My Father's Day Fun

I did not get a nice long bike ride through Nisene Marks today which was one of my Father's Day wishes. But that's okay, I'm still cleaning out from this spring cold I had earlier this week and biking is a lot less enjoyable when you're horking out lung butter all the time. I will be bringing my bike to work this week though so I can get a ride in after hours.

Nope, instead we did some major damage on the mess that is our garage. Well, my wife actually did most of the work on the garage itself, I did a few projects, made a run to Orchard Supply with Grady and played with the boys.

My main project was removing the skanked fabric covers on the bunkbeds. The slats are all held together on a frame and that frame was covered in what was once a nice floral print. Those days were long gone though and it was nasty with stains and broken slats and worn out cardboard. I removed the million or so staples holding the fabric to the frame first with pliers and then with a screwdriver which made it about ten times faster and better since more of the staples pulled out.

After getting the two slat frames ready and figuring out how many replacement 1x4's I'd need, Grady and I went off to OSH. In addition to the boards, we got a cool coiled up hose that's see through so its like a 50 foot long crazy straw! And a spearmint plant so we can have some kickass mojitos whenever we want them. Which reminds me, I still need to get a dwarf lemon and a dwarf lime tree!

Getting the broken slats removed was really easy as they were basically stapled in with these big staples. I could just pull the broken stubs off, then I flipped the whole thing over and pounded them out with a hammer. The new boards got cut down to the right size and I screwed them into place. It was actually alot faster and easier than I was expecting which is always nice.

Not much more to go before the bunk beds are ready to put into the boy's room. We need a new mattress for Sully but then we'll be really close to being good to go. I'm excited about getting them!

After I was done with my stuff, I helped organize my bike and motorcycle stuff, designated some stuff for the upcoming yard sale, some for Ebay/Craigslist and called in an order from one of our favorite Mexican places. My wife got the vegetarian taco salad and I tried the Al Pastor Chimichanga which was full of win!

After dinner all four of us went for a hot tub, the boys had a ball swimming back and forth between us, jumping off the sides and just being the funny little guys they are.

When it came time to put Sully down for bed, I read a book to him, skipping pages as I could barely keep my eyes open. When the book was done, we closed our eyes together and I feel asleep half on and half off his bed. Not for a long time but fifteen or twenty minutes.

Now the house is quiet, save Nande's somewhat freaked out whuffles after each of the fireworks explosions goes off. Oh, did I not mention the idiots around here have been shooting off fireworks randomly for the last few days? Yeah, with the super dry conditions, the fires burning all over the state and these fools are still lighting them off.

When I checked in on my internet stuff, I came across a great deal! Two years of Wired for a shockingly great deal of $6! Today only and today's just about done. I am very, very pleased!

Time for this tired but happy poppa to call it a night. Tomorrow's the start of a good week, I hope. I hope all the dads out there had a great day, just like me!

Mentalacity

A new word to describe an old and self absorbed mentality combined with mendacity (a falsehood or lie). It is the act of willful ignorance and continuing to do whatever it is you want to do. An alternative spelling could be Mentalassity but the mendacity aspect gets harder to find.

It is the equivalent of trying to get a suntan on a boat that's sinking. A mentalicitious person is one that somehow justifies the use of a frozen ball of ice in a snowball fight. Mentalacity is the stupid jackasses in my town who are unable to connect the dots about fire danger (the recent one above town, the one burning right now near Davenport and the one up north in Butte County) and how unutterably stupid it is to shoot fireworks off.

Notwithstanding the fact that its illegal, its not even July yet and they're basically just drunk morons. All of that almost goes without saying.

Rookies

It is with a mixture of amusement and irritation that I've been listening to fireworks being shot off all day here. Dusk is just starting to settle in and it'll be dark before long and that's when the real fireworks will get going.

But there have been rockets and mortars and Piccolo Petes being shot off all day long. I don't know about you but a mortar exploding in the daytime sky is about as enticing as wilted lettuce.

But I understand. There are hundreds of people all over my town sitting on huge piles of explosives, just waiting for dark, just aching to get the show on the road, as it were. And many have been drinking since early this afternoon. It is understandable that some will pre-fire their mortars a bit.

In fact, I think that's kind of a funny metaphor for their character without any possibility of verifying it. Impatience combined with mas cervezas equals early mortar ejaculation.

I just wish Nande wasn't quite so manic about the whole thing. She makes it a bit harder to enjoy the display even though there's nothing to see, just alot to hear right now.

But soon enough, darkness will fall and I'll perch myself on the neighbor's deck with my XTi to see what kind of goodness I can capture. The best, as always, will be shared here.

Welcome to Hell Week (Again)

This is one of the hardest weeks of the entire year to own a dog and live where I live, one of the few places in the county that fireworks are legal to own and light on private property but not the ones that explode or shoot into the air, those are illegal for private use everywhere. This is the week that fireworks are shot off with increasing frequency until the climax on Wednesday when the 4th goes off.

And Nande spends all night, every night this week freaking out. Panting heavily, hiding in the bathtub and generally just being really, really unhappy. But she's gotten better in controlling her insane barking and now she just pants and waits for daylight.

I feel awful for her and have grown to really hate the damned fireworks even if there's still a part of me that loves them.

The pain in the ass part is that the explosions will continue well into next weekend.