Monday, June 19, 2006

Tortooga

Here's the cake I made Davey for Father's Day. It was my first attempt at a buttercream transfer. Tooga's nose bit the dust in the freezer when the board he was on slipped and hit a rack. I was out of brown frosting and didn't want to make more, so he looks like someone took a bite out of his nose. The outline around his feet got a little messed up. I'm not sure why. Either not a thick enough bead of frosting or I didn't leave him in the freezer long enough. I didn't start him until about 9pm on Friday night. I don't reccomend decorating and baking a cake while dying your hair, but somehow I managed to do both. Btw, Tooga is a turtle from World of Warcraft. He gives a quest where you have to help him find his wife. For some reason, Davey kept calling him Tortooga and it made me laugh. Making the cake was really an excuse to try a buttercream transfer. They're really not too hard. Also, I really need a sifter for the powdered sugar, too many little clumps in the frosting.

Sunday, June 18, 2006

HAPPY FATHER'S DAY!!!!



Friday, June 16, 2006

Voyeurism and the Dog Walk



I have a new hobby. It’s something I find myself doing on my daily dog walk, which is like a fog walk, but a little faster, with a dog and there’s no fog. I’m usually out with Link around dusk, listening to a podcast. As it starts to get dark, people turn their inside lights on and I can see inside their houses. Yup, I’m a creepy dog walking nosey nelly. In my defense, these people could close their blinds or draw their curtains. They obviously want me to peek inside.

We live in a pretty nice neighborhood. Though our house is not one of the nice ones and we really live right on the edge of the neighborhood. My dog walk route takes me into the heart of the $700K house area. Some houses are surprising. Like a really nice looking house and when I see the kitchen, it’s in serious need of an upgrade. Mostly, when I see kitchens there is a fair amount of granite and stainless steel. I did see one kitchen that looked very similar to our kitchen when we bought our house. Think wood paneling, crappy brown veneer cabinets and lots of orange an yellow. Poor bastards.

On my dog walk, I spend time contemplating the decorating choices I see along the way. Sure, not everybody can have a giant map of Middle Earth, a replica of Sting (the sword not the singer) along with some tin Futurama propaganda signs and a wall of assorted children's toys that would make a preschool look as bare as a marine barracks in comparison. I see that the fancy house set seems to enjoy fake flowers. My favorite decorating choice (I’ve seen this everywhere) is the fancy waste paper basket, or for the table top a vase, full of really long sticks. A lot of houses have pictures in frames hanging on the walls. I think they call it “art.” One house has a nice horse picture on the wall, it’s effect is negated by the fake flowers in the room. I did see one room that was devoid of any decoration complete with white walls. There was a couch and a t.v. in the room and that was about it. I think they were going for the Willy Wonka look of the room where the kid gets shrunk into the t.v. set.

Pretty much every dog walk I see an old lady walking around outside in a house coat. I don’t think it’s the same lady each time. One time, on our street even, I saw a lady in a moo moo type dress. She wasn’t really old enough or fat enough that she has an excuse for wearing that thing. But I still thought it was awesome.

Thursday, June 15, 2006

What's New Scooby Doo?

Okay, so we have two cute little kids in the house. One is currently hitting that giant baby milestone of walking... so what happens? Our video camera decides to crap out. Luckily, pretty much every one with this model or similar has had theirs crap out already, so Canon will be fixing it for free. I guess they put a bunch of crappy CCD’s in their cameras so that after a year or so the camera is unable to record video. You can watch your old footage on the little lcd screen and you can still record audio (whoopee!) but no more video recording.

Roan had a bad dream last night. She woke up screaming at 2:45. I think I had just fallen asleep around 2. This morning she told me it was about Scooby Doo. Roan loves Scooby Doo. She mainly watches the “new” adventures of Scooby Doo. The theme song is different, it’s a pop-punk theme song. Roan makes us come and listen to her sing (whisper) along to it.

Do you know who her favorite character is? Daphne. Yup. Daphne and Fred. The beautiful people. You’d think my kid would be more of a Velma or at least Shaggy or Scooby kid. I asked her why Daphne is her favorite and she told me because she has a purple dress. I guess her bad dream last night was about Daphne being tied up and scary monsters that aren’t really monsters but people pretending to be monsters. Last week we got her a set of Scooby-gang action figures at the toy outlet. Guess who I had to be... Velma. Dave got to be Scooby. Baby Sage was the Sage Monster because she kept kidnapping members of the Scooby gang. Roan’s Little People school bus was the Mystery Machine.

Thursday, June 08, 2006

Houston, We Have Lift Off...

Sage is walking! She mostly stumbles around like a drunk sailor, but now when she falls down, she can stand back up on her own. Woo-hoo! She’s pretty proud of herself when she stumbles around, it’s pretty cute. Now I just have to remember to write the date down in her baby book. Poor Sage, the “second child.” It’s true, her baby book is not as full.

Horse Expo is this weekend. I probably won’t go, since I haven’t been riding and I’m not sure when I will start again. If I’m up early enough on Sunday and the kids are driving me nuts, maybe I’ll go (kids stay home with dad).

Today is Jay “Biz”’s birthday. Happy Birthday Jay!

Friday, June 02, 2006

Zzzzzzz.....

I am so sleepy. Roan woke me up a half an hour before my already set too early alarm was due to go off. Why did she wake me up, you ask? She stepped on and broke a crayon. A crayon that shouldn’t have been in her room to begin with as Sage goes around and finds every stray crayon (like a dwarf and treasure) and then proceeds to take a big bite out of each and every one. Crayons make a peculiar crunching sound when she bites in to them. They do sound quite delicious.

We have a play date in about an hour. I wish my coffee would cool down faster. Then we have to hurry home so we can watch a sweet little baby. This should be interesting. I can see what it’s like to spend the day with three kids. Should curb that inexplicable yearning I have for a third. I’m hoping Sage decides to take a really long nap and Roan will just want to veg out watching some cartoons. Then me and the little baby can just sit back and watch a dvd. I can dream, right? Anyway, today won’t be boring.

Lest you think I’ve actually gone and got a real life, I have lots of Warcraft stuff to talk about, but I think I will post warcraft stuff on a different blog. I’ll get around to it someday. It’s good to have goals.

I put a permanent link to beer and tv at the right. I think I’ve read the entire blog. It’s funny.

Thursday, June 01, 2006

I Hate Mondays

Oh holy crap

Awesome Blog

I just became aware of this blog.
Luci and I joined a new guild in WoW and this blog is written by one of our new guildmates. I haven't read all of it yet, but I really enjoyed the posts under "Raising Children - Cautionary Tales." You have to look at the right side of the page and scroll down to find all the posts. Funny stuff.

Stuff

I feel like I’ve unintentionally abandoned this blog. I haven’t, I’ve just been doing a lot of “stuff” lately. Nothing terribly interesting. Sage is a little more demanded during my usual “blogging time” and I don’t always feel like using her nap time (hallelujah!) for blogging. Spending nap time playing Warcraft (crate runs) is a much better use, I’d say. (hehe I just did).

Yesterday I took the kids up to the Thunder Valley Casino. Roan’s been once before. I always feel weird walking in there with my little kid(s). We went up there because my mom’s seniors group was taking a bus trip there. So we met up with her and some old family friends who now live in Lincoln. We went to see the friends house and then back to the casino to wait for 25 minutes for lunch. I think the insane wait times at the casino restaurants are just a ploy to make you gamble more. When we finally got a table in the cafe you could see that there were many empty tables. Perhaps they didn’t have the staff to take care of them, but if they regularly have half hour waits at lunch time, you think they’d at least fill all the tables. Oh well. Roan had pancakes.