guns. I can find some GI Joe stuff, but they are jeeps, and tanks, and hummer style vehicles. You'd think that you could find a HotWheel with some weaponry on it, but you'd be wrong. There is no such thing.

I submit this idea to the head of Mattel, stop messing around with the Barbie Corvette, that just makes the Corvette less cool, instead put a machine gun on the Camaro. Do something useful, turn a superfast car into a superweapon. I know that somebody else must have thought of this before, so I can't imagine why it hasn't been done yet.

If anyone out there has any information about this toy and where I might find one, please let me know. I don't think that it's going to be an urgent matter as I have managed to procure an Optimus Prime transformer that has a firing something on it. I don't know if it's a missle launcher or a plasma cannon, but either way it shoots in robot form. So that's something.

Tomorrow should be fun as his preschool is having a "Holiday" party, as you're not allowed to say Christmas anymore, even though that's what the Holiday party is for. We didnt' get two weeks off of school because of Kwanzaa. Of course that one wasn't invented until the late 60's anyway. But that's another talk for another time. Enjoy those Christmas tunes whilst they're still on the air!

Little Red Corvette

I haven't put this story up because I was hoping to find a picture of it somewhere, without it it's hard to truly visualize the amazingness of it all. It all started on my normally boring ride home from work on Friday down the long two lane road that takes me home.

There was an unusual amount of traffic for 4 on a Friday. This is the one day that I can mostly just get home while driving the speed limit. Friday, however, I was pushing about 4 mph. Then an ambulance went flying by me down the middle turning lane, followed closely by a cop car, then another cop car. And about 5 minutes after that, another police officer in a 4-wheeled vehicle. Apparently this was either the biggest accident up ahead that had ever happened, or they just had nothing else to do.

Now this stretch of road that I was traveling down on a bad day will take me around 15 to 20 minutes to complete. On this day after 25 minutes I was almost halfway down, and this is where the coolest accident I've ever seen had occurred. I'm not saying that I'm glad people were hurt or anything because, to be honest, I have no evidence that anyone was. There was a fire engine, two ambulances, and five cop cars there. A crowd had also gathered around on the sidewalks and in front of the nearby Starbucks. We were being diverted around the scene of the accident as it had claimed both lanes of this particular street.

There was four cars directly involved that were still where they were when the accident happened. An old Ford truck in front, followed by what I believe was a Civic, then a brand new Corvette, and finally an Altima. Now, you're probably saying, "Hey, that sounds boring and I don't care!" Well you'd be right, what makes this cool is that the Civic was on top of the Corvette. Yes, that's right my friends, the front bumper of the Civic was on the ground in front of the greatest sports car ever made, and it's back bumper was sticking up in the air a little more than halfway down the roof of the Corvette.

I'm not sure how this happened, and apparently it wasn't amazing enough to make it into the paper. But then again, the Times is a pretty crappy paper. So without any official reports, and because I'm not a Mythbuster...yet...I'll give you what I believe is the happenings of this amazing sight.

Phase One: Ford, Civic, Corvette, and Altima are all driving down the road, happy as can be at a top speed of what usually isn't any more than 30 mph, if you're lucky.

Phase Two: Ford driver (being a moron) stops for no reason in the middle of the road. Civic driver (also not that brilliant) tries to stop before running into the back of this massive truck but fails.

Phase Three: As Civic driver has hit the brakes to late, Corvette driver (the only intelligent one here) manages to stop just in time, however as the Civic hits the Ford, it goes slightly under Ford's back bumper, bringing Civic's back bumper off the ground slightly.

Phase Four: As the Civic bumper raises off the ground and Corvette stops just behind this, Altima driver (who has no business being here) hits the back of Corvette and causes Corvette to lose hold on the brake and slides ever so neatly under back bumper of the raised back bumper of Civic.

Phase Five: Since Altima driver is not a good driver (otherwise they wouldn't have an Altima) it pushes Corvette along just enough while Corvette driver is still trying to re-apply brakes to cause Corvette to slide under the wheels of Civic which makes Civic climb higher onto top of Corvette.

Phase Six: I drive by and see madness and am unable to get a good picture with cameraphone.

And thus you have the craziest crash I've ever seen. I wish I could have seen what happened to cause the back of the Civic to climb onto the hood of a Corvette. I'm sure it was spectacular.

So let this be a warning to all you Corvette drivers out there, don't follow a Civic to closely. They just want to jump on top of you in a car dogpile.

Play That Funky Music

So because I know you're curious, here are the songs stuck in my head right now.

I Was Just Thinking by Teitur
Don't Need Anything by Glen Phillips
Brady Bunch Theme
Be Like That by 3 Doors Down
Main Street Electric Parade by Disneyland
I'll Be Home for Christmas by Nickel Creek (and many others)
Knight Rider Theme by a synthesizer (no words, just humming it a lot lately, it was my wife's ringtone)
Bare Necessities by Baloo (my wife's current ringtone)
George of the Jungle Theme (my son sings this one a lot. well, actually it's just "George, George, George in the jungle watch out for that tree!" over and over and over and over...you get the idea.

So some are good, and some suck, and some are just annoying, like the American Gladiators theme that just popped into my head. Oh well. Enjoy those tunes suckers!

Our Retirement Plan

So, because I haven't put anything up here in a few days. And I'm lazy. And I have one of him playing baseball, I present my little guy demonstrating how he's gonna let me quit working in about 20 years. And we don't have a belt for him...in case you're wondering.

Trouble

Our little Tster got what amounted to his first note home from the teacher. He got sent to timeout three times in his preschool class on Tuesday. It's only a 2 1/2 hour class. The teacher told my mom (who takes and picks him up) that he was just running around and not listening. (Which is what he's been doing at home a lot lately also.)

We asked him why he got in trouble and after denying that he did anything at all for about 20 minutes, he offered an explanation that i don't fully understand. Apparently, the whale was going to slow for the Pirate ship and that was causing problems, so he got sent to timeout. I don't know why the pirate ship was chasing the whale at all, to be honest. Unless Ahab was the captain.

Also, it's unclear to me in what waters this pirate ship was sailing. As it was explained to me besides the whale being to slow, the pirate ship kept running it over. So it seems that this whale was just hanging out in the ocean, then this massive pirate ship comes flying towards it, runs it over, realizes that it hit something, flips around and runs it over again. Maybe it was just a whale watching trip gone bad. Who can say? Certainly not our boy, who is sticking by that story. So maybe there's some truth in it somewhere. Maybe the whale is some other kid, and the pirate ship was T on a trike. It would certainly seem possible, and to be honest, kinda funny. This kid lying on the ground while T runs him over on a trike again and again, screaming "C'mon whale! Move! I'm sick of my ship getting dings because of your lack of swimming skills!"

Well, maybe not funny...for the kid on the ground. Also, just so you know, I'm not raising a bully. Bullying is bad. I'm raising a kid who will be able to take care of himself. And if that includes using funds from other kids to get his milk because his parents forgot to give it to him that morning? Well, then that's what has to happen.

And for those bleeding hearts out there who believe all creatures are wonderful and lovely and we should save the spotted mini toad in southern Bolivia, I'm kidding. He's not a bully, and he's actually very polite, asking "May I" and says "Please" and "Thank you." He also gets mad when he says "thank you" and you don't say "you're welcome." He'll yell at you, saying "I SAID, 'THANK YOU'!" until you say 'welcome'.

So to all whales out there, watch out for those pirate ships, and today when I get home, I hope you weren't massacred at the hands of my 4 year old.