Marc and Morgan’s spot on the web

Lola and I peaked out our front window this morning to discover that we can see the balloons from this house as we could from our last.  It is not the same view, but really impressive from our driveway.  I have only done Dawn Patrol once.  my mom dragged us out so early, I don’t think I had hit REM.  It was nice though. She made breakfast and there was champagne (I was too young to care).  It was fun.  I remember being impressed even as a snotty teenager.  Now, I wouldn’t want to fight the crowds. Maybe next year for Dawn Patrol.  I think we will walk tomorrow morning to get a closer look.  Lola was impressed with just what she saw this morning, I bet she will love it.

I am back to work this week.  I have to say what a warm welcome they had – there were tons of books to be put away. Nothing makes the day go faster than a lot of work.  I truly missed it – actually my coworkers more than the work!  Ane with only 15 hrs,  it is easier to be away from the kids.

Parkerbailey (the ’85 VW) was sold to a nice kid this week.  I guess he was older than a kid.  Sad to see it go, but the Eurovan will help ease the pain. We have the Saturn for sale if you know anyone interested.  A good car and I liked it. But we can’t keep them all!  I already feel a little overwhlemed with the neighbors cars – but he has ten kids!

I am enjoying the cooling weather and am looking forward to the encroaching fall weather.   Changing colors, cooler weather, Marc, Paige, Lola and Gigi’s birthdays, Halloween, and a visit from Nana.

This is kind of cool while at the same time being a bit off-putting in all its capitalist extravagance – the marketing machine that is The Simpsons Movie. That website has so much stuff to explore it’s kind of intimidating me. But this is fun…you can create an avatar there.   So here’s me as a Simpson:

Are you freakin’ serious?

I just find it hard to believe some things despite strong evidence that they’re true.

Sorry, I’ve been remiss in posting, especially any new Lola pictures lately aside from the cookie thing recently. And sorry for using such huge files for that one. Hopefully I’ll figure out the thumbnail feature of WordPress next time. Speaking of learning new things, I did have a major score this week and figured out how to share the printer downstairs so we can print from the wireless laptop, as well as share files between the two computers. It’s really sweet.

Grandpa Dave is here (geez, I just found the photo gallery broken when I went create that link…why does this stuff keep happening?!?!?) for a visit and Madeleine and her mom should be here tomorrow. I’m lucky enough to have some time off, from 1pm tomorrow through next Tuesday. Hopefully will get some beer brewed, root beer made, and even swing a golf club a little bit at some point. Holiday weekend, woo-hoo! And speaking of fun stuff, we actually got to the movies last weekend, to see Spider Man 3. Good show, good fun, if you don’t try to take it too seriously and can appreciate some of the typical Raimi goofiness. And Michael Moore’s new movie looks promising.

Lola is really a firecracker these days. Her speech is to the point of having nearly normal conversations with her now, even if her statements aren’t always true or realistic. She’s also becoming quite the rough and tumble kid now that weather is improving and she likes to play outside so much. Scraped knees, stubbed toes, all of that is more or less commonplace around maison Tiar these days.

And, as long as I’m tossing out links willy nilly here, check out this newish online encyclopedia of all things Nevada. Really a nice site, if you find such things of interest.

And lastly, this odd blog claiming to be written by a man on the run from the law, with his adopted son. Could be fiction, could be delusion, could be a clever marketing idea for a movie or something. Found that somewhere, I thought Metafilter, but it wasn’t. But in searching Metafilter for the link, I was reminded how amazingly chock full of wonderous reading that site is. It’s also a massive timesuck, so proceed with caution. Also fun, Ask Metafilter, for giving or receiving (or just reading) oddball advice from the masses.

And that’s all for now.

Had a couple days of technical difficulties here. Couldn’t log in to post anything but from the outside, everything looked fine. Finally sorted things out last night and disabled the offending plugin.

And now I discovered the editor of these posts is goofed up…I have to remember HTML now to link to anything or format text. Rad. Well, I wanted to link to something but my HTML is too rusty and I’m too lazy to look it up. So here’s the link anyway, just a neat photo thing I saw. Hopefully I can fix things more completely later today…

http://www.chrisjordan.com/current_set2.php?id=7

Just a couple things worth a click:

• Guess the Google game – it shows you images from a Google image search, you guess what the search term was.
• $205 million seized in Mexico, plus some Euros – If you’ve never seen that much cash in a pile, now’s your chance.  Holy Moses that’s a lot of dinero.

Dang…just found another couple pictures I meant to share…these courtesy of Kate, snapped on her little organizer machine a while back when we decided to take out and open a can of “Civil Defense Carbohydrate Supplement” that we found in the fallout shelter under the library.  Circa 1966, public buildings had fallout shelters stocked with beds, water, first aid, and hard candy to keep survivors going for a while after the reds deployed a nuke.  It’s still down there, 40 years later, rotting away.  Curiosity got the best of us and we had to see and taste what 40-year old government issue candy was like.  Utterly disgusting.  Lots of good stuff about shelters and their supplies at this site devoted to them.  I wish these pictures did the candy container justice.

OK, just a brief update on the rather remarkable dice rolling streak I wrote about previously…we were way off in how the odds against such a streak would be calculated. I consulted my resident games-of-chance statistical genius and he explained it thus:

The first die of the 6 – whatever number comes out is correct-whether it’s a 1,2,3,4,5, or 6 as any of these numbers are needed.

The second die of the 6 hits the table-it must be one of the remaining numbers left. So you have a 5/6 chance of hitting this number.

The third die hits-must be one of the 4 remaining numbers. And so on.

So 6/6 x 5/6 x 4/6 x 3/6 x 2/6 x 1/6=5/324 or 1.54%

Then to do it 3 times in a row. Must multiply the number above by itself 3 times 5/324 x 5/324 x 5/324=125/34,012,224=roughly 1/272,098 !!!!!

So there you have it. The odds against rolling 1-2-3-4-5-6 on six simultaneously rolled dice three times in a row are 1 out of over a quarter-million. Remarkable.

So, this was just going to be another blogaday entry, but suddenly, there’s more to say.

For starters, Day 2 of Morgan’s employment was today, and Lola got to stay with neighbor Sommer and her baby Ranon. 10am-2pmish, and all went well. Hurray! On a less festive note, we had to make our first parental visit to urgent care over the weekend. Blood in the diaper makes one a bit uneasy to say the least. So far, they think it’s a urinary tract/bladder infection, but the jury is still out. Her bouts of unhappiness seem less than they were on Sunday, and we’re hopeful that another week of bubble-gum flavored medicine will be sucessful.
Before I digress too much, let me get the blogaday business out of the way. A funny little blog with funny little drawings on index cards to illustrate funny concepts. See: Indexed and enjoy.

News item that doesn’t concern me much despite my newfound affinity for soy milk.

For a taste of culture, take a look at the newly redesigned site of our friend Erin, recently relocated to Basel, soon to come back for a holiday visit. Her first stop? The Double-Dutch battle, we’re hoping to be there too.

And finally, a brief announcement – I’ve been bombarded by comment spam lately, so I turned off comments here. Too bad, you were all just starting to come out of the woodwork a bit.

Time for one that’s a little less categorizable. Josh Spear. Sort of about…design, culture, just “neat stuff” for lack of a better description. Check it out.

Sometimes history and death intersect to result in fascinating tidbits of knowledge.  Such is the case with today’s blog, Corpus Obscurum.  To put it simply, it reports on the deaths of people who were big in importance but short on fame.  While that may not be completely clear now, visit the site and read through a few.  Founder of the National Hobo Foundation, first black soloist at the Met Opera, and Pope John Paul II’s English tutor, to name a few recent entries.

Enjoy!