Happy 4th Birthday, Zoe!

I had wanted to blog about things before Zoe's birthday, but I'll just mash it all together and make a super post. Anyway, today was a day of purples, pinks, and princesses when Zoe's presents and cakes just overtook everything in the house. Abby Cadabby, who was previously unknown in this household, became a minor theme, along with Disney princesses, Barbie, and a whole lot of artsy tools. We had a family type gathering, with my brother and his family and my mother in law here to wish the Z a Happy Birthday. Zoe was pretty happy, seeing all these toys but the excitement value was carried mostly by Alex, who seemed more happy about the presents than Zoe did. Nonetheless, I think she had a ball. Now we just gotta figure out where to put all the new toys.

It's a little odd to think that it's been four years since Zoe was born. For some reason Alex always seems like he should be younger and Zoe should be older. Somewhere between their births they must've been some type of time distortion rip of some sort. The little girl sure does have some sass on her, she's always telling her brother what and what not to do, but she's also got some heart on her as well. Last night after I tucked her in, she told me she "was going to give me something special" and it was a hug and kiss. Somehow presenting that in that package made it something more than ordinary.

Zoe is something special for me, as well as my family. It's odd, since my mom's never had daughters, and my brother's never had a sister, so nobody knows how to shop for a girl. Luckily, though we were heavy on the artsy gifts and some princess stuff, there wasn't really anything to steer her into gender specific crap. Girls toys can be so oppressive sometimes, forcing little girls to concentrate on nothing but improving their looks and vanity-related tomfoolery. While boys are busy making war, girls are busy doing make up.

I'll get some photos up soon. Man, feel like this weekend I've done nothing much, and I think after this weekend I'll be okay to do some OT again. We've done a bit of overspending and I need to make up for it bad.

I lured yet another person into Rock Band, although I was expecting my brother to be into the drumming portion of the game. My sister in law ended up really digging the game, starting with the drums and then really digging the guitar. My brother tried it but didn't get much out of it. That, including Jay who was inquiring about purchasing a PS3 after I got him hooked on the drums, and my wife and it looks like we might have a band. Now I just have to figure out how to make Harmonix pay me for my efforts.

Watched "Hot Fuzz" yesterday and it was hilarious. I can see how it might've flown over the American audience, especially if they didn't quite gather that it was a dry spoof of sorts. It was a homage of buddy movies, and it was just a lot of fun to watch.

In other news, I did get my glasses fixed after a rather uninteresting snap early morning while I was cleaning my glasses. At first I thought my lens had just popped out, but then the sickening discovery that the frame had actually snapped. Lousy monkeys. Thankfully, the stupid Lenscrafters guy was too dismissive to sell my wife a replacement duplicate frame, and instead gave her a card for eyeglass repair shop in Bellevue. So instead of spending a couple C's on new frames, I got a weld job for about 50 bucks. However, due to some sketchy park job in some sketchy lot, they issued me a 25 dollar parking ticket which I intend to shove it up their lot. Those tossers issuing tickets to an empty lot. That's just annoying. Spoilt my day a little.

Well, that's about all that's about the Diego. I think Zoe's Princess Stories are about to end soon. Then I gotta get my hair cut and maybe a costume change, since I saw the worst photo ever taken of me by my wife. The WORST.



What the hell is wrong with my body? I had the budding chest of a 13 year old girl, the heightened gut of a fat guy falling from space, and it looks like the features of my face are trying to centralize themselves where my nose is. Damnit.

But here's prove that I'm not that hideous all the time. Different photo, same day.

Glanced at the blog and felt immediately bad that I hadn't updated in 10 days. And so much has happened too, with me having a birthday, and Alex having his first day of playschool. But then I realized that none of my friends update their blogs regularly, even on a monthly basis. Then I felt better. Yes, insulting my readers do give me a sense of resolution.

Anyway, the main reason why I've been absent is mostly to do with the PSP, but some of it has to do with my wife being on vacation. Unlike most of our counterparts, we're not doing anything on our vacation, just taking some time off for some sanity. My wife has been so overworked that this week has been a little better. It doesn't make our boy less crazy or our girl less talkative, but it certainly does make her life a wee tad stressful.

So, just to get the PSP out of the way, it's been a fun little multimedia device for me. And when I say multimedia, I really just mean videos and games. MP3s are for my iPod and having photos on the go is overrated. Most people don't use photos on the go unless it's like porn or something. I've never found that feature especially useful for my phone, iPod or PSP. But yeah, I watched "300" on it, and "The Descent" as well. It's nice to be able to catch movies at work, albeit the feature are interrupted - but the movie still gets watched. And podcasts do have to be converted, but it's worth the trouble for the most part. Just bought a cheap pouch for it today (cheap because the PSP Slim accessories aren't even out yet.) and so now I look like a bona-fide geek, with a PSP hanging off my belt loop. No worries, am married and have kids - doesn't matter how I seem to the opposite sex anymore. Just as long as I'm not creepy, that's good enough for me.

My birthday came and went mostly without incident - since the aforementioned gadget was my gift, I just got some sweets and cards from the family and that was it. Didn't do a whole lot, but I didn't work. Which was nice. Working 10 hours on my birthday isn't exactly my idea of a good time. But that was fine. Alex started his playschool which was very exciting for him, spending 2 1/2 hours twice a week in an environment with a teacher and other kids. He doesn't seem to like to share about his experiences, but he did miss Zoe when he came out of it last time. The first time he went though, it was tough to tell Zoe that she couldn't stay, that she couldn't play. Instead she had to have some Mommy time instead. Cost was a factor, but it was also about getting him ready for school, whereas she still have a couple years to go before we had to think about school.

I decided yesterday that I should start encoding all my home movies to mp4. I had begun a previous project like this, converting all my home videos to DVD, but the thing of it is that it is still sorta accessible, but still not. And I'm never happy with the encode because it gets to be too time consuming. With the mp4, the format is small enough not to kill my HD space, and actually plays on the PSP, though that is not really the main reason for doing it. I just want to have the access to all the videos at my fingertips. Don't know why, but it seems like a nice idea.

DUDE. Today we decided to go to Gene Coulon park because it's a nice park that my wife's never seen, and it had a pretty cool playground that I wanted to show the kids. We then went to Fry's to pick up the PSP case and then we were going to go to Walmart. But I was hungry so we wandered to that neighborhood to see what there was to eat. We saw Arby's, and was considering Popeyes' until I saw the drive thru window and decided that it was simply going to be another different kind of fast food. So we were going to go to Billy McHale's but in the same parking lot was an interesting sort of building - Sorta like a barn or a worn down house. My wife read the slogan "Steak. Crabcakes. Peanuts on the Floor." and I was hooked. Walking inside Jimmy Mac's Roadhouse was a bit weird, the front door looked like a screen door made out of chicken wire, and when we went inside, there were peanuts of the floor alright. The ambience is really something, like we had wandered into a Patrick Swayze movie or something. The menu dropped our jaws at first, most entrees were starting at 21 bucks. But we ordered the half-rack ribs, and the kids were splitting a kids meal.

The first hook were the rolls - they were warm and slightly sweet, and with butter they were just plain delicious. I ate two and wanted more, and my wife ate the other half. And right after we finished it, another tray of rolls came and got devoured. Our meal came and they had divided the single kids meals into two full baskets, which was pretty nice of them. Our half-rack of ribs were huge, certainly more than I had expected. The beans were awesome, and the sweet potato fries were... different, but not bad. The ribs were good, and I just sat there with a smile on my face. I truly appreciate good food and it makes me happy. I'd recommend the place even if it is a bit gimmicky, though I'd suggest going not during their busy time. Because they were busy during dinner time. We were there at around 5 and it was just about right.

So there, all caught up now.

Alex's Fourth Birthday

It was such a noticable difference - from his first birthday whereby you had to rip a sliver of birthday wrapping to unsuccessfully persuade him to unwrap the present to yesterday, his fourth birthday. Yesterday he would begin to open the present, say, "There's something weird inside..." and then see the present and say, "Wow! That's cool! That's awesome!" He even diplomatically extended that to clothes, even though most boys his age could really care less about the duds. "Wow! Cool pants!" But he made out pretty good, and he was spending some quality time with some of his gifts.

One of his gifts was a portable extension of the kid's learning videogame system, Leapster. We had gotten the system last year, but it was seldom put to use because the interface was actually more complicated and not exactly a cinch to hook up (for everyone else anyway), but the portable one was more of a touch screen, looked better on the smaller screen, and was more logical than a big system. Anyway, he took that in the car on the way to the airport to drop off my Mom, but then on the way to Puyallup, he got sick. Which confirmed for once and for all, he inherited one of my less desirable traits, motion sickness. So, like me, he can be handsome and witty and crazy, but put me on a chair and spin me a couple revolutions and I'm as good as dead.

But we had fun at the Puyallup Fair yesterday, with us eating a whole lotta junk like "pink clouds", or in adult speak, Cotton Candy, and other kinds of junk. We didn't spend as much as we did last year - but that's pretty relative anyway. You can't go to the fair and not have your wallet gouged for the overpriced food and rides. One of the photos on the slideshow shows a fire engine one story off the ground - the kids are running shotgun in that, arms braced and head between their knees. The employees were actually waving to them and talking to them, but they were definitely white knuckling it. We'd like to think of it as a bonding experience, when two siblings experience what is seemingly a life and death situation, they grow closer together.

After that, we went back to Grandma's house and had the bluest cookie monster cake. It was disgustingly blue and doesn't even come off skin well. I suspect it's done some slight pigmentation damage due to the amount of food coloring used. We didn't get to wish him Happy Birthday one last time because they both fall asleep in the car, but I'm sure he had just that.

Alex's Fourth Birthday

Here, Let me brew you a cup of Self-Loathing.

Alright, I shouldn't be such a pain in the ass about the moaning and bitching. It probably isn't really that bad at all, but man, there are times when it just feels that way. Anyhow, today just happened to be one the them days. But first...

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So Zoe turned 3 on Friday, so we decided to do something interesting instead of just sitting around watching the kids play with the presents. Well, there was that, but we also went to the Seattle Aquarium to look at some fish, and also the Seattle Library as well. The Library was actually less interesting this time around, and even if it was the coolest thing in the world, I brought the wrong lens anyway, so I didn't get a lot of great shots. Just a couple here and there.

The kids did have a rather fun day, although there was a lot of walking, and Zoe got into a bunch of time-outs because her ears were something not processing basic instructions. Seems like they're both three now, so they're both equally crazy, inattentive to our demands, and stubborn. But we still had a pretty good day. We took the bus downtown and the trip down was terrible for me due to my spectacular feat of motion sickness, but the way back was better. Alex fell asleep on the bus so I carried him all the way home pretty much, about 4 blocks or something. That boy is heavy.

One of the highlights was that Zoe got a princess cake, as is shown in some of the earlier photos. Now that cake is fancy looking at all, but it is 45 bucks and it tasted a little like they used sugary Crisco for the frosting. The cake itself was pretty normal, but the frosting was just murder. I did the dishes and I couldn't get the stuff off my hands.

So yeah, she turned three, and we didn't do anything big, but just right for us.

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I was originally going to do a video post, and toyed with the idea so much that I did a test on podcastpeople.com which sucked, since their bandwidth had limitations. Then I did one on Twango which also sucked, since they were doing something odd with their video and it didn't stream. Finally, I tried Youtube which worked okay, except tonight the servers were busy or something so I couldn't even get in to start on my video. Finally, I thought I might do it old school, but after a short blurb, I decided I didn't really like the way I looked.

Which brings us to today. Wasn't the greatest dad today, just tired, snapping at the kids, and being impatient with them. Didn't feel like spending any real time with them today, and really just wanted them to be quiet little mice who were out of my way. I know, it's tremendously selfish and terrible, and I'm not proud of it. I've just been feeling overwhelmed by them recently, because they've turned into toddlers with attitudes. I had no idea toddlers fought with each other or me that much, but I believe this is probably common of siblings who are about the same age. They just get into it so often that I get tired of all the bickering.

But so not only did I not do the video podcast, the self-loathing even manifested into dismemberment of my facial follicles. I don't know, maybe it's been bugging me a while, or maybe I just got a tad self-destructive, or maybe I just didn't want to look like my co-workers at work, but I shaved my mustache. I was going to sleep on it, but after thinking about my last time at work, I just chose to disassociate my looks with them.

See, I thought that a lot of Asians didn't have facial hair, so I was kinda wearing it like it was something unique. Well, the two co-workers have facial hair as well, so I didn't stand out within them, forming a kind of stupid 'tache club. Furthermore, Friday one of the guys was just so damn lazy, and also I noticed the other new guy in shipping was starting to grow his out, so I just thought that it wasn't unique anymore. It became almost odd to have one along with the other guys. I don't know, it's not like I want to look special or anything, but I really don't want to blend in with those bums. The guy on Friday seriously pissed me off. His work ethic was something I thought only existed in theory. Self-imposed breaks, bathroom breaks, and he mentioned that I was working too hard. And I said to him, "I'm just working."

My face looks weird. I feel pale, and slightly naked, but I'll get over it. Somehow maybe after shaving it'll seem like I've changed somehow, and I can be a better dad tomorrow. I just wish that sometimes the kids could see how much they're frustrating me, and how much easier it could be if they just observed a few rules.

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I experimented with some beer this weekend, trying Boddingtons Ale after seeing it on Diggnation's podcast. I'm not a drinker, but this beer is tolerable, even slightly enjoyable for it. Though I'm not sure if it's due to the taste, or rather the gimmick - or should I say, widget, that is part of the beer.

Droughtflow it's called, and it's a little plastic capsule that stores nitrogen in the can. When the can is cracked, the nitrogen rushes out the hole and reacts with the CO2 that's in the beer, and it bubbles to form a creamy head similar to what I guess is Ale from the tap at the Pub. I have no basis for comparison, so I'll just have to take it for what it is. But on the technical aspect of it, it's pretty cool. It's a British Ale, and it's only a buck and some change, so it's worth a try. If not just for the widget.