Muppets Bohemian Rhapsoday....

Saw this at Geek Dad today at Wired.com...had to pass it on.

Just wondering...

...if anyone out there has used the Shutterfly or Photoworks sites to create a Photobook or Calendar? I just created a calendar with Shutterfly and should have it by the end of the week. A friend just gave me the idea of doing a photobook, but I don't know what service she used. I was looking at these two because Picasa references both of them when you go to order prints and things. I really like the idea of having a hard cover printed book with captions and paragraphs talking about each set of pictures...sounds sort of like my blog really...so if anyone has any suggestions or advice I would appreciate it.

Well....I tried...

To be an XKCD stick figure for Halloween...but it didn't turn out so well. I couldn't find the stuff I needed second hand (and frankly I started late because I didn't get the idea until this past week). So, buying new stuff and resorting to electrical tape instead of a Sharpie didn't get too far. You can see the amusing result below.

So Halloween was great fun for the kids and adults. The kids made out like bandits. My son now has enough candy to last until next year.

My brother came up for the weekend and I got to spend some time with him on Saturday in the morning and during the day. We went out to go surfing and skim boarding first thing. I brought my son along too. The waves were nice even if the water was cold. It was the first time I had worn a wet suit surfing. I only have my scuba wet suit and I quickly learned a few things.

First, you don't notice the water temperature when you are trying to paddle out through a nice set. You only notice that any headway you made is quickly erased.

Second, you can't paddle in a wet suit (3/5) like you do without one. It is a LOT harder. I was still inside the break and just couldn't paddle anymore. So surfing turned into something that was more like a prolonged drowning. I finally gave up and just went back in. Next time I'll wear the spring suit, or get something more designed for surfing.

As if that wasn't embarrasing enough, I decided to do some skim boarding too. Really it was my brother showing my son how to do, which he picked up incredibly quickly. I mostly watched. When they got tired, they would hand the board to me and get a few minutes of good laughs. Here is some necessary information to be successful at skim boarding. First, you can go too slow. You need a bit of speed, which requires a bit of coordination because you have to jump onto something that is moving and not quite stable. After you get some speed you throw the board down, flat, and a little ahead of you. On windy days this is challenging. For my brother and I, more so because when he and I get together near water, the winds are ALWAYS 25+ knots. My brother's wife went rollerblading on the board walk, but she made it back in time to get some good laughs at my expense. We all had a lot of fun.

After that we picked up my girlfriend and her children to go to my favorite sushi place. It is simply the best sushi anywhere ever.


More pictures from Halloween:
Picures

I practically stepped on this....

Before I realized what it was. I was tracking three boys and SGG at the edge of the woods when my peripheral vision caught something unusual just below my foot and I extended my stride just a hair.

Cottonmouth, Water Moccasin, whatever you want to call them, it is a poisonous snake. There are more pictures, and a video below. It is near the end of October and these guys are normally near dormant this time of year, but it is a warm 80+ degree day here today. It wasn't very interested in me, and it wasn't able to move very fast. I got the boys and SGG over to have a look, from a safe distance, and we let the snake keep going on it's way. It seems like I see one every October.

We were out doing a geocache and moving a travel bug along. I've been wanting to get to this cache for a while. It is in a park I know very well, but a section I've never really been to before. SGG and I took my son and two of my neighbor's boys. It was fun, but we were under a time constraint....which we kind of busted. The cache was very cool, but fairly difficult to get to since there are no real "trails" leading there. There were a lot of thorns and my calves are scratched up pretty good.

It has been two years since the last big acorn harvest, but they are falling like rain drops here now. All day and all night...***SMACK***thud***thud***thud***roll***roll***swish. They hit the roof, bounce, roll, and sail into the grass or drive way. I park the car away from the house to keep the acorns from collecting under the windshield wipers.

:-)

EDITED to add:
SGG and I now believe this is a copperhead. It would be the biggest one I've seen up close if it is. The head shape, color, and body markings are closer to a copperhead than a water moccasin. If you look at pictures of both, you can begin to see why they are hard to tell apart.

Cool Snake and Cache Photos
Slideshow
And here are the pictures in a slide show below (just smaller):

Home runs and things

Ok, home runs? Yes.

Home runs are things like a home cooked meal for cheap, that everyone loves, and only really need pan, maybe a pot.

I made the Cheatin' Chicken Cacciatore last Friday. If you haven't made the Chicken a la Popeye or this, you really don't know what you are missing. Quick, delicious, easy, inexpensive. It doesn't get better than that. A homerun, out of the park. How good was the chicken cacciatore? My son loved it, and SGG ate it even though it had mushrooms in it. She HATES mushrooms.

Things have been kind of busy lately. I've been working on some picture and video projects at home. My son had the flu three days last week. I had a 10' rule in effect. He couldn't get closer than 10' from me. Not a problem. I think he was in bed the whole time.

Brandon also had straight A's on his progress report. He really seems to be focused on doing well in school. Miracles never cease.

Work has been busy, but not stressful. Mostly I am back to doing what I love full time.

I play spring and fall softball. I bought a new bat in May, it lasted two nights. I sent it back. They sent me a warranty replacement bat. I used it two night, it broke, I sent it back. They weren't too keen on sending me another, but they did. I used it tonight for the first time. I hope it lasts longer than the others. I don't do anything hinky, I just hit softballs. I like the bat, and I hit a lot of home runs with it, but I don't think I'll buy another one of that brand.

Softball tonight had an interesting ending. Let me explain about a walk off home run. If you are the home team, in the last inning, and are either tied or losing when you get up to bat and you hit a home run, it is a walk off home run. It means you hit and walk off the field, the game is over, you win. :-) It doesn't happen too often, but it does happen. I haven't ever hit one, but I have wanted to.

I hit a walk off home run tonight. And we lost the game. Aweso...what? LOST? So, already, it doesn't really match the definition of a walk off home run...but I am going to claim it anyway. :-) What happened tonight was that we only had nine players. I was the ninth batter. We are supposed to have ten players, so after the ninth batter it is an automatic out. We had two outs already, so after me the game was over anyway. We were down by 4 runs. Only 1 runner was on. I hit a home run, and walked off, losing the game by two runs. :-)

Like the movie Tin Cup where "everyone will remember the 12", everyone tonight will remember the walk-off home run.....LOSS. :-)

Just thinking outside of the box a bit here about regulating...anything....

Why regulate healthcare? Government involvement is already one of the reasons premiums and costs are so high.

I want to propose a different tact. There is an industry untouched by government regulation, and for one specific reason to follow is likely to remain untouched. Let's consider one of the reasons insurance is so high, health care is so expensive, and why we have so many interesting reminders on signs around us all the time. Lawsuits...and more specifically, Lawyers.

Just think about it. What if private law practices were limited to criminal defense? All other lawyers had to be government civilians, especially on civil suit cases. What if these attorney's were not allowed a cut of the final judgment or settlement?

Just think about it.

Now remember, most members of Congress, State Governments, and City Governments were at one time Lawyers...You think this will get anywhere?

Not until we get more involved.

Iris, Kajeet, and more Popeye....

So, to catch up a bit. This weekend our neighbor's dog figured out how to will through the fence. While I was investigating the dog and the fence I saw this purple flower in a spot I didn't know there were flowers. My neighbor says it is a bearded iris.

I fixed the chicken a la popeye for SGG this weekend. How good was it? She asked if she could lick the plate. My son keeps asking for the chicken a la popeye now. Big Little Wolf said she has a pasta dish up there now too. One pan and one pot. :-)

Kajeet is a phone service for kids. I read about it here last week. I had been looking at phones and plans for my son, and I have come to HATE phone companies. Hidden fees, contracts, "features", etc. You could spend days trying to put all of it together to get to some bottom line price and still not get there. To me, Kajeet was simple. Parental controls on all phones, gps locator if you want it (and I do), and no contract. I can terminate my son's access at any moment, or add money and things to it. Compared to what I was looking at through Verizon and Sprint, this was easy and had all the right stuff. :-)

MMMMMMMMM.....

Yesterday my son went on a field trip to the University of Richmond and then to the Virginia State Fair. What was the highlight of the trip? Bull riding at the State Fair. More specifically, he rode the mechanical bull. Twice even. He said that they were having some sort of contest, if you stayed on for 8 seconds you win $200. I mentioned that I couldn't see them allowing him to ride without a consenting adult. He said he had to sign a few forms. Seriously? I still haven't asked he teachers about it though. He said he was on both times for just over 7.9 seconds. That I do believe.

This morning he was complaining about his chest hurting. You think?

I was too tired to care. Something woke me up after about 3 hours of sleep and I couldn't go back. The only hour of sleep I got after that was the hour the alarm went off before I got up. I was so tired that I went running and everything was on inside out. I didn't notice until I took it off to get a shower. I bent over to smell something in a cup and then wandered about for five minutes trying to find where the smell was coming from before figuring out something from the cup was on my nose. I thought I pulled out my black suit today, but it was the navy blue one. Fortunately the shirt and tie almost matched because I wasn't changing it.

It wasn't shaping up to be a good day. It turned out fine though...at least at 9pm EDT it is fine.

I made this concoction tonight. It was AMAZINGLY delicious. Chicken ala popeye. My only begotten son went back for seconds. Many thanks go to Big Little Wolf for mentioning it in the comments. You really can do it all in one pan if you don't do the potatoes.

Edited to add:
You HAVE to do the potatoes though. It is worth cleaning the extra pan.

It's just dinner...

And no it isn't a dating site...or a site at all...it's just my dinner tonight.

It was inspired by dinner last night at the Mexican place after the spider-tunnel-cache. I got a spinach enchilada and they made sure the spinach was thoroughly cooked. I am assuming to ensure the was no chance of any bacteria surviving...and I can tell you it did not. It wasn't bad at all, just really well done.

I got to thinking this morning that I could do that just a little bit better. I had refried beans and spinach tortillas in the house. I went to the store and got a couple of bags of spinach and a Mexican cheese combo bag (among a number of other items).

I heated up the refried beans in the microwave and heated a pan with some oil. I put in the spinach with a lot of garlic and some bits of an orange. My neighbor calls it kinky spinach, and it is really good. When the spinach was done I put it in a bowl and dumped a bunch of cheese on top. I spread out the beans on the tortilla, heaped the spinach/cheese on top, and rolled it up burrito style. It was delicious.

I knew Brandon wasn't going to eat it, so I got some catfish while I was at the store. I rolled it around in some corn meal, put in a little more oil in the pan, and fried the fish about five minutes on each side. I always add some salt on each side of the fish, but not pepper this time. It was marinated in some cajun seasoning already. I cooked some corn for him too.

Not too bad for dinner overall. We have lots of fish left over.

Another Sunday Geocache...hidden by a friend...

Julie, the professional Geocacher, hid a cache out in Chesapeake not too long ago. Since I saw her Saturday at a little league game, she asked if we had gotten out to find her cache. We haven't, but we haven't been out that way. Sunday I had to pick up my son from his Grandparents and we were going right by there. No excuse, we had to go find it.

It was getting near sunset when I picked up my son. He was in his pajamas. Didn't matter, we were still going. I had brought my head lamps just in case we ran out of light, and it was a good thing because I needed them anyway. I have a good friend, Candace, that lives 2 minutes from there so I called to see if she would like to come out with us. She said yes and met us there.

There is a nice park just inside the neighborhood there and naturally I assumed the cache was there. Walking in, the first thing we noticed was the very large spiders making their webs for their evening of bug catching. I tried to get some pictures on my phone. They are below. There was a nice pond with a big waterfall. It is a very picturesque spot, even with the giant man eating spiders around. The cache was not here though. I looked at the cache description and it became apparent that we had to go out to the main road.

When we rounded the corner we saw a policeman investigating our vehicles. We were parked in front of some no trespassing signs, but we weren't trespassing. There were no "No Parking" signs. The policeman was very nice and knew about geocaching. We talked for a few minutes and he said we would be fine for now, but next time we should consider parking somewhere back up the road.

We walked over near the spot and we found a very cool tunnel that looked like it was used for flooding. It was dry and no chance of flash floods at that moment so we figured we were safe. It was there we saw the garden spider, and that was funny because I was just talking about one I nearly backed into in Oklahoma that was 3 times the size of the one we were looking at now. I investigated all round the tunnel opening, but the cache was not there. It was a sort of micro cache and only had a log in it. I was going to have to go in.

So I did. It was a really clean tunnel. While I was looking for clues to the spot I saw some sparkles here and there down the tunnel. I thought those might be from the cache. NOPE. Believe it or not. those things were spider eyes! I am not kidding. Like animals eyes at night, those things light up. That was crazy strange. I did find the cache quickly though, being arachnid-ly motivated.