Hello, Dolly!

We took the kids to see Wall-E on Saturday, and from what I saw of the movie, it was great. And if you've seen the movie, or at least the trailer, you'll get the reference of the title above. It was E's first movie, and we weren't sure what to expect from her. We'd been really pimping the movie in our house for a while, showing her the trailers, the little snippets online. She really knew who he was and was all pumped to go see the movie. It seemed that even T was helping out, telling her how great the 'Big TV' was and how the seats were high and all. We got to the theater and sat up towards the back (which was a bad idea), and we only had to wait a couple minutes for the trailers to start, but then the previews started.

And then about 20 minutes later, she was bored. By the time the movie actually started, it was too late. I tried to get her to focus on Wall-E up there on the ginormous DLP pure projection screen, but there was nothing I could do about it. She was gone. I spent most of the movie moving her from her little booster seat to my lap, then letting her go over to mom's lap, then back to me, then taking her out when she got mad and started crying, twice. I spent a few minutes down on the ground in the disgusting theater floor picking up various cups and suckers that made their way under her seat.

I did however get to see the end of this movie, when we took T to see Ratatouille last year (Pixar anyone?) he had to take a potty break with only about 5 minutes left in the movie, so I left when Ego walked out of the restauraunt, and returned when the credits were rolling. So I missed the end of that one until the DVD came out months later. I hope to see this one again in the theater. On the bright side, there wasn't much dialouge in the beginning, so I didn't miss any really important stuff...that I know of.

So maybe next year when our next Disney/Pixar feature comes out, she'll be a little better. Let's hope.

Take This Job and Shove It

Watching the College World Series last night when Fresno State pulled off that amazing upset, I was reminded of all the close calls I had as a young lad competing and I was going to be compelled to talk about that. Then I decided to change up the ol' header and was going to discuss the amazing coincidence of having Pixar's newest movie have a main character that has always been a nickname for my clan. After all that, however, I got a couple of very interesting e-mails from the Yoga instructor whose site I had just built.

In the first, which I was cc'd on, she is telling someone named Tim all about how she wants her new products page to look. And within this email, I'm referred to as the 'old webmaster'. I was naturally confused about this as I didn't know anything was wrong. So I emailed her back asking if this site was to run alongside the current site as a ecommerce type of thing and learned that during a conference call earlier that day, she'd agreed to put her site on Tim's server and let him take it over. So I was more or less fired through a cc'd email. Not that there was ever any contract or anything, so technically I was never fired. It was more like not having my option picked up. I guess the life of the part-time freelancer is like that. But the part that made it even better was in the second email where she let me know that she'd still need my help after the transition was made until she could learn the new system. So apparently, she's jumping to this other system without the knowledge of how it's run, then not going to the person who owns the server, but through me. The guy that isn't responsible for the site anymore.

I may be a bit bitter over this, and probably don't need to be. Actually I should have seen it coming, she did a similar thing to my cousin when he was filming her first documentary. She was fast talked by an older producer (who is the same guy who hooked her up with this new webdude) into making another version of the Baby Yoga video. He brought two of his own cameras and some headsets. Then used two of my cousins cameras, his digital SLR, his homemade camera crane, me as a cameraman, one of the Yoga teacher's students houses, and had my cousin edit the whole thing and do re shoots. So basically my cousin did the same video twice, but this other dude got paid for it. It seems the same thing is happening to me with the website. I'm sure that I'll still be getting paid for some things, I'm definitely getting paid for this months work. So someone else will be able to get a paycheck for the work that I've done. I guess such is life.

It wouldn't have been all that awful, but I'm also losing control of the school district site that I run. It's going to a new system that's supposed to make it easier for others to update their own sites, but I guess we'll just have to see about that one. I feel that I'll be just as busy as before answering all the questions. It will be a much nicer looking site because the designer is a professional (which I'm not at all) and he won't have the administrators telling him that they deserve to be on the home page, even though they don't...at all.

On the brighter side of life, however, I do get to go to the DMV today to renew my drivers license. I've updated my vitals, as my old one says I'm 5'10 and 12o lbs. which I was at 16 when I first got my license. However, now at the ripe old age of 28, I've hit a couple growth spurts and added my daddy weight. So think of me at around 10:20 as I'll be filling out paperwork, and giving DMV money to take my picture and put it on that little plastic card that says I get to drive a Class C vehicle.

I miss those championship games. Even though my team lost most of them, the reality is that they were so important at the time, and now looking back, I realize how much those insignificant games really meant for me. I'm able to cope with the losses that are coming my way now, able to deal with the inevitable heartache and headache that accompany a trip the DMV. And I know that no matter what, things always happen for a reason, and it will get better.

Where the Green Grass Grows

We have a few trees left in our yard after the massive Tree Reduction of 2006. We have a cherry tree that finally gave us edible cherries this year, a massive supertree of an unknown genus. This massive superstructure gives grand shade, yet drops lots of sticky things throughout the summer. This is tolerable for the most part, but we have a new little friend. Well, he's not new, but the Fruitless Plum Tree has fruit on it. The tree we were told was fruitless and wouldn't be able to grow anything but leaves, has a couple little plums on it. So, it would seem that our little fruitless tree, isn't so fruitless. It's amazing, we can't keep hardly anything alive, but the tree that can't grow plums suddenly can. Makes me feel that anything is possible, especially with my newly green thumb.

So below is the pic of our ginormous tree, and the infamous fountain in the middle there. I was trying to get a picture of the sun through the smoke from the over 3,000 wildfires in California. You can't really see the smoke, but because of this red sky last night, the sailors were delighted. So that's something.


Maybe if you're lucky, next time I'll post our Scrabble board from our second game ever, I know you can't wait for that one.

Carosel

My in-laws are heading down to Disneyland today to start off their Disney Cruise, this has allowed us to rearrange our child watching schedule from it's usual setup, to the current mode of having my lovely wife trade her usual Saturday off, for yesterday and play "Stay-at-Home-Mom" for a day.

She seemed to really enjoy it, and I wish she could do it more often. They went to the park and rode the Merry Go Round and had a great time. Then they took a more stressful trip to Target. That one, apparently wasn't as smooth a trip. So here are the pics that were taken with her possibly temporary new phone of our kids, who are just so much more adorable than other kids their age.

That hair? On my daughter? All her mom, I'd show you a pic of my attempts, but I'm saving them for her first date. They're that bad.

The Photographer

Well, I was planning to post some of my boys photographic gems, but he took the camera over to Great Papa's house. (That's what he calls my dad). He took the camera over there, it ran out of battery life after about an hour, which it's prone to do, and then he forgot to bring it home. There really aren't that many pics left to take on that camera. I caught him the other night lying in bed taking pictures of his room in the dark. Actually the flash was being used, so the pictures were turning out, but he was just laying in bed, snapping away. I'm thinking about sending in some of his better stuff to the state fair competitions. I've been going there for years and I've seen the crap in the 'Art' section. If those things can make it in, I'm sure a picture taken by a 5-year-old of his little sisters feet standing next to Lightning McQueen racing around a mini Cars racetrack has a very legitimate shot at winning us a ribbon. Which is, of course, the ultimate glory of the state fair circuit.

Of course, there's always the off chance that they won't believe such pictures could be taken by such a young artist and they'll assume that it was simply me trying to pass of my work as a kid in order to win one of those spectacular shiny pieces of nylon and cotton. But let's hope not.

My Father's Son

Happy belated Father's Day to any dads out there. Eh, who am I kidding, nobody reads this thing. Happy Father's Day to ME!!!!!

Yesterday was a good day that started out with me not being able to sleep in. That was kind of a bummer. Also I heard my daughter yelling down the hall from her crib at about 8ish in the a.m. for me to come get her, which I did. We had a pizza for lunch from Chicago Uno, which was really good. We've been to the restaurant a few times before, but never eaten the 'infamous' deep dish pizza. I also got a free steak dinner for another trip in for being a dad, and my kids each got a free meal for their next trip in also. My lovely wife got nothing. I explained that because this was Father's Day, she wasn't entitled to free food. She didn't appreciate this explanation. We took the kids to Toys R' Us after the late lunch early dinner, which I call Linner, to help stimulate the economy with our newly received and since deposited IRS extra return $. We figured that since we got extra back because of the kids, they could each get something. So T got himself a new K'Nex set and some more Hot Wheels, and E got herself a Barbie camera that doesn't work, so that's going back.

We got ourselves the super turntable deluxe version of Scrabble. We've never really played board games against each other, as I knew I'd feel guilty about beating my wife, and equally bad about letting her win. But we figured we're mature enough to try this now. So we played our first game of Scrabble unscored and didn't go so well. We got stuck rather quickly, the second game, though, we used all our tiles, and had a really kick-ass looking board, which I took a picture of to prove to ourselves that we'd done it. We didn't keep score so I don't know how much I beat her by.

We've also recently let our son use our old HP digital camera. It sucks the life out of AA batteries, so we broke out the old charger and rechargable batteries for it. I found an old 256 mb card and dropped the cameras quality to as low as possible and he can now take about 750 pics on that card. He's really having a lot of fun with it and has already made plans to make sure the batteries are charged for his next trip down to Disneyland. Which, as far as I know, hasn't been planned yet. If he finishes with his current crop of pics, which is mostly images of his cars and his feet, I'll put some of the better ones up here so that you, too can enjoy the photographic genius that is my 5-year-old.

Phantom of the Opera

Well, the anniversary has come and gone. Phantom was pretty good, we missed the first 15 minutes or so because I-5 was shut down and we were forced to go around the long way, but it worked out in the end. We had good seats in the upper balcony, first row, center stage. So coming in 15 minutes late probably upset all the people on the left hand side of the theatre when we had to walk directly in front of them. But this was during the big opera scene, so I don't think most of them should have cared. They didn't miss anything good.

The players in the company treading those boards were good. There were no crazy horrible singers there, which is always a concern. All in all, it was a good day. Good times were had by all.

On another note, T-ball is now over for the summer. We had our last game Saturday and our team party afterwards. It went pretty well, the whole team made the party and only one player said that they wouldn't play again next year. One of my girls, she always seemed to be having a good time and enjoying herself. Her friend was on the team as well, and they managed to start hanging out with the boys by the end of the year. But when I asked her after the party if whe'd be playing next year, she just said, "No." I found out later that her kindergarten teacher asked her if she liked playing T-ball and she responded, "No, I hate it." Them's strong words from a 6 year old.

But most of the team seemed to have a good time and they wanted me to manage a fall ball team this coming September, so I'm going to do that, even though one of the more experienced T-ball coaches advises against it. But I figure, 6 weeks, 12 games, no practices? Doesn't sound that bad. But I guess I'll find out. I still need to get the sign in stuff from the fields. And since I know you're anxiously awaiting updates, they will be forthcoming.

County Fair

I figured out how to get past the hair fixing problem. I put her in a little pink A's hat. Solved everything. We had a good weekend as just Daddy and Daughter. Took a bike ride down to the park and spent a good hour playing on the playground while the mexicans played soccer. Actually, it looked like a league, and the players were all mexicans except for the goalie for one team who was the lone english speaking white kid. It's nice that they have a little hobby like that. Little E got it in her head that she was going to use the big swirl slide and I wasn't allowed to follow her up there. I did anyway for a while, as it's pretty high and if she misses a step, it would be bad. But she did fine and loved that thing. She was starting to wear out a path in the ground from the bottom of the slide back to the steps to start going up it again.


But she enjoyed it.

Later that night we went to the County Fair. I've never been to the local county fair but have been making yearly pilgrimages to the state version for the past 15 years or so. The state fair has been going downhill lately and last year we didn't see hardly any animals at all. The county fair here, however, was chock full of wildlife. She got to pet some bunnies, saw a turkey, which was just fascinating for her. She even petted a two-toed sloth. That was an interesting creature. It moved a lot faster than I thought it would. And hanging upside-down like that all day must make the blood rush to your head at some point right? I can't do it for too long.

But we enjoyed going, my parents came along also so my dad took all the pictures from that, as my wife is still in Disneyland with our cameras. Today they're going into California Adventures to watch the new Playhouse Disney show. And ride California Screamin', and Soarin'. I don't know if my little guy is big enough to ride Screamin' or not yet, but he does love Soarin'. And he also has now discovered that Splash Mountain is incredibly awesome. Which it is. So the countdown until they return is at 2 more days. Tomorrow is their last day in the parks, and then Wednesday is going to be the real fun return trip back here. Thursday my wife and I are celebrating our anniversary. We're going to see Phantom of the Opera in Sac-town. It should be fun, right? I think it's the touring company of players, and not the local town production. Although Sacramento is a pretty big town.