Two Princes

My brother was walking to work yesterday in SF behind a bum. This bum saw one of his friends across the street. My brother overheard this small exchange.

Bum 1: "Hey Jess, How you doin' today?"
Bum 2: "Not to bad. I got the day off."

Moral? It's all relative.

Do You Hear What I Hear?

I've realized lately that I listen to a lot of music that my kids like while I shuttle them around. Every morning I get up and get them ready to go and take them to whichever grandparent's house they're supposed to go to that day. So five days a week, we take either a 20 minute, or 40 minute ride together in the van. And two of those days, it's a 40 minute ride back also. This time in the vehicle of vantitude is spent handing back stuffed friends, and books that have fallen within my reach. Explaining that the Christmas lights won't be back for a long time. We don't race other cars in the rain. And other such tidbits. And of course, while all this is happening, we're listening to music. Sometimes, I can listen to my tunes, but mostly, I can't. I'm listening to the tunes that they want to hear, and to be honest, I love hearing my 20 month old daughter sing along to "Pirates of the Caribbean." So with that in mind, I present my top 25 most played songs off my, and I should stress the word my, so I'll make it more stressed: MY...there we go...iPod.

1. Fraggle Rock - the theme song, "Dance Your Cares Away!" *clap clap* and yes, they clap


2. Muppet Show - also the theme song


3. Fat Cat Sat - a Sesame Street song from the good ol' days that rhymes lots of words, it's T's newest favorite


4. Honk Around the Clock - like "Dance Around the Clock" but with Honkers from SS
   


5. Dance Myself to Sleep - SS song with Ernie where he brings in bugle playing sheep
   


6. African Alphabet - Kermit helps African singers say the alphabet
   


7. Sing After Me - Classic with Grover and Madeline Kahn, check it out on YouTube if you get the chance, Little E really gets into the Meeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee part
   


8. Life Is a Highway - From Cars
   


9. My Name is You - Another classic Sesame Street tune
   


10. Six -Bert sings about his favorite number
    


11. Capitol I - Early 70's folk rock tune about taking care of and living in a capitol 'i'
    


12. Alligator King - Classic about the number 7
    


13. Ladybug Picnic - Same as above, but about the number 12
    


14. Behind the Clouds - More Cars
    


15. Exit Music (For a Film) - Hey! Look! It's the first one that I listen to...at number 15. It's not Radiohead, but a cover by Glen Phillips, Sean and Sara Watkins and Luke Bulla.
    


16. Somebody Come and Play - Everybody should know this old Ses tune
    


17. Ten Tiny Turtles - Another in the vein of 'Alligator King', guess which number this one's about
    


18. Paper Clips - Bert sings about one of his favorite things
    


19. Sugar - My second tune!!!! at number 19...Dan Wilson, formerly of Semisonic
    


20. Everybody Sleeps - Sesame Street again, about sleeping...or did you get that already?
    


21. Take a Breath - Another wonderful 'educational' song from Ses
    


22. There's a Bird on Me - The titles really spell out the songs intentions don't they? Ses again
    


23. Letter I - Just in case you didn't get enough information about the letter 'i' earlier
    


24. Lowercase N - Hmmmmm...
    


25. Peanut Butter - How would you describe the making of peanut butter? Sesame Street knows how
    

Wow, I don't know what's scarier, that those are the top 25, or that I know them so well. I suppose that I have been listening to them for almost 5 months straight now. Which is how a 20 month old can have parts of them memorized. If they keep singing, I'll keep playing them.

Green and Gray

So this is what happens when I get kinda bored. I change the template for my blog. It's a nice new look, sorta sleek and sporty. Like a new toothbrush. Maybe one day I'll get into this enough to make my own little banner at the top. It will have nice pictures, and maybe some wisdom. I'm feeling like a cupcake with a firecracker candle would be rockin'. Yeah, I'm gonna work on that one.

In the meantime, as an update for the new links that I put over here ------>
Nickel Creek is no longer a band, but there is new material coming out for all. For me it was a very sad day when they announced that they would no longer be together as a band. They truly are my fav band ever. I saw them in concert on 8 seperate occasions with opening acts like Mindy Smith, Glen Phillips, Eliot Morris...I even saw a comedian/magician/actor open for them. I can't remember his name now...he wasn't very funny/good/interesting. I've even seen parts of their band in concert three different times. Twice I saw Chris Thile and Mike Marshall perform together, and lately I was able to get to the Various & Sundry tour to see Sean and Sara Watkins with Luke Bulla, Glen Phillips, and Grant Lee Phillips. (If you want to see some fun stuff, go to YouTube and search for 'Various and Sundry exit music'. You shall see the Watkin's Luke Bulla and his sister, and Glen Phillips play a great Radiohead cover.

I guess there comes a time in each bands life when they feel that it's necessary for them to pursue other options and see what they can do on their own. Which is also why baseball has free agency. There's no 'I' in 'team', and no 'I' in 'band', but there is one 'I' in 'Nickel Creek'. Oh well. Thankfully, Glen Phillips is still touring and will be performing at the Freight in February. I'll be there.

Imagine That

My 4-year-old son has an entourage. It's a fairly new acquisition. He spent most of the day yesterday with them while they picked up his toys and cleaned his room and fixed his lunch and such. These kids that he has doing this are imaginary. Sort of. He has four different peeps that hang with him and they all apparently have their own specialities. The most interesting thing about this for me, is that they are all based on real people.

He has made his imaginary friends four of his friends from school, or one might be from when he was golfing or from a long-distance pen-pal, I'm not sure which one he is referring to. It's an interesting predicament for me and the wife when we tell him to go pick up his toys, and he explains that Curtis is doing that for him. When we say to help Curtis, he informs us that he already has Nicolas helping Curtis. He'll even make them take a nap in the afternoon. We'll tell him to go lay down for a rest, but he can't because they are all in there sleeping, and he might wake them up.

I'm not sure if this is how it's working for him at pre-school also, if he needs to practice with his scissors and he has one of his minions do it instead. He has shown some remarkable improvement in the cutting category. Hmmmmm.....

This is my first experience with imaginary friends, but since they are all based on real people, I'm not sure if he's having imaginary friends or if he's getting Beautiful Mind on us. If I hadn't seen all these kids at his pre-school I may be worried about that. Also since he's only 4, I don't think that he has concerns about big brother coming after him.

On another, more exciting note, I signed him up for T-Ball, and that will start in late March. I'm excited, he's excited, mom's kinda excited, his little sister doesn't care. So the whole family has an emotional response to the T-Ball thing, which is good, right?

Play the Game

We've started playing board games with T lately. I was hoping for like Risk, or Monopoly, maybe a hearty game of Scrabble. But instead we've decided to keep it more on the level of a pre-schooler and made it Chutes and Ladders and Candyland. Of course in my house, we don't have any games that are just the games. They all have themes. Our Chutes and Ladders is Sesame Street Chutes and Ladders, with the game pieces being played by Big Bird, Cookie Monster, Elmo and Zoe. Our Candyland is the Walt Disney Parks version, where the end goal is to make it to Cinderella's Castle.

Candyland isn't to bad, it's obviously a very simple game, flip a card and see a color, move your guy to that color. Get to the end and win. The nice thing about this it that it's pretty quick. T-ster gets the game and realizes that he won't win every time. (we're not the parents who suck to let the kids win. . .we're too competitive) . He will always finish the game, even if he's not first, so I suppose that's a good thing, right? Not a quitter. But the best part of this game is that it doesn't take to long to play, the longest game so far has only taken about 10 minutes. It's perfect for my short attention span.

Chutes and Ladders, or Chicken Ladders as he called it yesterday, is also fairly simple, spin and see your number. The problem arises when he has a hard time following the direction of the game board. He doesn't always head the right way, so that can take some time. But the worst part of this game is the chutes. If you remember your formative years playing this game, the ladders take you higher in the game and the chutes take you lower. So you can spend plenty of time trying to finish the game because as soon as you get close, you start hitting the slides and getting further and further away from the goal of beating the game. We played it last night and it took almost 30 minutes to finish the game. It really sucked. So we're trying not to play Chicken Ladders to much anymore. Maybe we'll just stick to baseball. That's starting in a couple months.

Let's Go Bowling

My wife and I went bowling on New Year's Eve. Party animals, no? We went to have some grown-up time without the kids, so we had them watched with our parents and took off. We went to Harvest Park Bowl in Brentwood because we had a coupon. Oh yeah baby, we're economical. Once we arrived, we found out that they were running a special starting soon that would include 2 hours of bowling and shoes for $7 each. So of course we jumped all over that one. 'Cause we're smart. At the time we were selecting our shoe sizes, two hours of bowling didn't seem like that big a deal. This is the one thought that would hurt us (figuratively and literally) later on.

First off, let me explain that I'm no athletic slouch. I played baseball for 14 years, still play softball, played basketball for 10 years competitively and coached for 5 years. I have been golfing since I was 6 and lettered in that 3 years in High School. I know my way around sports. My wife doesn't even like to watch sports that I play, even when I'm playing them. That said, my highest game was 146. Which isn't to horrible for not having played in I don't know how long. That game I bowled 146 I also beat my wife, who only got around 120. Now that was my best game, and also her worst game. The other 6 games we played, she slaughtered me. The first game I struggled to break 90, and barely made it.

This particular alley had a speedometer somewhere down the lane and i was able to keep a pretty steady run of 22 mph's flying down that lane. My wife topped out at 16 mph. Of course, I kicked her ass in the speed competition, however, they don't give out trophy's for that. Not that I know of at least. And if they do, then I want one...badly.

So the rest of the games consisted of me struggling to hit 100 while my wife cruised to easy 130's+. Her high game was 165, which she reminds me of semi-frequently, and that crushed my game of 104. And to make me even more sucky there was a blind old man bowling in the lane next to us. He was literally blind, he had the glasses and a rail that was placed next to the lane that he could place his hand against and helped him to walk forward towards the lane. He would walk all the way to the front of the lane feeling for the beginning of the lane. Once he felt the 'don't cross this line' line he would count his steps backwards, the walk forward, throw his ball down the lane and listen to hear if he hit the pins. Then he would turn around and ask his old folk friends what was left. They'd tell him like, "5,8,10 pins" and he'd line up and knock most of those down. He did better than me also.

Moral of this story, I need to go bowling more. Anyone who wants to go, let me know and we'll figure something out.

Like The Rain

So I may be leaving work early today as I got a frantic call this morning at 7:30 from my wife to let me know that our fence was falling down into our house. I could hear my neighbor outside hammering to try to save the fence, and I'm not sure what my wife wanted me to do as I was about 20 miles away at the time. I'm actually still about 20 miles away.

What may make this story more interesting (as if it's not interesting enough for the faithful few) is that this is happening during what's being called the biggest storm in the past 3 years for us out here. There are winds hitting upwards of 60-75 mph. 'Hurricane Force Winds' they're telling us. Like we've been through a hurricane. In California. In the Bay Area. There is a blizzard warning for the Sierra's and there should be snow on Mt. Diablo come Saturday. Not that we'll be able to leave the house during this storm.

I had to get fuel for the family van this morning as I neglected to get enough yesterday to get me to work and back. The wind was howling and the rain was coming in sideways. I felt like I may have been carried off to Oz. The Valero gas station has TV's there, which apparently are the new thing for people putting gas in the car, since we're paying $3.50 a gallon, we get basic cable also. They were showing a local ABC station's weather forcast. It said that today it would be about 86 degrees and that a cold front would be moving in this weekend that would bring our temperatures down to a nice 75. This forcast was for Wednesday, in which I can only assume was back sometime in the summer. Or this particular gas station has access to future weather reports and I was watching something for sometime next June. Which is possible, however, not probable.

I think that they just taped a news weather report last summer and had it labeled, 'HOT' on the tape. Then they grabbed that one instead of the one labeled 'WINDY/COLD/RAIN/CRAPPY' and put it in the VCR to play for us unassuming gas getters. Pathetic says I.

I don't know if it matters as I can always see the weather when I get out in it anyway, and from the look and sound of it outside, I may be in it later to fix that fence on the side of my house. Fun times ahead!

Long Black Train

So remember that fantastical GPS that we got for Christmas? Well, we took our first out of town trip with it on Sunday up to the Train Museum in Sacramento. It got us there fine, worked great. We had a great time at the museum, the kids especially. T could have spent the whole day just watching the giant toy train setup they have.




And to be honest, it is pretty impressive. In the next room over from this one there is a large Thomas the Tank Engine setup for all the kids to play with and the scream about when their parents make them leave. Not that ours did, just all the other kids who were there, but not ours.

After our time at the museum, we walked around Old Town Sacramento and saw that the place has changed into a bevy of candy shops, or 'shoppes', and junk stores. Kinda disappointing. So after our walk, we were hungry as we weren't going to eat with the bikers who were populating the area. And this is where our GPS adventure started.

We were using the GPS to find a restaurant in the area and we saw a Back 40 in Roseville. If you haven't eaten at one of these, consider it a major loss for you. Since it was 20 miles away, we tried to find something at Arden Fair instead. That didn't go over so well, so my lovely wife set up our electronic navigational buddy to take us to the Back 40 in Roseville. Or so she thought. After about 15 minutes driving back towards our house (which is the opposite direction of Roseville) I discovered that she had selected a Back 40 in Pleasant Hill, which is near our house. Apparently she had somehow changed the origin for where to search for the restaurant, so I guess all in all, though this wonderful device will tell you how to get where your going without any real issues, if you can't use the device, it's just as bad as not being able to read the directions on the map.

But soon will come the story of us going bowling on New Year's Eve. Not at night because we don't go out after 7 anymore. Well, hardly ever.