Author: lief

Santa is coming to town

Tonight there is snow on the ground. One of the few times, in my memory, when snow preceded Christmas. It is supposed to be VERY cold in the coming days at least relative to the typical northwest weather that we get; in fact they say it will be colder than it has been here in 50 years.

The girls are REALLY excited for some playtime in the snow. Emma said it this way on the phone with BopOp earlier.

It weally is nowing!
Weah gonna mayka NO-MAN!
I am so ecthiting!

This is a far cry from where she was mentally last week when we had pictures taken with Santa.

In the attempt to get Emma on his lap she lost her right shoe and the other shoe came away with Santa fuzz stuck to the toe. Once she was successfully deposited onto his lap she dove for the nearest comfort, Abby.

The poor teenaged, “holiday helper” grabbed the squeaky toy and squeezed it’s plaintive wheeze, hoping for attention. It was not even an also-ran with Emma’s caterwallin. It was also no match for our terse and simultaneous instructions,

Take the picture!

As inneffectual as they were with the squeezy toy a snappy trigger finger caught the action for both posterity and as evidence for future therapists.

Yeah Doc, I dunno, I just have this thing against men wearing red?

It also shows just how good a big sister Abby is to Emma.

In honor of JohnnyDeep and for Fatty

“I am not much of a joiner”
Kent Peterson over at Kent’s bike blog

I am not much of a joiner either BUT I have been reading FatCyclist for a while now and Fatty’s wife Susan is fighting cancer. I have never commented and I don’t know him personally but I read about him and his wife a lot, so now I feel like I do. Fatty has a lot of friends in his Internet neighborhood and he has formed (is forming) a team for the Livestrong challenge and well, I am in…just because.

And because I also know JohnnyDeep, a friend of a friend who is fighting cancer with a vengeance.
Johnny, I have a hard time following your progress but I do check in and I invariably wonder what I could say or do. Nothing seems right. I don’t know what to do or say and the answer just circles back to “nothing seems appropriate”; I don’t know why.

  • I don’t know you enough
  • I am not good at “this”
  • it is too hard to read your blog
  • but everything helps
  • and I only met you a few times so just let him have his space
  • but he always welcomed me into his house despite all that…

So enough is enough, and I don’t know if this is appropriate really either; is 100 miles of riding my bike enough? Not really, but it is what it is and I can do this.

So June 21, 2009 I will ride my yellow recumbent 100 miles in honor of JohnnyDeep and for Fatty’s wife Susan.
If you feel like contributing you may do so on my Livestrong Challenge fund-raising page here.

I guess now I’m a joiner.

Hey mister…

Coupla days ago I was riding BopOp’s Globe (an upright, diamond-frame bike) home from the train. I was cursing my strained pelvic floor (rather than thinking about how to fix my recumbent) when one of those small ironies of bicycling occurred.
With perhaps a slight redefinition of irony, let’s explore this and see what comes out.

Coming around a long slow corner I pulled my head out of it’s slump to notice a vehicle in an unusual location. It was stalled on the far side of the street and a disheveled man was just getting out with a small gas can. As I made eye contact he ironied me.

Hey! Can you spare a brother a gallon of gas?

In my current condition I wasn’t real quick, and the question actually stunned me for a moment, but I still had the wits to come up with this retort as I rode by;

Sorry man, all I got is burritos!

I chuckled to myself all the way home and even tried coming up with a better reply.
I only came up with

Looks like you need to get a bike!

I think the burrito’s one was better with all due respect to the zeropergallon.com website but I think this remains one of the great opportunities, a TON of material, for a truly good one-liner.

Can you think of a better one (I’m lookin at you Jame)?
I kinda want to have a ringer pre-loaded for the next time somebody asks me for a gallon of gas…while riding my bike.
And, if your retort can pull double duty for when someone in the stall asks me, standing at the urinal,

Hey! Can you spare a brother a square?

…well, if you can do that you will get special recognition on blief.
I am the judge and jury on this one and I still might be the winner cause the burrito line was good.

Not Alice’s Restaurant

Apparently we can’t get enough of the whole costume thing around here. For Abby’s birthday UN-birthday party she had planned an Alice in Wonderland theme.
She planned it, The Mommy executed. The Daddy and Emma just showed up.
And by executed I mean

OFF WITH THEIR HEADS!

There is so much material in Alice in Wonderland that we could have simply conversed entirely in Alice quotes all day long and never repeated ourselves. In fact I did; well…at least the former. My tongue nearly stuck in a perma-lithp.

Here is an excellent group shot we got just before the festivities began and afterwards I include some detail shots because we were just all in character.

Tea anyone?

I'm not late?

But I don't want to be among mad people?

Off with their heads!

This is an unbirthday party!

It was a very, merry, unbirthday for all.

Costumage

talkin bout my girls...my girls
From the top we have; a bunny (the third one in the house these days), Lyra Belacqua in her winter attire, and a sheepie with whiskers.

There. Done. What a cute little black sheepie nose! 🙂
I ‘ant whiskews.
What?
I ‘ant whiskews.
But honey, Sheepies don’t have whiskers?
[pointing to the extreme hemispheres of her cheeks] Looong ones.
Ok…whiskers it is.
…
MOM! [running to tell] Daddy’s putting whiskers on Emma!!!
[from afar-loud] Daddy?! Sheepies don’t have whiskers!
[to afar-loud] This one does!
[from afar] Ok.

Another choice moment came at one of the first houses we hit up for candy.

Emma…uh Sheepie…What do you say when they open the door?
[door opens and holding out her punkin bag]
Pleeeeeze!

She got lots of candy.

Two singers

I kept the girls up tonight to watch, with me, an historic speech. After an unexpectedly quick resolution to an expansive campaign season spanning nearly all of Emma’s little lifetime I felt the levity and import of this event should not be superseded by a mere bedtime.
The important elements were not lost on either of them: Abby inquired as to how those girls earned a puppy and Emma made a frank and honest observation based on a lifetime of experience with the performance arts;

He has two singers.

Yes We Can.

Yes he does and…
Yes We Can.

Mustachioed

Last Monday a co-worker showed up with a big mustache and some big ‘ol pointy sideburns. I chuckled and asked him if he lost a bet. After that I felt a little bad for the comment and so I told him if he decided to keep it I would wear one too until Halloween. So the next morning I shaped and shaved. I ended up missing the mark a bit and got a kinda sleezy mustache. I also missed with the extravagant sideburns so they ended up being too short. Now add my new Superstar helmet and my new Windwrap fairing to the skeezestache and you get an unhappy cross between Super Dave Osborne, a 70’s b-movie star, and Speed Racer.

If that picture is not hideous or somehow less than descriptive just know that I am not looking myself.